Writing My Mind.com

Questions

The wisest people I know are full of questions.

~ Text & photograph by Russ Allison Loar
~ Click here to listen to "Questions" at Russ Loar Music.com
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All Of Us

We're all mad here.
I'm mad.
You're mad.

~ Artwork by Russ Allison Loar
~ Text from "Alice In Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll
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# 58:

Every moment is sacred.

~ Russ Allison Loar
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Fathers and Sons

They are their father's sons.
I criticize them for being like me.
I know too well where that can lead.

~ Text & photograph by Russ Allison Loar
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# 43:

Find heaven right where you are.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

"Where is the doorway to eternity? Where do you enter? Think on these things and we will continue our discussion next time,” the self-proclaimed self-help guru said at the end of the two-hour class: “Finding What You Never Lost,” held at the community senior center.

The guru climbed into his car and as he was backing out of the parking space he heard a familiar scraping sound and knew his front bumper had again caught on a parking lot bumper.

He shifted into park and climbed out of his car to push the left end of his ragged plastic bumper back into place. He’d done this many times before. “I ought to get it fixed,” he thought, but his income as a local guru and Social Security recipient was of a temporal nature.

“I am but a humble creature of the Earth,” he thought as he tried to open the car door. The car was still running and somehow, he’d locked himself out. “This is going to be embarrassing,” he contemplated.

~ Story & photo painting by Russ Allison Loar
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Time Travel

If we could ever figure out how to travel backward in time,
we’d have to get rid of the word “after.”

~ Words and photograph by Russ Allison Loar
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# 222:

In this world of sorrows, we must find
some small, happy thought, each day,
and smile.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

I Slapped My Father, Hard

I slapped my father hard, a clean open-fisted slap that sent his bifocals skidding across the kitchen floor.

It was the culmination of my accumulated rage against that man. It was a reaffirmation of the difference between us, of the vow I’d made to never, ever become anything at all like him. It was complete rejection, without hesitation.

It was a vow often repeated but first intoned when I was eight years old, the morning after The Dream. It was a dream that would both instruct and haunt me for the rest of my life. In The Dream, I saw my parents as I’d often seen them late in the evening, from behind a canvas shade pulled down to cover the glass-paneled door that separated my tiny bedroom from the family room where they spent their evenings watching television. My makeshift bedroom was originally a den. Although their house was built by an architect, it was not designed for two children. I was the second child.

By curling the edge of the shade back a bit with my thumb and forefinger, I could watch television shows that were on past my bedtime, and I could watch my parents. I discovered my mother smoked. She had never, ever smoked in front of me or my older sister, and especially not in front of her parents who lived next door, who would have been horrified. I also saw my parents drink. Sometimes they filled the house with strangers who talked loud and drank and talked louder and drank more and filled the house with smoke and loud frightening laughter surrounding and invading my tiny dark room.

My parents acted gracious and kind when observed by others, but alone at home they were troubled and angry. I was often jolted out of sleep in the middle of the night by the sobbing and screaming of my mother, by the angry accusations shouted by my father. I knew this meant I would be severely disciplined the next day for the smallest transgression. I would be hit. It might be a slap across the face, a spanking or repeated blows during the frenzy of unharnessed rage.

I spent most of my younger years assuming guilt, wondering why I was such a bad child, deserving of so much punishment. But as I grew older, I developed a growing awareness that I was not really the cause of their anger, just the excuse.

THE DREAM:

I was standing next to the glass-paneled door in the dark of my room and pulled back the shade just enough to see my parents turning off the television. They began pulling at their hair. Finally, with great effort, pulling off the masks of their human faces, revealing their true faces, the faces of wolves. After removing their clothing they were fully transformed into wild and frightening fur-covered beasts. They snarled and snickered, malevolently amused at their deception, walking on four legs toward their bedroom and out of my sight.

The next morning I vowed I would never give in to these wild beasts, these devourers. I would fight them. I would defend myself. I knew their secret.