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Deep South Memories, Both Actual and True…

IMAGINEERING THE MAGIC CEILING

I am lying flat on my back in the living room of my childhood home, staring at the hard-plaster ceiling and contemplating the cracks that zigzag here and there, going nowhere in particular.

At this moment I am just Me as a kid, back here in the 1950′s when this scene—actual and true—is taking place.

Alone in the asbestos-shingled bungalow I share with two parents, two sisters, two brothers, I am enjoying the silence of the moment and doing what I do best: ruminating and cogitating and fantasizing and thinking real hard.

I am rarely alone in the house, so times like this are special.

Right now, I am wondering where my inspirations are buried. Over the years, I have hidden things so that I or some futuristic person might find these things and gleefully re-experience them someday.

For instance, there is a note squirreled away between insulation  and roofing in the back of the house. I can no longer get to this note. It is a message to myself, but I have no idea what this message contains, because it has been so long since I hid it there back while the add-on room was under construction.

In the back yard is yet another secreted treasure–-a small box with important but now forgotten objects that I want to dig up. However, I am unable to locate the spot because the hand-drawn secret map to this burial site has gone missing in the chaos of childhood.

I blink blink and stare harder at the ceiling cracks, massaging ideas and poems and stories in my head, not yet brave enough to set them down on paper. After all, only Writers can accomplish this, and I dare not call myself a writer.

These compositions will float and flourish for decades until the day comes when I will regurgitate them in the form of columns and books and blasts and blogs and podcasts. Some will remain hidden. Some will inspire others…some will find Appreciators.

Some will simply exist…waiting.

Finally, life intervenes and motivates me to arise from the floor, dust myself off, grab a snack, pocket a pad of writing paper and a pencil, and leave the house before any family members return. They might not understand the significance of my lying afloor and appearing to be doing not a thing in the world.

Another hidden note: I alone know that these few minutes have been busy and activity-filled and reanimating for me. I know, too, that those in the family who are not imagineers will think me idle.

But I also am aware that there are younger, upcoming fellow dreamers among them  who may yet blossom and expose their hidden treasures to Appreciators, too. Who may gaze deeply into the plaster cracks to see what lurks there, what hibernates there.

Appreciators who will have not a clue as to how much floor-time goes into crafting a work of art into something visible and alive

© 2019 A.D. by Jim the Reed