Life as usual was rife with emotional turmoil. After narrowly escaping the bullies of my elementary school years with virtually no assistance from any other human being, I had now been thrown into a substantially more hostile environment of Junior High where now I had to contend with the added dimensions of strangers from at least six other educational districts carrying major racial rifts amongst themselves, within a strange place, and with strange obligations and classroom requirements. My brother, Lucky, whom had preceded me by five years with such adventures himself, and from whom I tried desperately to cull answers about these mysteries, had conveniently escalated his rebellions against the upbringing within our household to such a point that eminently, he had to run away from home.
While adjusting to the loneliness of my twelve years of age, Lucky remained entrenched with his own perplexing life adapting to his temporary and new home environment at our grandmother’s house which by and large was far removed from my access - if only by an emotional definition. In physical reality, grandma’s house sat on a corner, a mere three blocks away. Even now, I am astonished by the minimal social unity the extension of my family members had exercised while I was at such a young and tender age.
Perhaps even more astonishing, was the fact that I could still look up to my brother in spite of the quickly propagating reproachable behaviors manifesting in his mutinous life. On the other hand, it might not be so considerable for a youngster to hero worship an older brother when the whole of his environment seemed purposeless except for being the constant recipient of physical and emotional berating by his peers, while simultaneously imprisoned at home and proactively punished for the wrongdoing one’s older brother pioneered.
For me, a deep rooted need existed to find sense and reason in my environment. My only natural avenue to determine such causes and effects came not from asking pertinent questions of my parents - the answers were profoundly out of the capabilities of my silent father, and hopelessly retained deep in the bosom of an overprotecting mother apparently terrified by the possibility these answers may some how cause me to grow up before she thought I was supposed to. Instead, my answers manifested through the perceptions I had of the only person at the time I seemingly could relate to; my older brother.
In my mind, I downplayed his lack of interaction with me because I was admiring his tenacity against such a cruel world. Why! It had to have been playing out upon him just as it had been playing out upon me. Hostilities from peers. Rejections from girls. Assumed inappropriate punishments from our parental features. He had a strength - albeit, a negative one - but strength all the same, and in that strength, my admiration rested.
In his absence, my pursuit of reality’s truths, on occasion manifested in my dreams. It was unfortunate that the moments which presented themselves did not always coincide with my capability to comprehend them at the time.
Case in point:
Late in the winter of my seventh grade year, during sleep I found myself walking towards the Belmont Park which acted much like a magnet during my frequent quests to commune with nature and in so doing derive some sense of satisfaction for being placed upon this physical plane. The twilight tones of violet and blue were predominant as I reached this destination, and they brought to me a sense of serenity that could best be expressed if one were to understand that just as the "eternal dawn" signifies being in a heavenly place, then the pre dawn undertones of twilight must signify the earliest point at which the soul realizes the darkness of ignorance has "finally" been put behind its desire for illumination. It was here, in all of it’s grandeur that I began to immerse myself in the vision.
My mind movement registered first as the child seeking the playground swing set of this park; a place where the constraints of the body could become reanimation of the spirit. For in swinging, my feet need no longer be placed upon the ground, and in keeping with the twilight analogy, I could move towards a lofty, inspirational place where the sense of blessing and overall serenity could be found as well. But as I approached the park, my anticipation for the swing set dissolved away much as the familiarity of what was supposed to be "my" park had, when before my eyes I could see towering trees rising up from the rolling hillsides and out upon the exaggerated plateaus of the pseudo-familiarity of my surroundings.
In this vision, a peculiar yet obvious sensation came to mind of, "refuge" when I realized that perched in the sturdiest cradle of limbs of each tree, a gigantic nest had been placed - a nest fully capable of supporting a human sized occupant with security, intimacy and plenty of room to spare. And even as I understood this, I knew that the refuge was not for my benefit, but had been used by others who by the time of my arrival, had themselves, departed for distant places I could not imagine. Even though this community was devoid of occupants, their "vibrations" seemed to have remained - and the place felt ghostly, and mysterious while full of promise for some impending discovery that I might make.
Much like a traveler exploring new environs, I found a compulsion and a pulling towards one nest in particular. It wasn’t deep in the field by any means, nor was it easily accessible. In fact, at first, while standing at the base of it’s massive trunk, I felt incapable of climbing to it’s lofty height. But the compulsion that I was on the verge of an important discovery never waned, and I soon managed to climb up arriving in the cozy little pocket from where my view had notably improved.
Aside from my grandiose view, a sensation of familiarity arose within me after awhile in the surrounding nest. Suddenly, I had determined that the previous inhabitant was in fact, a relative, the sensation striking me as if it were the memory of a long lost brother - yet, someone so distant that only at the moment, was I reminded that he even existed in the first place. As I explored what appeared to be personal belongings left behind, I found one item intimately familiar to me, but peculiar in that I could not describe what it was.
By now the predominant sensation within me had become one of bittersweet remorse. While the undefinable trinket remained in my grasp, I soon became comforted in the awareness that this object was what my comprehension identified as a "legacy" from my actual brother by blood. It rested in the palm of my hand while I pondered the fact that it may very well have been the only connection left between myself and my brother. Yet, for this duration, he was perceived as a mysterious entity with whom I felt a strong bond even as I remained compelled to understand as someone who had "moved on" - apparently towards some abstracted other-world place which I myself could not access.
Perhaps it was my consciousness arguing with my subconscious while I remained asleep in reality, but the "brother" represented within my comprehension seemed to be someone more distant than the brother I knew as Lucky. After all, Lucky was not a member of the departed in my awakened reality: he was simply in another residence at our grandmother’s house. The dream closed with me puzzling over the connotations that someone I should have known better had now moved beyond my capability to do so, while simultaneously trying to decipher the meaning and the purpose of my new found trinket.