Imagine for a moment a container with four walls. These walls are all beige and bland. These four walls make a box and inside this box is a bookshelf, filled with words beyond one could ever read, the books that lined the shelves were probably collected over a long span of schooling. I doubt they were ever picked up after being placed there, the dust lining them agreed. A fireplace warmed the interior of the room, contained inside a rustic caste pit where many a rejection letter must have been thrown in fits of rage. A record player that must have been picked up from someones garage-sale after the passing of their great-grand mother. And lastly two couches made of what I can only imagine Italians dreams are made of. The whole scene you can say this was if Martha Stewart and Josef Mengele had shared a prison cell. On these couches sits on one a perky, cheerful, well accomplished woman by the name of Dr. Amelia Parrish. I am here in her office to make sure there is nothing is wrong with the ole noggin so to say. My name is Zemel. I am going to be subject to these sessions with the good doctor as an example. A rare case in the modern age.
...
My family were quite the traditionalists. They also thought themselves comedians, they were not.
The record is skipping around and it catches my train of thought.
I first learned about classical music from cartoons. The Rabbit and The Hunter locked in an epic back and forth for survival. The Rabbit through circumstance and cartoon shenanigans convinces The Hunter that He, The Rabbit is a great composer and The Hunter is the next performing operatic singer awaiting his chance for fame. The music commences and hilarity ensues. The idea that the music, the beautiful music was the background of these cartoons, and we as viewers ignore it. I mean its looking us right in the face and we just turn a blind eye to the whole thing and just focus on the escape, the cartoon. You could call the whole experience a narrative on society but I'm not trying to be an asshole here.
Yeah I guess that's where everything starts. Parents were military, fought in the last great one and had me. Mother was an engineer and father her CO. The relationship was fast and hot. A passion that was fueled by war and the though that maybe they would have something more after they were sent back to the states. I would be told what the war was like on the ship they were placed in. Open sea and wide skies, clouded by the potential that they were one torpedo or EMP away from certain doom. My mother would eventually leave my father after a string of augments stemming from a lack of interest and having nothing in common besides being on the same boat.
My childhood was spectacular in how ordinary it was. I grew up in a small ghetto, not too poor to live but enough that hot-dogs, Marconi Cheese, and PB+J were made staples of my diet. I went to a public school. Hmm, what else?
Yeah I had some friends. My best friends when I was a kid. Mathew and Julian, they were the popular crowd for sure and I had the honor of being associated with them. We got up to the usual stuff, playing cards and watching TV. We used to ride bikes and walk around the neighborhood. When I was in school I used to get beat up pretty often, torn shirts, and being beat on. Julian and Mathew stood up for me. Then they would give me a couple punches to make up for the ones they took defending me. I think they saw it as a correcting action. Takes these hits from a friend so you can take a hit from a foes kinda deal. I took the lashings and went on with it. Never saw an issue with the bruises, better than a black eye. This is how I though for a long time.
Eventually we had a falling out. I think the main reason was I understood my life's purpose at a young age and they just didn't understand.