Pierotti's Camp outside Kane 1963
The Pierotti's camp outside Kane. 1963
A little reunion with friends of my parents and their children. This was a little "camp" they had outside of town. I just remember wandering over by the creek and out into the forest. That might be me batting. Our Dads grew up together, went to War together and survived it. They always kept in touch. The people who share your childhood are never forgotten.
“The wind will blow. The devils rise. All who celebrate shall be ghosts. And there will be nothing but eternal dancing, dust on dust, everywhere you look.”
-The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
*
I got to the lake in the woods and remembered the game of British Bulldogs we’d played here when the lake froze last January. Twenty or thirty kids, skimming and shrieking, all over the shop. Tom Yew’d interrupted the game, scrambling down the path I’d just taken, on his Suzuki. He’d sat on the exact same bench I was sitting on, remembering him. Now Tom Yew’s in a cemetery on a treeless hill on a bunch of islands we’d never even heard of last January. What’s left of Tom Yew’s Suzuki’s being picked apart to repair other Suzukis. The world won’t leave things be. It’s always injecting endings into beginnings. Leaves tweezer themselves from these weeping willows. Leaves fall into the lake and dissolve into slime. Where’s the sense in that? Mum and Dad fell in love, had Julia, had me. They fall out of love, Julia moves off to Edinburgh, Mum to Cheltenham, and Dad to Oxford with Cynthia. The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making. But who says the world has to make sense?
*
The world’s a headmaster who works on your faults. I don’t mean in a mystical or a Jesus way. More how you’ll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that’s wrong with us, if we’re too selfish or too Yessir, Nosir, Three bags full sir or too anything, that’s a hidden step. Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault forever or, one day, you do notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about that hidden step and think, Hey, life isn’t such a shithouse after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps. There are always more.
Black Swan Green: A Novel by David Mitchell
Pierotti's Camp outside Kane 1963
The Pierotti's camp outside Kane. 1963
A little reunion with friends of my parents and their children. This was a little "camp" they had outside of town. I just remember wandering over by the creek and out into the forest. That might be me batting. Our Dads grew up together, went to War together and survived it. They always kept in touch. The people who share your childhood are never forgotten.
“The wind will blow. The devils rise. All who celebrate shall be ghosts. And there will be nothing but eternal dancing, dust on dust, everywhere you look.”
-The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
*
I got to the lake in the woods and remembered the game of British Bulldogs we’d played here when the lake froze last January. Twenty or thirty kids, skimming and shrieking, all over the shop. Tom Yew’d interrupted the game, scrambling down the path I’d just taken, on his Suzuki. He’d sat on the exact same bench I was sitting on, remembering him. Now Tom Yew’s in a cemetery on a treeless hill on a bunch of islands we’d never even heard of last January. What’s left of Tom Yew’s Suzuki’s being picked apart to repair other Suzukis. The world won’t leave things be. It’s always injecting endings into beginnings. Leaves tweezer themselves from these weeping willows. Leaves fall into the lake and dissolve into slime. Where’s the sense in that? Mum and Dad fell in love, had Julia, had me. They fall out of love, Julia moves off to Edinburgh, Mum to Cheltenham, and Dad to Oxford with Cynthia. The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making. But who says the world has to make sense?
*
The world’s a headmaster who works on your faults. I don’t mean in a mystical or a Jesus way. More how you’ll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that’s wrong with us, if we’re too selfish or too Yessir, Nosir, Three bags full sir or too anything, that’s a hidden step. Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault forever or, one day, you do notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about that hidden step and think, Hey, life isn’t such a shithouse after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps. There are always more.
Black Swan Green: A Novel by David Mitchell