Imprefect thoughts and in imerfect mind
Dustin Feyder
Instructor: Kaelie Farrah
Intro. To Creative Writing
Writing Prompt 01/14/19 "Imaginative Writing" Chapter 1 page 1 'Warm Up.'
draft # 1st
Imperfect thoughts and in Imperfect Mind
I was recently in a class. My instructor, who asked to be called Kaelie, (pounced as K-Lee.) had used a phrase, one that I have used many time during magic shows "The human mind is imperfect" I don't know who had coined the phrase. If such a common phrase needs to be attributed to a single person. But those words plus this abstract art piece, on the cover of "Imaginative Writing" by Janet Burroway, seems to have reminded me of something.
Now in my magic shows, one trick I have is a mentalist game where I show of just how easy it is to confuse the human mind. I take two cups, to even cups, and two fist full of coins, two even fist full of coins, then I evenly drop the coins into the cups, two by two, always keeping it even. Until at last I am left with a single odd coin in my hand. I look to my group and confirm that everyone has seen everything I have done so far. Both cups are even, I dropped coins two by two this whole time. I thin take my odd coin and add it to one cup and flip both cups face down. I point to one cup and say "this is the cup I added the odd coin too. That means this cup is odd." then to the other "but this cup is even." I thin lift the 'even' cup and show it has an odd number of coins in it, the cover it, then the 'odd' cup and show it has an 'even' number of coins under it. I will take the 'odd' coin and show it off asking people at that point "how did I end up with an odd number of coins in the even cup?"
At this point half the people I am talking to suddenly look at me confused having no idea what I did. A third of them are convinced I am a 'warlock' just to give you some idea what sort of people I frequently find myself hanging around. Full disclosure, I am not a warlock I am a 'magician' in the words of professor James Randi at the James Randi Educational Foundation "A magician is an illusionist playing the role of a conjuror." I have no supernatural powers and as far as I know nor does anyone else. If anyone asks me, I am also happy to walk people through any of my tricks and show them how they work. Of the rest, some will think they know what I did, but only 2 people have guessed right out of the thousand that I have done this trick for.
This trick, for one, is easy. I started with an odd number of coins in each hand, odd plus one is even, so the cup that gets the 'Odd' coin becomes 'even' in short. I lied. Almost no one is going to count the coins as I am dropping them since I am counting out loud to confuse my audience in the first place. So the meaning of the word 'even' becomes 'symmetrical' until I show of the even cup which is now, and always has, has an odd number of coins in it. By the way, this isn't my trick, I learned it from Penn Fraser Jillette, turns out if you catch him walking out to his car after a show and ask him how one of his tricks work it isn't hard to talk him into letting you in on the joke.
All of this is key in understanding the next part of my story. I have had a side project I have been working on for about a decade, a romanticized story about my youth where I take all the fevered hallucinations of my childhood that I can remember and shape them into a pseudo-autobiography.
1993 I am ten years old. I have just been diagnosed with G.A.D. (General Anxiety Disorder) wrongfully by the way, but that isn't necessarily important to this story. My doctor was a diehard fan of "The Grateful Dead" and looked much lick Tommy Chong from the movie "Up in Smoke." to treat me GAD he prescribed: singing, dancing, and pantomime, to keep the monsters away. In other words, nothing. But it is ok, he got his medical degree in 1960. I am happy he didn't recommend bloodletting or exorcism.
If anyone has had the inclination to read a few pages of DSM-5, they may have found that GAD has five out of twelve symptoms in common with Clinical or Cronic Depression. Add on top of that the oddities one experiences with A.D.D. Dyslexia and in your memories a good deal of small and harmless things suddenly all look very big with even bigger teeth.
This brings me to my dad. My family is full of complicated people. Grampa Warn notwithstanding, my father may be the strangest of them. My old man had all sorts of bizarre stories he told me about what life was like in 1970. He told me about how he ran away from home at fifteen and mascaraed as a U.S.M.C. long enough to finish a tour of service. He told me about his time spent jumping between military forts deconstructing, cleaning and reassembling heavy equipment, and he told me about a time when he 'accidentally' throw a hand grenade at an S.O.
But what he talked about the most, outside of history, was a man he called 'Big Wally' I did meet this man once, so I have a feeling that at least some of the things my dad told me where true. Wally couldn't read, he couldn't count above ten, but he was a giant. Wally stood somewhere between seven and fourteen feet tall. It is hard to tell when you can't yet see over the top of the kitchen table. Wally was also strong, Wally could pick up a 1988 Harley 'Warthog' under one arm and throw it onto the bed of a truck.
My dad apparently had met Wally at one of the many military camps he spent time on. He and my did often spent time camping. My old man's ideal Friday apparently consisting of such activities as drinking a 3lbs back of M&M's eating Cajun turkey jerky then constructing and discharging pyrotechnics without a permit.
One Friday my dad shows up late to meet me at grandma's place. When he shows up, he is dressed up like Indian Jones. He is driving his Frankenstein monster that he tries to pass off as a ford ranger. A bronze plank is resting in the front set, the bed of the truck is filled with backpacking equipment.
Dad has a new story for me. He tells me about a place called "Mount Carlton Sand Paper Quarry" a mine of some sort that sometime before 1900 was in operation around Lack Superior. The site got closed down, dad doesn't know why, but when the workers left, they left behind most of their tools and never came back. After that people started calling it Carlton's Peek now no one calls it anything as it is a forgotten place.
The road going up to Carlton Peek is overgrown and impossible to travel by car. Best way to get there is by bike. It is a 15-mile walk on forested paths hidden off a country road 20 miles from the next nearest town. It is the type of place you honestly wouldn't want to go.
As we drive dad tells me Wally now owns the mine, or what is left of it. But Wally had an accident. My dad didn't tell me the kind of accident, dad did tell me that Wally didn't survive. Rumor has it after whatever had happened Wally picked up his bike and walked back to town carrying it on his back. Wally walked into the gas station that dad and I stopped in. He took a drink at the well pump outside. Then fell asleep, never to wake up again.
Dad and I claimed to the highest point of highest point of Carlton's Peek with that plank. Passing by rusty shovels, broken drills and a car that had apparently been half eaten by the mountain itself as it sticks out of the ground, its hood broken open three feet over my head.
Once at the top of the cliff, dad pulls out the plank and a gas-powered tool from his bag that apparently shoots railroad spike. He rests the plank on the ground. It is nothing more than a thin piece of bronze with Wally's name embordered into it. Dad nails it to the bluff. He then pulls out of his backpack a cigar box made out of tin. Dad sits it on the ground next to him then rest for a time.
All of this I am pretty sure happened. The next part is the part where I am not as sure. Dad and I start to climb back down the bluff. About a third of the way back down we stop on a plateau. Dad wants to set up camp, we will walk back to his truck in the morning. Dad sets out the tent, pulls a snack out of our bags. We eat hot dogs and a banana each. That part I know happened because I have that photo of my dad eating a banana hidden inside the frame of a paint I have of a unicorn.
Dad rips a shrub out of the earth and digs a hole in the ground, he uses lighter fluid to start a campfire. I teach my dad how to play 'Magic the Gathering.' then a strange sound catches my dad's attention. He stands up and walks to the edge of the plateau looking out to Lake Superior. Now, if you have never been within 30 miles of the great lakes, they look like a gulf. The lake fills one's line of sight. The sun is just starting to set, there should be a red reflection coming off the water. There is not. The reflection is black.
Dad waves me over to him. I pack up my cards and walk over looking up at him. He grabs me by the solder holding me. He doesn't talk, he just stands looking out at the water. It is serval miles to the lake, but it is still clearly visible from where we are. Then the black cloud slithers to the tree line. The otherworldly noise gets louder. And after another minute it is at the base of the bluff. At this point, it seems to click with dad what is going on.
Dad grabs me and pushes me at the tent, he picks up our backpacks and throws them into the tent then clicks on a flashlight, he throws my sleeping bag at me and pulls his over himself. He tells me to hide in my sleeping bag.
The sound is now the loudest thing I have ever heard peeking out from under the lip of my blanket I can see shadows have covered out tent. If not for the flashlight it would be impossible to see. Shadows flicker, something is crawling up the side of the tent. I can see my dad is hiding his head between his arms as if to hold onto a hat onto his head.
Misquotes, tens of millions of them have woken up all at once and are swarming around the lake. Did my dad's fire call them to us? I have no idea. Now I am sure these are just the little red, and black misquotes we see every spiting in Minnesota, but that is not the way I remember it. In my mind, they are the size of cats. I can see their beaks poking into the tent, they are smelling us.
Dad reaches across the floor and grabs my arm, he holds up one hand in the 'stop' motion. He doesn't make a sound. Neither do I. for over an hour we lay there without moving again until the sound has vanished into the night sky. Then the smell of burning green wood fills the tent. Dad walks out of the tent. He opens his backpack, and he pulls out two cans of Coca-Cola. Whatever that was has passed. Dad walks back over to the fire pit. It is just glowing gray dust at this point.
I take the can of cola from my dad. We both sit around the dwindling orange light. We say nothing, there is nothing to say.
Suddenly I am thinking about my coin trick again. Did my dad and I live through a plague of flesh-eating bug via wraith of god? Or did I get a bug bite climbing down the bluff and dream up the rest of it post hawk? I don't know. I don't know if there is a way to know. But even if I lied to myself the same way as I lied to the crowds that watch me do magic trick. In my imperfect mind, that is what my broken memory looks like.
Thank you.