Back To: The Tyranny of Materiality
An exceptional image! A mythical warrior . . . though, my headgear is in reality the gold cord accessory [pinned to the shoulder / worn around the arm] of Gordon's cub scout uniform . . . this reminded me of other creative contraptions conceived such as: either Ben or Gordon had a toy log truck that came with miniature chains to hold the logs on the truck . . . I look the chain and placed one hook into my hair and inserted the plastic wishbone from the game Operation into the other hook so I had a neat dangly ornament I used to wear around the house . . . I loved Ben quite intensely . . .
We're cleaning out the goat barn . . . obviously before Dad's injury . . . he taught us to drive this old Case tractor: it was very straightforward, there was a lever you pulled and the tractor moved . . . I was apprehensive driving the tractor, I preferred the interaction between myself and horses . . . the mechanization was mindless with you, the driver, fully responsible for its crashing or not . . . I remember Mom playing a joke on Dad by having Gordon and I spray paint this tractor pink . . . our collies: Sunday [right] and Girl [forefront] . . . this is the same shit-speader that I'm sitting in in the video clips Up on the Hill: 1 & 2 the day of Dad's funeral . . . I think my Mom still uses it . . .
From our 1984 BOCES yearbook: the Senior Horticulture Class . . . [from left, front] Melodie, me [from left, back] Joe, Tammy, Margie [holding Doc] and MarySue . . . Melodie and I are wearing pots on our heads . . . Mel planned the skip day party for her Senior class . . . my Senior class was in Washington DC for the Senior Trip but I didn't sell enough candy bars or whatever for eligibility . . . I didn't legally need to attend BOCES that day but did for something to do . . . after BOCES everyone was going to head out to this party and I rode over with Margie [she was from Cooperstown too] . . . she had a cool redish purple Mustang . . . I proceeded to get tanked with everyone else . . . the party was located on a back road in Cherry Valley cause most of us were minors: there was a popular party place, it was next to a cliff and had no fence to delineate the edge . . . see the cliff from the Video Clips page . . . at some point during the afternoon some friends and I, Mark P. and Brian A., decided we were going to climb up the cliff from the bottom . . we drunkenly slid down an embankment in the woods to get to the bottom . . . we discovered that the pitch was too steep to climb straight up so we had to meander sideways and so we did . . . people were up at the top dropping sticks, beer cans and spitting on us as we attempted this stupidity . . . we made it to the top without a mishap. I was filthy from head to toe and decided to leave with Margie mid afternoon . . . she dropped me off at the High School and Brian(1) picked me up . . . we drove to Herkimer to pick up his sister Brenda then went back to Richfield . . . when we were waiting for Brenda to come out he grabbed my feet and knotted my shoelaces to the steering wheel . . . I went home and showered, changed my clothes, ate, hung out and eventually hooked up with Randy, Marty, Sue and Brian(1) . . . I suggested that we head back up to the Cherry Valley party so we went: by the time we arrived it was probably after 10:00 PM . . . I went to the keg to get a beer and felt like puking: it was like the hangover effect, I was so drunk earlier that I couldn't drink . . . so I was sober. I remember sitting on the edge of the cliff in the dark, contemplating life . . . Melodie was trashed: she was doing funnels [holding the end of a funnel in her mouth while someone poured beer into the funnel] and came over, bitching, telling me to get away from the edge of the cliff . . . I told her to go away . . . high school graduation was about three weeks away and I had no plans whatsoever . . . Brian(1) had asked me to go back to Florida with him and I figured what the hell, why not? I don't remember the fall or the events leading up to it but we've pieced together that Randy was trying to get me in a good mood so was going to chase me and that when I stood up to run, when you moved away from where the fire was, you couldn't see the edge and that I just ran right off the edge . . . nothing high risk, no drugs / alcohol / altered consciousness, an ironic accident . . . nothing more or less, no blame, no fault: it just was . . . and is.
What are the implications involving anniversaries? As Memorial Day Weekend 2000 passed, it is technically the sixteenth anniversary of my disability . . . funny, I feel the same as I did though one more year accumulated . . . the quad years are catching up to the non-quad years. Why must we keep track?