Concerning Yesterday; that is, Last Night-
Part I: Travels in Portsmouth and Kittery
(to be followed in time by Part II: Travels in Dover and South Berwick early this morning)
(Note: Part One is, in a way, so long, that it will probably be best to divide it into at least two subdivisions; thus, it might be better and more accurate to call part I "Book I" and part II of course, "Book II" or even, "Volume II." Another important thing to bear in mind is that one, this too, at least for the time being, is unfinished; and that I wrote about one hundred pieces similar to this for a six month period last year, from rough February to July or so. So, I may decide to upload those strange part-fiction, part-nonfiction pieces as well. Besides I love to read, write or watch a good story-who doesn't? So, without further ado, here is the opening to "Concerning Last Night-Volume I: Travels in Portsmouth and Kittery." Enjoy!) :)
After I left Mike's old house, clambering down the ancient stone steps, along the stone walkway, down more stone steps, alongside the stone wall, with it's cracks, crannies and fissures, and down to my grey four door Buick sedan, I climbed in, of course, and drove off, meaning to depart the city of Portsmouth and head home to Maine, but a thought seized me as I drove along, a compulsion to see my old place of work, if only from a distance, so I drove down the long, winding, sinuous ramp to the monumental Portsmouth Rotary, which was lit up like a Christmas tree what with all the hotels, the liquor store, and the diner that ring it, that stand along the circular fringe of it, plotting out the circumference of the spheroid by means of their existence as odd landmarks (now I say odd not because they, in themselves are odd, but rather their placement to be markers from a circle, that is odd, uneven and highly irregular, considering almost all of them are lumped on one side, and only the ramps to the highways and the vast urban fields seem to be the other markings-but they are also irregularly placed). I negotiated, I manuevered, I navigated the semi-circular portion of the rotary easily, as i had done a thousand times before-for after all, I worked for much more than a thousand days at the place to which I was heading. Soon, I was out of my curve and on the straight angle of the Route One Bypass. I passed several landmarks, most of them buildings alongside this thoroughfare, and soon enough I was on Route One proper, marveling at the landscape spread out before me: at the rolling hills, purple and indistinct yet still mighty in the distance, the lights and shops and plazas and gas stations all around me, flanking me, the hundreds of yellow and red glowing eyes of the cars in front of, to the side, behind me, the blackness of not only the sky, but the road surface itself, the lowlying marshlands just before and beneath the gradually rising ground, the hills, the great accretions and gatherings of trees off at the far edge, beyond the reach of man, the red-and-white spire with it's red lights that indicated the altitudinous radio aerial, the antenna, the transmitter of the local radio station, a squat brick building of one-storey that lingered somewhere in the limbo between the things of nature and the things of man. All this and more, I passed by, but thought it held (as it always did) a certain fascination for me, I was more interested, I suppose in my intended destination: The tucked-away, tree-bordered plaza of light, people and stores that had been my secondary, vocational home and that of my secondary, vocational, temporary family for almost three years. A place that despite the hell I had endured for at least two years there, is still somehow special to me, and I miss it. I suppose it is only the fact of the heavenliness and paradise of the first six months there that makes me miss it and wish I could have it back again, and also perhaps the fact that over the course of three years, for better or worse, through much heaven and hell and tedium I grew intensely attached to it-though it was also the dwelling place of Hitler's minions, of new Nazis. I say this metaphoricallly, figuratively to provide an exaggerated if somewhat accurate portrayal, a concise portrayal and assessment, of the rather incompetent, childish, vicious, brutish trio of vile managers, who in their incompetence and general behavior and speech, not only barely passed for human beings or even apes, but not even did they pass for the devils and demons that they were! Again, though, they were men-stupid, hateful, evil, worthless men who insulted and harassed and condescended to all, perhaps, but in the end, still men, just men, not the vile, almighty demonic creatures of pure malevolence that I, in my endurance of their harassment and bullshit, make them out to be.
Still, at all costs I wished to avoid them.
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