Surreal
 I
spent eight years going to the Immaculate Conception Catholic school
here in Clarion, but I remember almost nothing of that time, just a few
peculiar moments. I remember sitting in class feeling hot and drowsy on
a spring afternoon and gazing out at the fine day I was missing and
hearing the nun drone on and on about Henry Hudson. I remember the day
that some kid brought fireworks that looked like shiny metallic marbles,
and how he spilled them and I stepped on one, how it exploded, and how
Sister Sylvester collared me and hauled me away. I remember racing down
the hill at Rankin's Grove on my sled and smashing into a pine tree and
lying there on my back, looking up through the branches waiting for the
pain to hit. During each of these early experiences I was amazed that I
seemed to be in my body, and yet outside of it at the same time. I did
not know if these were normal feelings, but for some reason these
"out-of-body" experiences were fascinating.
I would now describe those early experiences as being surreal ----
having the intense irrational reality of a dream. For a long time I
thought that such surreal experiences could occur only for a few
seconds, but I was wrong. Early one spring morning, when I was seventeen
or eighteen, I entered a Boy Scout canoe race that was to start at
Tionesta, proceed down through Oil City, and end up at Franklin. That
day was surreal from the very start, and ended with me in a dungeon of
sorts. As Ron Miller and I paddled out into the Allegheny, clouds were
gathering in the west, and just ten minutes after the start we found
ourselves in a snowstorm in the middle of the swiftly running river. It
was early in the morning and the sun, still low in the eastern sky,
continued to shine right in under the storm clouds. It was spooky, but
we had our life vests and were both experienced scouts, so we continued
racing down the eerie, silent river toward Franklin. At Oil City, we
were tripped up by the strong current swirling around a bridge abutment,
and it a blink we were both in the dark, cold water. The life preservers
did their jobs, and with great effort and some help from another canoe
we were able to hauled our craft to shore. Soaked to the skin, we
shivered off into the snowstorm, in search of warmth and a telephone. We
split up then, and my partner had better luck than I. He ended up in an
Islay's restaurant, where he was made much of and fed cocoa and
sandwiches with hot pie for dessert. I missed all that. Looking like
death warmed over, I wandered into the local Woolworths. There they
listened to my tale and I made a phone call. Then they put me in some
dry but very large coveralls and led me downstairs to their warm boiler
room, which was lit only by one dim bulb, dangling from the ceiling. I
sat there for an hour, as if in a dream, until my mom came and whisked
me back to reality. As we left, I thought with a smile that this,
anyway, was a day that I would not soon forget.
As the years passed, I came to look out for and to try to savor these
surreal moments. They came most frequently when I was sick, hurt or in
trouble, but I also found that, sometimes, it was enough to be tired
---- especially at sunset in romantic surroundings. In 1992, at the end
of a long day of driving, we parked the car and walked a long mile, deep
into the German forest, to visit the Externstein. Pam was not all that
eager and kept mumbling about how we were taking an awful long walk just
to see a big rock, but a deal is a deal, and the Externstein was one of
my choices, and so we walked on. The Externstein is a group of five, 100
foot high, weathered limestone pillars which have been considered sacred
by men since the stone age. They were even thought by some to be the
pivot point of the universe. Sort of a German Stonehenge, but older. I
was very interested in seeing for myself this relic of dim, dark days
long past. I did. We stepped free of the forest, into a huge clearing,
and I saw the Externstein before me, backlit by the dusty setting sun.
There were dozens of other people about, and Pam and Pete were with me,
but some detached part of me was there alone, seeing the stones as
people two thousand years ago might have seen them. I climbed up a
ancient staircase to the top, and gazed out on the dimly lit forest and
felt strangely at home.
So last fall, there I am, raking leaves by myself in the front yard. A
breeze is blowing and more leaves are falling as I rake, but I don't
really mind. The day is superb and the crisp, dry leaves chatter at me
as I rake them into large piles. Then some last piece seems to fall into
place, and I stop and lean against the rake and stare about me in wonder
at the perfect symmetry of the afternoon. I wonder if, when I get very
old, searching for such quiet moments might make an interesting way to
spend the time before my last surreal experience ---- the one that we
all will share. |
 
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