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It was more interesting before smartphones


Clarakore

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As a child I always wanted to see the world through a different lens.

Through the bottom of a green-tinted bottle of soda, through honey-combed windows if you would stand on the other side, even peering into a mirror while staring at the reflection of the ceiling and trying to walk as far as I could. That one would create the illusion of walking upside down.

The soft screech of a screen door opens and then loudly closes shut. A portal into another world that I had always wanted to explore. Standing at the window, one hand on it, I look out as the trees dance in the spring breeze. No, nothing happens in order here, the linear march of time has become diffused. That tyrant has been disarmed.

The birds burst forward with their chests in the air and their song in my heart. I imagine them flying to the sun, even if they never make it that far the sunrays bathe them in a glorious shine and there would be no difference. I want to fly to the sun, melted wings be damned.

I sneak out and walk toward the payphone on the nearby avenue. Through my peripheal a few cars could be seen driving past. My own block is empty as I cross it and begin to cut across the church that is across the street. The sound of cars is fading but still audible.

Down the small slope, now on holy ground, a long wall is to my right that separates the street level from the church grounds. Past the dull cross on the wall I go through the small path between the storage and the recreation hall. Into the alley I get the feeling that I might be the only person left on earth. Loneliness only countered by the memories of conversations I had with you on the steps that lead into the rear of the church.

Closer to the avenue the sound of passing cars returns to my consciousness only interrupted by a barking dog who quickly loses interest in me. Crossing the street and going down the hill the broken sidewalk welcomes me with familiarity. After a couple of more blocks I pick up the handset, hear the dial tone, and drop a quarter into it while dialing your number which sounds like music.

"Hello?"

"Hi, it's me."

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I really enjoyed that.. as short as it was, I got involved into the story immediately.. thank you. :tu:

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Life in general was more interesting before cell phones and social media. Wonderful story there.

I loved my childhood, although I grew up on a massive council estate, Ravencliffe (Bradford). I had the wood on all sides of me to play. Everyday was different and interesting.. even playing on the kirbside of the road in the summer, playing with melted tarmac, picked out of the roadside.

Children just down play and have imagination anymore..

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Every generation since the beginning of time has bemoaned the failings and disrespect and so on of the generations following them. History repeats itself. I must say, though, that this time around the older generations may be right.

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I agree Frank. The world is getting faster and kids growing up to fast. It's even affecting them in a biological way I saw on the news...this is a real change.

Edited by Irrelevant
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Yean, my childhood was pretty much idyllic in a small town. We kids had 3 tv channels, no DVD's, no video games, no internet, no cell phones...we had to create our own fun and our own adventures. There was usually a kid's-organized baseball game somewhere, kids riding bikes, playing catch, we always seemed to be outside somewhere even in the cold snowy winter.

Nowadays I hardly ever see children outside playing, and it seems their fun has been created for them. Times have changed.

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hehehhe

mind if I chime in with you old geezers ?

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hehehhe

mind if I chime in with you old geezers ?

Less of the old.. I can still Jiggy with it.. :su

If you don't mind me asking.. how old are you.. I am too lazy to get my wlaking frame and check your profile :tu:

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I remember always playing outside as a kid, with my brother and his friends out in the woods behind my house.. We would play army :yes:

I would stay outside even alone from when I woke up until when it got dark.. I was never bored and my mom would practically have to drag me back in the house.

I find it rather sad how most kids are growing up nowadays.

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Less of the old.. I can still Jiggy with it.. :su

If you don't mind me asking.. how old are you.. I am too lazy to get my wlaking frame and check your profile :tu:

you'll have to visit my profile i'm afraid ... I dropped my walking stick and I can't reach over to prod at the num pad

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  • 4 years later...
 

IWMIBSP second chapter:

Anissa was a voice that lit up my eyes into my mind and heart, maybe all the way down to my combat boots.

Upon answering you sing clearer than the clarion call of morning.

Afternoon for most yet my days and seasons are measured by you as my moon-sky and earth-dirt, my soil, my homeland, not listed on any map atlas can hold, for your world is bigger than mine.

A silent pause after we laughed slightly when you tell me how you forgot to iron when we met at the mall, you and Delfina, but that it was interesting to try the wrinkled look.

I said nothing but remembered another girl I told that I could not talk because I needed to iron my clothes...she called me on it.

Skin tight 501s or wrinkled Bugle Boys and punk rock, new wave, and hardcore band tees?

I nevermind duplicity in me and said Delfina was cool but weird, weird-cool...she knew and mhmmed as we were all weird to a degree of friend- or kinship.

What about Elsa? Your other friend I ask. Out of the trio of beaties Delfina and Elsa were still strangers to me.

As was her older sister Gwyneth, a teennage pregnancy success, abortion to us was a failure according to the lyrics of Bodies by the Sex Pistols. A religion as good as any to us latchkey kids.

But Gwyneth was my girlfriend before her and Elaine passed me onto Gwyn's cousin Annelies.

A cool girl but better friends, the kind of friend that I now missed. Annelies and Elaine had passed me back to Annisa.

All we did was hold hands and kiss but Anissa I wish you were as good a friend as Annelies and Elaine. Elaine was the glue, her parents cared, about us and our educations in a place and time that no one else did.

They opened their house and doors and even advised me with a smile of openess or words of encouragement to stand up to bullies because my body is equipped for that.

It was a perfect time and place when such advice did not even promoted violence but sense of self and place, my esteem, and the place where we could have big dreams.

Nowdays violence is being unfriended from fb for many and for a few to be driven by with 7.62x39 as the type of math taught to us.

If not the more personal nine or forty-five is a lesson of seeing the fright of death in another's eyes or feeling in our hearts for even those who cannnot care now will join those of us who do.

This tale not only a dirge for busy how phones used to ring or signal busy and off the hook but also for the death of the first thrashers and skaters before the rise of internet facist and haters.

One day we will miss this too and remember the good alone that, at least for me, remains unwritten. We are the unseen.

 

 

 

 

 

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Hi and hello loved one. Blink if you can hear me.

I won't abandon you when your chips are down this time. Sorry I did not come sooner but I was listening to Nirvana's Come As You Are on cassette with automatic rewind and replay.

That feature failed this year near midsummer day. I kept rewiniding it myseld and finally said fund(sic) it!

They don't make tech like they used to. Really just 25 years that tape deck lasted....but me too. Bad build when cheap plastic stuff took over making boys into girls and men into monsters.

I will only replace my music with a record player to spin my vinyl collection. Or a BPA-free mp3 player and XM device that can also install aps like soundcloud, spotify, sleepy time for white noise balance, and 8tracks.com.

But you my dear, blink if you can hear me, don't die, please, but if so I honor you stayed here longer than destiny planned, we both are on borrowed time.

So blink, squeeze my right or left hand, or come to me in a dream, audio hallucination, or a visitation with your presence.

This is the final form of telephony, defined here as a gift, skill, art, technique, wiring of my mind to my lymphatic, but the wannabes can argue over if it is true psi, if psi is even true, and you my sister-friend-crush-cohort-ally...hope you believe soon that our powers and abilities to hack reality are true.

Just in case, as I nees to leave now, but before I do listen to this.

2600hz soundclip plays and I even try and hum with it. Hail Captain Crunch and the phreaks who were true before Jobs and Wozniak lost their way. Heil them too! Device Supremacy is the new form of Nazis. Ya, I invoked Godwin too and that means end of topic hun.

 

BTW I also realize I am no longer a rebel but a renegade. See you tomorrow some time.

I am now two floors down in another hospital room, by the bed, talkiing to my cousin, in two hours I will be in another facility, a hospice, then a jail, and finally a post-op rehab. Long night ahead but now I talk to stars, no walls, just me and the moon again.

Here is the title for the third chapter and final verses now for IWMIBSP, how many times must we rehearse for the hearse ride, and casket carry, I will not help, cannot help, the pity parties or the burial-for-profits economy.

(But I will escort your soul to the river Lethe or whichever one you need to cross. All five if you decide to live again. Help is near whichever orientation you decide, alive or dead even trans.

 

Special dedications to genderblindness and suicide is an alternative, you'll be sorry by Sui-Tens.

In memoriam of the punk rockers who took the title of Sui Skins for their scene and club. 

Circa mid80s, thank you, for taking care of the first sister of mine that fell on the battlefield of life here.

Special love also given to the brown single mothers and their lost kids known as Town Freaks who would stab you for a nickel.

And then the black single moms in  the struggle whose sons gunned up as The Fellas in the 90s.

Those courts now torn down in the 00s, and now the 10s the area is gentrified by new money who raise prices to keep us out and pretend with claims of creating a sense of place and locality.

We will honor that. We will accept you. If you wanna use a payphonse still go more south by Military and Zarzamora.

 

 

 

Edited by Matterundermind
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  • 9 months later...
Quote

Four of Cups is drawn after One of Staffs, Two of Swords, and Three of Coin were drawn in the previous chapters. 

Dama Fortuna smiles upon us as providence begins in short below. The Walk by the Cure plays in concert with ceiling fan, tape hissing after song ends, my breath slowing (danke santa poblana yasmin)...

...The Bass bobs as Love Cats plays on and suddenly you remember something you wanted to recall for so long now. Take your time....

Chapter IV

I saw her digitally and sent my prose plus discord too. She is doing well as be for the beekepers, not me, bless us all.

Copying and saving a few memes of healing towards our recoveries in the same vein....or breath.....hope she never mainlined and stays alternative for life and I can see plainly she has.

Beautiful kids we all had and the fall and rise of rome has less volumes than life between the analog and digital divide.

Chrysalis helps. So does reentry. As do old faces in memories alive and those you heard of and finally met well.

Caterpillar with it's lovely children's melody appeals to me still and the glow does not wear off. We glow brighter even if your lights go out. 

From George West to the two Georgias. Inbetween days plays and this tale remains undone, unedited, unread, unsaid, unseen, until un-un becomes you.

Sailor V (or however you spell it in French).

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