I giggle the moment I see it.  Disappearing behind the concrete metropolis, my car descends down a paved slope leading to corridors.  The pale blue horizon meets with the dark blue of the Pacific in the distance.  These ocean shores become treadmills for scenery, a pedestrian hiatus for tranquility.  A broken hourglass shatters the confines of time.

I spend countless hours here…alone.  The smell; the sounds; the feel; the locale allows me to revisit deep impressions upon my soul.  I have walked miles upon this Pacific seaboard throughout the years leaving indentations.  I stroll through my corridors.  The chapters of my individual journey unfold, some trailing behind me, while others are still a work in progress.  Those waves rush in.  And that thunderous noise soundproofs any intruding dialogue from people passing by, setting the stage for my commune with God.  A breeze wraps itself around me.  Seagulls swirl overheard.  A soul is protected, calming a heart that might suggest otherwise.

It reminded me of being in a gigantic aquarium.  You gawk through the glass at the other side.  And whatever creature you are staring at, they show no acknowledgement to your undivided attention in return.  They just float by, unaware to your perusing.  I was sitting in the airport in Seattle looking through a huge sheet of glass.  I became fixated to the world on the other side on mine.

The busyness of air traffic caught my eye immediately.  The airport personnel drove luggage carts and concession trucks.  Lights flickered on the aircraft.  Planes rolled down taxiways to either make an exit into the clouds, or to pull up to a designated gate allowing masses of strangers to disembark.  These passengers would soon enter the world where I was sitting.  They were faces of unfamiliarity.  There were those who appeared tired, some who smiled, and others who were just indifferent as they entered the terminal.  I was curious about where they were heading.  Where did they come from?  What did they consider to be their biggest blessings in life?  What were their curses?  What strengths about themselves would they claim?  What struggles did they need to own?  They, too, floated by with their baggage trailing behind them, or totting cargo slung across their backs.

I tasted the metallic prongs on the microphone.  My teeth grinded against the steel shoved to my mouth.  My sighs were amplified, obnoxiously exaggerating my heavy breathing through the crackling static that came over the loud speakers.  The hollow, wind-blown thuds interspersed with my parched, smacking lips, filled empty space.

The moisture varnished my face.  The track lighting above burned my flesh like a magnifying glass exposed in the sun.  Beads of perspiration clung to the tips of my bangs.  Nobody moved.  Stuck on the edges of seats, my peers morphed into wax figures and porcelain dolls with fixed expressions already chiseled into place.  Their eyeballs remained locked, periscopes targeting upon a subject only to fire back comatose glances that detonated on impact.

I sat confined in a maroon motorized wheelchair.  It had been five years since the diagnosis.  I had deteriorated quickly.  I looked white as a ghost.  Torsional dystonia reduced me to a mere shell of a frame.  My arms had to go out to be raised.  Hands had to go up to be dressed.  Limbs hung limp at my sides to be bathed.  People lugged me around like a rag doll.  I swallowed a lump in my throat as I had to ask one of the most difficult questions confronting me.  Was I going to die?

The black birds congregated on telephone wire.  The cornstalks rustled, rolling out waves to the wind.  A rush of noise oscillated like a fan throughout the fields.  A voice called, distant yet ever so near.  With a raised brow, the farmer stopped.  He hungered after truth.  “If you build it, he will come…”  In the movie, Field of Dreams, a whisper from nowhere emerged from an abandoned cornfield.  It offered the process of healing in exchange for a price to be paid.  Would the farmer adhere, take heed to its beckoning?  Like a child sneaking into a cookie jar, would he cease the plow to express a craving with wide-eyes; reach in to find meaning; dig deeper to experience delicious taste?  The movie spoke meaning to my soul.

My skin plastered itself to the vinyl seat.  Every movement sounded like fruit roll-ups being peeled away from saran wrap.  The summer temperature rose above the pavement.  The heat waves wobbled in front of me.  Puddles of water stood on the highway in the distance.  It was the first day of the rest of my life.  I wanted it to vanish like a mirage.

The brace harnessed around my neck suctioned in the perspiration.  I wore it as a mere guise to distract from the inevitable.  Who was I fooling?  This spongy apparatus became an irritant like lingering mosquitoes that one bats away to no avail.  It clung to flesh as an adhesive to a wound.  My pulsating bruise clawed much below the surface.  I knew I could no longer hide no matter how hard I tried to disguise.

“Jimmy!”  My words pierced the silence.

Hot tears began to roll down my cheeks.  Deep sobs began to shake my body.  The humiliation terrified me.  I tried everything to prevent it.  I crossed my legs, uttered psychological babble, prayed relentlessly, and pondered happy thoughts.  I flopped like a fish out of water, squirming around to ward off what I knew to be the inevitable.  My efforts did not suffice.  To my demise, diarrhea exploded throughout the insides of my sleeping bag.  My bowels, like firecrackers resounding, left nothing but filth to wallow in.

The struggle seized me with fear, put me further into seclusion, and locked me into a world of my own.  Would anybody ever understand my brokenness?  Clearly than ever before, I wanted to be somebody else.  After all, who was I in this feeble, debilitating shell of a man?  What was in store for my future?  I stared into the darkness feeling utterly alone.

School lockers slammed latching to metal.  Students zipped their backpacks closed.  The warning bell rang signaling that last minute dash to class.  There was always the smell of salami sandwiches in brown paper lunch sacks.  Or, the myriad of times our backs rested against those chain link fences.  One by one the captains of teams would call out names.  I was always the last one standing, waiting to be picked.  It didn’t seem to matter.  My optimism in this schoolyard hustle was that I was considered one of them.

Yet eighth grade left me a stranger, fighting a war among those I deemed to be friends.  He came to conquer my world.  At least, that was my impression.  Smirk across his face, he held his head high.  He was mighty, a champion.  He knew how to hunt, and annihilate with words.  The arsenal that contained his ammunition resonated power.  The weaponry at his disposal relegated me to mere prey, a mishap.  He certainly knew how to choose his battles.  He wounded me deeply, and fired at will.  It has taken years to recover.  The mental limp is still evident.

Beads of water plummeted down the windshield.  In sporadic fashion, many of them bounced upwards, only to spike downwards, tracing out trails like a heart monitor gauging a heartbeat.  Others descended swiftly in a straight line; smooth, fast, unencumbered.  I sat in the driver’s seat staring out into tiny, big, oblong, and circular water droplets obstructing my view.

My imagination wandered to shooting stars, huge masses of brilliance dislodged from out of space that people wish upon.  All the while, the gush of water sprayed.  The swinging gigantic wash cloth waved in the manner of a matador warding off a bull.  The round spinners ricocheted off of my SUV like a pinball machine.  Crazy as it seems, it was the precise moment when I speculated the inauguration of my journey with God.  When did it really, personally begin?

Rows of vineyards passed us by like still frames swiftly moving in succession, pages of caricature figures rapidly turning.  He sat in that yellow school bus.  Unscathed by reality, his gaze burrowed holes in the glass, peering into nowhere as gorgeous terrain flashed before his glossy eyes.  He kept singing; slowly, methodically.  Persistently banging his head against a window, he wore a helmet that protected him from injuries.  His speech was impaired, but his voice harmonious. 

The hot dirt permeated in the noon day sun.  Our bodies bobbled, bouncing up and down an old highway, the reverberation of that rickety bus heard.  The veterans’ home was situated on a velvety green hillside among billowing oak trees that resembled ice cream cones from a distance.  It was located in Yountville, CA on the edge of the luxurious Napa Valley.  A huge building off by itself, my school, it modeled as a gateway that welcomed caravans of tourists from all over the globe to the world-renown wine country.

I remember the first time I grieved.  Sycamore trees lined our residential streets bursting with a pageantry of color that fluttered on delicate limbs.  The leaves tumbled, spiraled, and whirled upon an autumn breeze, discarding golden memorabilia that quilted the asphalt.  Now whenever I see hues of seasonal change flaunting its beauty, I step back in time.  I crave lost innocence…

“23, 37, 18” rang out his call.  The huddle had broken up seconds before.  We scurried to the scrimmage line.  With arms hung limp at our sides, we stood posed as manikins.  Draped in oversized white fruit-of-the-loom t-shirts, we modeled our jerseys as the felt-tip marker fumes lingered.  Odors from the numbers we had drawn on our shirts orbited, intoxicating us into hallucinating about other dimensions, dream of new worlds.  The frigid air gripped bare skin.  Fingers tingled.  Hands grew numb.  Snot oozed from our nostrils.