Adrian Mehr
Professor Windy Sumner-Winters
English Composition 1010
06, November 2007



Earliest Memory


By



V. Adrian Mehr







The first thing I remember about my life, is the day my grandfather died. I can still see parts of the day in my mind, without any help from outside sources. He had wanted to start visiting all of the “kids”, almost as if he knew how the day was going to unfold. I have no recollection of how far down the list he got, but I do remember our house, which was next door, was the first stop. Very soon after at one of my aunt’s, he had heart attack, which was not the first one, and fell off the back of a four wheeler that my uncle was driving. The folding chase he sat in, which was the last at our house,. remains in the storage building where my mother placed it to this day, my grandmother did like wise with the clothes he was wearing that day. It was as if both of them were saying “out of sight, out of mind.”, with their actions, but not their words.
I clearly remember making a mud “sculpture” with the sprinkler and my naked three year old body. This meant getting hosed off and showered, which I don’t remember, however, I do remember us being the last to arrive at my aunt’s house, which I do remember. Some things don’t change and neither dose being given hell for it either.
I can remember some of my relatives faces, from around the room, their clothes, their dramatics, some of them seemed to be putting on a show, especially the ones closer to my age, but for who? The dead? I on the other hand, seemed to not understand, that he was “gone” & wondered why my peers were in such a tizzy, they could not have know any more then I, could they? But now being on the other side of life, I think what I was feeling then is what I now call now “clairvoyance” and maybe knew and saw more than even the adults did that day.
Even though I was only almost four when he died, I remember and love my grandfather, as well as being able to see his influence in my life, from the candy I enjoy, “lemon drops” and “red hots”, because he always bought them for me, to the way I carry my self and go about life. In contrast to the stuffing of reality and holding onto the past of my grandmother, as well as being late all the time from my mother and making a big deal about it, like my aunts.
I do miss him, but seem not to be as sad and down cast, like most of the rest of my family, was and seems to be still, but maybe I have more hope or maybe I like him can see what lays ahead.

Adrian Mehr
Professor Windy Sumner-Winters
English Composition 1010
06, November 2007



a Family tradition.
Or
Two pages of bull shit.


Shitted by


V. Adrian Mehr






I have no idea what to write, because in my family, nothing is ever the same, except that nothing is ever the same. We, my brothers and I, really only had my mom’s side of the family. My dad’s parents were divorced when he was a child and then my grandmother illegally moved him across country, where he eventual met my mom. It’s funny how that happens. however my grandmother seemed to care more for “deadbeats” that made her look good over her flesh and blood. My grandfather, his father , who he had regained contact with as an adult, died while I was in the womb
My younger brother and I were the youngest of four boys and our mother the youngest of four girls, putting most of the next generation born before us. Therefore, all the fun together things that bring a family close had been forced like the farce they were, as long as they could be and were over for us.
My family, what the hell, I’ll be honest. ALL My family is “turned funny”! This part of my family never let anyone in, unless you were “with it”, as if they knew what that meant in “Hicksville”. They sure thought they did, but that we didn’t. Ah! The refreshing life as an outcast! Little did I know how much I would pull from that later in life. Looking at it from that angle makes sense now. We are given trials and whatnot and we have the choice to grow and go on with life, or like most of my family, sit and wither away.
I have seen enough rabble rousing, back biting, disregard, disloyalty, disharmony, dishonesty, both know and unknown, all form “good” people that “love” each other, that I hope to be on the road of rooting and eliminating it from my own life.
I have to tell this story. One year, several of the older members of the family conspired to get our branch of the clan to my grandmother’s on “time” for Christmas dinner, so they told my mother a different time than what was told everyone else. My brother, who would later disown most of us, was in town, for what would be his last Christmas at my grandmother’s before she died. This put us with a full house and one bathroom. After, or maybe I should say during the phone call, the rest of us see the receiver fly across the room and hit the floor. “It’s at 5 o’clock and not 6, did I forget to tell you?” my aunt had told my mother. It was around four and the turkey was not quite done and no one was ready. However we had pull, we had to bring the main course. So dinner was at six and it had to be dealt with. My aunt never tried that one again.

an "A-ha"?

As I think and try to come up with an “a-ha”, it’s hard to do, I seem to say “that’s what it was I was trying to remember.” Or to my self “that’s what I have been telling you.”

Here is one that is very painful for to write about, but I fell I should, even if I get written off as a nut case.

Thomas and I had become very close friends rather quickly, which in hind sight, is not the best thing to happen to a chap. Even with “age gaps”, marital status differences, etc. supposedly blocking the way of our friendship, none of which we bought into. We were seen together more often than not.

Then the change began, I will be honest about the fact that I understand a lot of things that are below the surface in life, I just seem to know with out any real reason as to why. So when I began to have interesting dreams this spring I was intrigued, but not taken aback, especially when the things that I was dreaming about were happing at the same time I was dreaming them.

But for the sake of not rambling, back to the abbreviated story. I knew when there was a change, I see these things, I read people & realize when there is a change in body language and or countenance. Thomas began to withdraw and I knew it, but refused to heed it, even after the dream, his and not mine this time, but I knew what it meant. Even after two of my own, I refused to budge, I can be stubborn like that, but “this friendship was a gift & wasn’t going to be taken away or lost. I must save it!”

Then inter neurotic roommate/”friend” Karl. Who is becoming more and more on edge.
As well as the Thomas’s wife, Erika, the worse enemy of a guy’s “best friend”, who I know had some unresolved issues, that she was directing at me.

And now to set the stage.

Karl wanted to throw a pool party, which I knew would be a bit of work for me, but hell, I am game for a good shindig. In all the preparations etc. Karl gets agitated, but I keep trucking, because I am failures with Karl’s quirks by now, having been living with him for 9 months, and the best thing to do is let him deal with it. As the party wound down and few guests were left. Karl, Thomas and Erika, end up out by the pool, I am by this point really tired and began to join them. As I start to place my hand on the door knob, it seems to almost burn me, it wasn’t static, but it seemed like an emotional burn, followed by a ripping sensation in my heart, but I was tired & thought no more of it, till Thomas & I were on the job the next day and then it wouldn’t go away. So I asked him what they talked about out there, he hesitated and then gave this answer about how much potential they saw in me, the direction I was going . . . . . . . it all sounds good, but it was hollow and unbalanced, and I knew it, partly by the look in his eyes.

I was in a state of unrest after that, I couldn’t relax and then my folks asked me the same question I had asked Thomas, in the same wording and my spine bristled. “I don’t really know, what he told me, when I asked, seemed to be all good” I said. They both looked at each other at the same time and I knew I was about to hear what I didn’t want to. They turned back to me and shared more of the story then Thomas had admitted. They had at Thomas and Erika’s on their way out of town to pick up a tool we had barrowed for work., but the conversation was full of Adrian doesn’t do this and that, he needs to do this . . . . . . all things that he had never discussed with me, that if he had , would have look at in an entirely different light. Then that night after not being able to sleep again, I stated to meditate and fell sound asleep till about 3 in the morning when I set bolt upright in bed and had to complete dreams flash through my mind and I accepted the fact that I had been betrayed. Then I wept!

I didn’t say anything to Thomas, like I could have anyway; he disappeared from the picture, just sort of stepped out of my life with out rime or reason, given anyway. Karl whose neurosis began to intensify, even though he was getting paid rent every month, eventually told me to move, just as I was about to start school and had been in a near fatal car wreck, because “I didn’t have a real job.”. But hey, even if for myself, I was working, which is more than can be said for him. . Thomas reappeared and acted as if nothing ever happened. But I on the other had still walk with the limp left from the wounds of loosing two friends as well as family in Thomas’s children.

But I am ALIVE and continuing on with life. All though not an “a-ha” it was a realization, that shed new light on my life, brought me back to school, which showed the path my life was taking, and HELL! It is all going to make a damn good script someday.

“The Show Must Go On”

I hadn’t talked to Matt since the middle of the summer, a drastic change from almost living together half the time, when he, our friend Aaron & I would hang out. My phone rang and I thought “oh shit, why can’t people leave me alone? I have enough on my plate already.” But it was him. We had a jovial conversation with loud music and sirens in the background, on his end, mind you. I had way more important things on my mind to think any more about that, for now. Could I find the play I wanted for class, starring who…? Where would I have to drive? VCR? Who was coming over? We ended the conversation with plans to hang out later this week when I got caught up on things. Who knows when that will happen? I kept on with my plans, find and get the play, followed by a VCR, and then Molly, after finding out no one else was coming, because something had happened on campus. Not sure what, but something. I pulled up into the lot and called Molly and while I waited there a girl in hysterics was at a car across me with a group of people. Someone she knew had been shot. I minded my own business. When the cars of her and her companions left, I thought nothing more of it till we got a call a few minutes into the movie. Someone had been shot, and at school no less. Football player . . . . Money in pocket. . . . . Hit a tree, nothing that connected me to who ever it was. Things like this happen every day in town. They just do. I mean this is Memphis. But they had put the dorms on lockdown, we heard so who knows when or if I could take Molly home? But anyway, back to the movie. I don’t remember much before I fell asleep, soon followed by molly I assume. Because we woke up abruptly at 2:53 am as the tape was rewinding and then I drove her home. The lot was much calmer than the last visit, was the only other thought on the subject as I drove home to bed.

The next morning I was up and at it way before I wanted to be. I had things to do, therapy to get ready for, packing/moving to do, class to attend; I was completely wrapped up in my life. My text message alert went off, and then again. Classes were cancelled, but not rehearsal. “The show must go on”, you know. And it stayed that way all week, except the discussion in one class. It just didn’t involve me. Or did it? Everyone else seemed to be unnerved, but me. Was, am I, calloused? Hardened? Stoic? Or am I just heartless? It was more like not allowing myself to be detoured, to keep going. “The show must . . .”

Is it just how we are programmed as Americans? “It happens, just not to us”. And then it keeps happening again and again. Because “I wasn’t involved” and want to stay that way. As long as we take that stance, not only will it not change, neither will we. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, over and over, but expecting different results. If we choose to keep walking and don’t learn or do anything about what we are facing, or worse yet, run from it, because “I don’t want to be uncomfortable”. The spiral we are on will keep winding down, if we are not willing to step forward into a new world that can be ours. Why is it that we run from change when in it lays our only hope of true freedom? What is there really to fear? What if we actually did lose something, or our very lives in the process, The Journey? But caused a ripple that moved the stagnant waters we live in? Would we and our world not have been bettered?

So my questions for you, mayor elect, are. Will you continue leading the city on as it has been and walking away from it all, wrapped up in “your” world? Or will you step forward and become an actual leader of us your peers in our world? Or just another human, proud the “He” had won the people over and is now better than the other?

` Sincerely

V. Adrian Mehr

“Prime Directives Response”

Was silence safer? This really did happen, didn’t it? It’s not some horrible dream, then why can’t I talk about? Is it because there is so much water under the bridge? Water of the same kind? Will complacency become self-protection? Has it already? Am I no different than they are? Have I become more so in the silence I am choosing?

My thoughts on my past, relating my self to the soldiers who were at Abu Ghraib. I understand, more than I can ever to share with you, the pressure to keep face, the fear of others knowing what you have done, the safety of your own silence and the torment no one sees!

I was offended at the flippant and arrogant this paper seemed to be written! First of all, to think that one would have clear reason on anything or anything for that matter, while drinking to the point one no longer has the ability to stand, much less hold composer or stomach contents. And then write about it from the “educated” point of view? Second. to connect reality and our interactions with the other cultures around us, to a television program about visiting alien planets. And expect someone to heed their words afterward? Ii is all most laughable.

More often than not we miss and or are not taught the truth, with all the atrocities that are attributed our country we for get what all it has & is doing for us and the rest of the free world. It is likely that if the “hicks from the sticks” had not pushed forward and made this nation what it is, we and most of our brothers would be under the power of dictatorships. Not even be able to discuss this right now.

extreme / balance

We rove, we look, to find substance to fill . . . . . .

We dwell in one extreme or the other, hopping for balance. . . . .

What we think we see, is not what is. . . . .

Peace with out war?

Love with out hate?

Right, with out wrong?

Would we even know what they were? - V. Adrian Mehr ,

When we think we have found it, it is only one, only part, not the whole.

Balance is two extremes. That blend into reality

We live in a world of balances. With extremes on both ends of the scale that is reality. It is rarely that one end or the other is truth, it is more often than not found in the blend of the others.

Is any one wrong worse than another? I think not! If you ever read the bible, you might recall references to “the judgment seat” or the sheep and the goats”. There is in the words of Christ a much missed, misunderstood, misused, prophetic story. At the end of time the Father sits on his throne to separate the righteous from the evil, but. . . it is those who turned others away because of being wrapped up in what “they” thought needed done and missed the hurt needs of others. Which He later refers to as “Turning Me away”. I would say that if we just focus only on the pain and indignities suffered by those who were prisoners and not also that pain the soldiers my have when they reanalyzed what they have done or indignities of peer pressure, we fail in one regard to learn, change and see the whole picture. I have heard very few others use the quote from a witness in the Nazi trials “I sat there and looked in to the face of my former tormenter and realized that I was capable of all the same evil that he was, if the tables were turned. So I began to weep.”

I think the author gets close to this point. When he seems to return to earth, after he recovers from the hang over he seemed to get from the previous ten pages of drunken, orgy like revelry, that mad this story a slow, rather boring read.

In the end he seems to begin to dive more into the fact that we have all contributed to the evil(s) of this world and all care the gilt in some form, even if we are not the ones directly responsible for a single act. And then he seems to go of on a tangent, I am one usually attuned to metaphors, but for some reason had a lot of trouble with the ones here, as he bounces back to care free Halloween festivities .

"Prime Directive" is from the book, "A Good War Is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America," by David Griffith. It was published in 2006 by Soft Skull Press out of Brooklyn, New York.

“Like a moth at the flame of so many inaccessible lanterns. … … .. “
“Let us . . . tenderly . . reverence . . . spoil . . .treasure. . . . . a pencil.”
-V. Woolf
Crazy statements? Ideas missed in time passed? Concepts created under the influence of
narcotics?
Or
Words with more than one meaning? Deeper pictures painted beneath the surface?
Metaphors?
Miss. Woolf tells a story of her journey to purchase a “pencil” or does she?
If you read what is not printed on the page, but written just as clearly, you will see more.
Pictures of life
yours
mine
ours!
How many times do we have to come up with some small, almost insignificant reason, in
this case a “pencil”, to do a much larger thing, such as get out of the house? I know I
have and if you are honest, I think you would answer the same.
Do you have the ability? The gift? The warmth?
Of recall?
To walk through life and see more around you than others can? To feel again, what
everyone else has forgotten? The richness of it is rewarding, is it not? Miss. Woolf takes
us on a journey through hers, as we meet melancholy Englishmen, elderly shopkeepers, bowls & knickknacks, as well as lost love! Did you see it?

Should you touch it?
Could you feel it?
We are given vivid sketches of England in the winter, as well as the summer, as we travel
with her. I could al most taste the air around me, as if it was alive with life. I found
myself in ore than one place at the same time. I started to ask myself, the same as she “
here or there? True self . . . . this or thatrare we . . ourselves?” as well as, am I whole?
And then
They
Are gone!
As our remind us of what has happened, can we not stop learning?
Can we keep growing?
Can we move forward with life?
The memories ebb and flow, come and go the same as the river Themes. Can we feel
once again what we did then? But are we retaining what they are there for? To show
what we have learned, to change what we do, to enrich and balance our lives. I hope if
not, that reading this “haunting” that it frightens you further down the road of life, as it
did me.

pissed
unexpected
fear (of hurting someone)
shock
confused
irritated

pissed
irritated
confused
shocked
depressed

shocked
confused
amused
surprised

event: the car wreck, that brought me here.
i was driving along, minding my own business and before i knew it another car was flying at me, all i could think about was not hitting the young girl i saw on the other side of it's window .. . . . . .

i rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and realized that my back/leg were in pain, that increased to a sensation like fire . . . . .

i pulled up to a traffic light and was struck by fear as had happened before seemed to flash in front of my eyes. . . . . . .. . .



person: my friend Thomas
we were covererd from head to toe with the glue, from the flooring we had been laying, sticky would be an understatement . . . . .

as the knife kept going, the most horrifying gashing noise followed by a half moan half yell, as blood began hit the floor . . . . . .

i stood there about to weep, as two people that i cared a lot about and that loved each other beat each one another to a pulp verbally



belief:that we belong in community
i was lonely, depressed and not only suicidal, but had attempted it as well. . . . . . .

on a rainy dreary day i came through the doors and my heart , face and whole countenance was set aglow. . . . . .

i had never believed it could happen, she who seemed not to want my presence to be real, was now asking if i would be alright. . .