Departed trail & Bitter trials.

Too many alive to live

In the past we were shown a gleam’s of what was to be repeated. Studies showed us there were 76 million people in 1900 and that it grown to 299 million by 2006. The TRF (total fertility rate) was 3.7 children per woman during the baby boom, and within the years of 1946 to 1964 more than 76 million were born. In 2006 nearly 3.0 million were added to the United States and 56% of these new births came from residents’ living in already in U.S., the rest came from both legal and illegal immigrates. Population increases was due to immigration, fewer deaths, and the over growing births, it slowly waned on the economy, the recession had made its own problems and with this it added on to it. It took $250,000 to raise a child in middle-class from birth to age 18, urban areas had bitter environment to allow a child to mature. 

From the generations after the baby boomers they had fewer kids and later down so did their kids, those who grow to be the workers and payers of today had started having more child had to pay to raise them and for a much higher health care. Due to medical brake throws people live longer and healthier lives, and that very thing was making Americans unable to pay for the rising health care. The economic shift had done its share of damage and health care was one of them; the baby boomers of yesterday had become the elderly men and women of today and the large number of elderly gave a strain on public programs like Medical care and social security. When the baby boomers were adults they pay paid for a less costly health insurance because many of them had stable job’s and had fewer children of their own and the percent of elderly were half that of today. Job lost took money from the people who paid the bills, and the money that was were stretched to support family expenses, and many families were over crowded.  

During the times of aid for the Middle-East things had gotten worse in our nation, but bitter in foreign affairs. Year after year the United State’s large cities were getting crowded. In past we were warned, at first we already had dealt with a similar problem but the new baby boomers were dramatically increasing the birth rate, and we would regret the effects. It began to show its self, and I lived through its effects. I was surrounded as a child when growing in the overcrowded schools.

Schools began to have two teachers to help in an effort to help students learn more, but more students began entering schools than could be taught. Immigrations were a part of it for a moment, most of the emigrants were from the south of the board, and others were from far parts overseas. Wishing for a bitter tomorrow and opportunities, families moved to the U.S. in this dream bringing their families with them, it was an unhappy time for me. Average class rooms of 30 became 35 then 40, more teaching assistance were brought in to compensate for the teacher to student ratio. It was hard for me living in those classes were ignorance was common.   

I was in school where there was many bullies to avoid and I didn’t have much friends to hind land run with when the bullies came to beat me up. I hated those days, at times my father was at home and letters came to tell my mom I was I fights. When my mom heard she would come to the counselor meetings to try to resolve things for I can get some sort of justice, and which would lead to the bullies to find and beat me even more. My father would simply beat me more badly than the bullies; I would get a few scrapes and bruises on my arms from guarding my face when the bullies would hit me. My dad said if I wanted to fight I should learn to fight, he would teach me the hard way, no punching bags to hit, no gloves to spare with, and it was just my fists to my father’s fists.

If he hit me he would hit me with his rare fist at my unguarded face, I got black eyes at times, cuts on my face, the sad part was my mom healed my wounds and didn’t stopping them. As I went back they saw my beating from my farther, they left me alone, every one left me alone for a month tell the bullies came back. Rumors were made that I knew how to fight and the bullies wanted to know, I told them my dad fought me and taught me to fight, they beat me to see if it was true. I didn’t protect my face like last time I let each hit land, they laughed as I stood and took it, I told them I didn’t want to fight even when I knew how. My father came the next day to school to take me out and ask “why learn to fight when you’re not going to”; I told him I didn’t want to be a bully.

He told me I was weak and needed to be strong in the world to live, I was strong already, and kids picked on me because I never fought back, I just didn’t won’t be like him and my brother who was just like him. Things got better when condition worse, the population stabilized and declined only soon after when the condition got better. The rescission took jobs and emigrants had gain the damage like ever one else, emigrants that moved to the United States for jobs had a problem, the few jobs that were available hired quickly, no work meant no money so many emigrants moved to their homes in other countries of their origins taking their families. Because of the families leaving led to a thinning out of students in schools, the strain in school budget during this time come around when less students of emigrants were attending.

As the times past, people tended to have fewer children than those in the past years, the access for education and paid employment came to decline the rate of birth. Those how wanted children had their first at 25 yrs and older; the population growth began to level off. It was estimated over 190 million women became pregnant each year, also estimated 26 million of them get abortions so over 164 babies are born each year nationwide and lessen off each year in each category. Educational grants were made with the wealthy to support schools, clinical services helped new couples have a chose to how many children to have when they want them. An increase of both unmarried and married women started using birth control was 64% by 2011.

  The industrialization and developments had bounced back from the rescission, food production increase, and health care had improvements but at a price. 

                                                      *****

A waking to a bed with loneliness, a waking to a house and not a home, empty and cold with a computer speaking to me and not the voice of my wife. My daily life of schedules and repeated days were shattered with an act that is a perfect release for a man to old to wait any longer for change. When I was in my own bed my body would be warm with heat from the heated room, but now I wake to warmth that is inside me. The sun pouring in the room, I see things I didn’t see during my pleasurable night, I see a shelf of books lost to the world that I knew well growing up to, many people forgotten these books for they talk of a world filled with lies and pain. 

I loved these books, because they were what I saw when I looked at my life and thought the world would ultimately led to. A world of George Orwell’s “1984” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”, the stories told me of a place controlled by people of power. A place were hunger of the body was daily in worldly story, in the other a place was daily starving for wisdom and humanity lost with each book burnt in its dark world. A few literature books stood with them and volumes of collected poetry from authors and poets. This world never read these books, never smelled the ink printed deep into each page, feel the rough thickness of each sheet that holds a piece of the story in.

The world is like “Fahrenheit 451” when it’s to knowledge. Everyone learns so fast and collect each book to memory, learn algebra, geography, science. Learn so much and then stop learning leaves them wanting more. Still able to hold onto to each memory with a firm grasp in mind they carry a need for more knowledge. Randomly they collect things about bugs and birds, different minerals in the earth, and about the history of a town or foreign country.

They go to college to gain more and more. They learn new careers but don’t really need them, most of the doctors that are the best are like this they learn more and more but what makes them different is that they use it to save life. These people only learn it to know it. No matter what they learn they still haven’t learn the important thing that seems to be even more rarer as time flows by, wisdom will one day be lost. The books I loved were lost to the world, people too ignorant to read these books and might see how nearly perfect this utopia is.

Wisdom is knowledge used to help others, a dream made the light bulb that guides and lights the way in the dark, this was a wise thing to dream. A dream made the Atomic Bomb that was wise when it ended a war but was a stupid when it killed billions in Japan. Anger is a friend I know well when looking at the world and seeing something that is taken for granted. On the shelf with the books are a couple of pictures of children and people, happy people. One of the children was familiar, I believe was Tess as a kid, but without the womanly shapes that I know and touched, her hair is a brighter and a more noticeable and bold brown, those eyes are the same but has a happier face to it.

The woman that’s by me is sleeping with her naked back at me, and with each exhaling breathe I see her ribs move into collect the air. Through her pale skin I see the lining of bones barely peering out, compared to her younger self she’s changed. Her hair is a dark brown and has no brightness, her face has aged wrinkles with a paleness of years spent in a house without sunlight, and the picture of her has a tannest of playing in the sun. The warmth from the apartment heater kept the room from being cold; we could lay with no blanket and still be warm. The clock on the wall flashed red with the time “9:15 am”. I’m so use to waking at this time that I can wake up with no clock alarm, I still have to go to work and this thought is a burden.

I slowly dress myself and half way through I walk to Tess and kiss her cheek and her neck before whispering “I have to go to work, but I’ll be back”, “thank you”, Tess speaks out from her sleeping dream with a half curled smile. Out the apartment and to work I left with a thought that I’ll be with Tess again. Down the street I go with a inner light of happiness drawing out to show, how long has it been for this feeling to come out, time is friend and foe for me. It took a lot from me and gave such short moments that I remember as great times, I had my wife for years but I was always taken from her by war. War is a tool like any other for me, and that brings me to places far from the person I love, a great chasm of loneliness is made in my youthful years not knowing that she was going to be my future.   

I race to work, past the door ways and halls to the locker room to take a shower and wash away the stench of sex from my dry sweaty body. The soap is hospital sold brand that is meant only to disinfect and sterilized whatever it’s applied to. Blue tiles on the walls and ground, a fog of steam clouding the large shower area, interns taking a quick sprites or spray to wake up themselves. Locker doors are slamming shut; and the quick pace of people rushing not to be late or for others doing so eagerly to go home after a long day of waiting and calmly working. The pink gel soap foams with the water in my hair and at the foot of my toes.

When I’m done I head to the locker I weekly visit to change the suit left inside as a just in case. Going through the locker I have memories of starting out in the hospital as a bright minded intern due to, being in love at the time. In those times the light faded from me as times of greatness is called, I heard it out and gave my answer, I went to places with an idea to help, but slowly it evolved to helping those I can at that moment. If those died only after I just saved their lives I merely prolonged it as far as I could. I look back and see myself standing at this locker ready to save lives and finally give something that couldn’t be taken from me. The skill to rip out and cut away and patch up the dying so they can live, I remember leaving on a helicopter to arrive in Mexico to do this job that was my calling to do.

That scene I saw is more vivid now than when I seen it, me hovering down with the over sound of chopper blades scraping against the air. Coming down and seeing monstrous rows of medical tents and a dozen or so of surgery tents with numerous workers of nurses and doctors at fast pace work to help. I jumped from the helicopter with my friends carrying boxes of medicine and fools we were rushed by workers and other violators, robed of all things. The foods quickly divided for the children and the elderly, parents don’t take a small bite or nibble, they know all too well to give what to give what scrape they had to they’re hunger kids. The medicine is used to medicate the people in the tents who are recovering, still the chopper blades scrape the air and make no other sound heard.

I see the face of a child crying but I can’t hear its screams, he soon shuts up when its father swoop’s him up and gives a bite of food. I was nervous but I never faltered to show it or any other emotion, just one emotion came to the surface, wisdom. Others around try to do the same, many failed in the time I’m there and leave home and try to forget what is and change to what was. I believe then and now that times of greatness calls to many individuals and only a few replay back. Everyone is given this chance to hear its call of greatness, it comes from no giant iron bell or one made of grand silver.

The sound comes out of acts made by men, and carried out by word of mouth, and echoes afterward on the gust of a careless wind blowing to the east and west. These winds push the autumn leaves in a dance of pairs like a waltz caught in air. Each monumental act is recorded to know how many times greatness has called out and what the answering reply was. I fall back to my world knowing that I answered the call of greatness with the reflecting glare of my scalpel. Time dragged on when I was waiting for change to come, but now change has come to my life and time doesn’t drag on so slow.

Time was here on my watch, ticking at my pace. Time was here on my watch, shifting each gear to a rhythm that a lined to each beat that was from my chest. I dress with no thought of where I was going, only to leave this room, walking on pass the halls of this building and up each flight to my room, in hand a long black dry clean laundry bag to hold my suit from yesterday. The hustle and bustle of the street carries on as the day awakens for each one. I stand at my window with no tie around my neck because I feel no need for some colorful rope to chock me all day, like each other day. 

Skeptical at my shoulders with my white lab coat ready for work, I feel happy for I am in love. The clear window replays a scene of disavow, again I see drivers in a line separate from those on bikes peddling to work, saving the environment with simple act of biking here to there. Pedestrians walking and stopping to say hello and make small talk, others go to the shops nearby for cloths and foods. Simple days of youth have past for an old man who lives for now, I feel old when I compare myself to the young men before me and at my side, Tess has remind me that I’m not that old to love. A part of me wants to clock out early to get my cloths to the drycleaners and get to Tess.

I don’t really need to wait long for the short hours that came made it bearable to leave to the drycleaners and drop my suit at the end of each week to change and clean the suit in my locker. I clock out and drop my coat on the hanger behind my door, and head not home but to Tess. Out the doors, past the blocks, to the park where there she was seating on the bench from yesterday, waiting in a ravaging red dress that was far more than a younger girl can pull off, a high richness of elegances that women so long for. Her hair was down with curls pushed back to show each ear pieced holding short gold ear rings similar to chimes that dangling with a slight motion of her head. Gold bars on a thin chain spread apart to give room for the next in line of six that were at Tess’s pale neck, the giving sunset showed how lovely a woman can be when the sun moves out the way and lets the beauty of a woman shine.

With crossed legs she looks out far in a direction with no clear intent at watching anything only looking somewhere to drift off from. The realization of me there snapped the trance out of focus and was newly a pointed on me, “hello doctor Morales forgot something, and I thought you might need it if it rained again”. She pulls from an area out of my sight my red umbrella, “I didn’t forget it I was going to take it with me when I left your apartment tonight, it gave an excuse to go see you”. “An excuse, well I have it so no need to go, maybe we should elsewhere to talk, maybe your place”, still on that bench she looks into me with each flirting word. “My place, well I’m heading to drop some dry-cleaning, so we can go to my place after it”, a few seconds of playful banter ended when she smiled and led me on my path before letting me take led, she didn’t know where I was going.

Through the small district I drop my dry-cleaning in a shop that handled them for me over a long time I knew the owners of this shop. A young girl was there that I consider to be a niece for the many times I seen her and watched her grow, she was in her late teens and humble having parents that let her work whenever she could when not in school. I give my hellos to her and tell her to give some to her parents; I ask how she and they were like each week I do, they were middle class people whose nationality was from Russia I don’t know what part or I just forget at times like I say I’m old and getting older. She tells me of what she’s learned in computer engineering and how she loves her boyfriend and wants me to find someone to love or at least date; I think she didn’t see Tess waiting out in the window for me. We sat in seats close to another to hold hands, strapped in for a ride in the speed train we flew to my apartment.

The walk was calm and no word made, only an act was made now and then, a kiss but what was constant were our entwined fingers and smiles with our walk. The cold night pushed the sun down into the large horizon were it grew at the sides and made a wave of heat that sprang out in ripples like a pond, hit suddenly by a rock. Like a battling ram that pulls back before throwing its self against a wall, each pounding force takes the sky. The white half moon brakes the barer of the mid-sky and rests in the center where the sun was before fought back behind the earth. Off the line where the speed train rode, smaller it made itself as we rose off the ground into the air inside my building apartment.

Into my apartment we stood kissing, we already knew this and before wasn’t a one night stand because we carry each word and breath made between us with love for the other. We seat on the coach looking in wonder at what to do, “What should we eat, some homemade dinner or take out”? “Take out gives us time to talk, but it’ll be nice to eat some homemade dinner”, like teens in love we playfully flirt with every day words “yes it would, and some wine too”. I popped open a bottle of 5yr old wine and Tess found some glasses, each year was a year without my wife, I was saving it for my death bed. But why wait tell death comes when I can taste sweet life now, the wine had sweetness and a bitter after taste that came like each bottle of wine holds. 

We stood in the kitchen making a Spanish dish for ourselves; this brings me to my child hood, eating my mom’s dishes that were passed down from my mother to daughter over time. I made “chilly re a no” for two, we ate it while talking of how the world was or seemed better when you’re a kid looking out at the world thinking it’s perfect and has such good in it. I tell her about how my life and others are easy to compare to a sprout growing into a tree. I told her how I would just stare off into space and thought about life. I wonder about the trees that live in the forest. Also I think of the animals in the wild, even about us.

The thing I wonder about is why life is what it is, and doses the things it doses in its specific way. “From a seed in a forest that falls from its parent an apple tree, the seed will grow into an apple tree. The parent may want a pear tree but it’ll grow into an apple tree like its father and grow from its mother the dirt, the living earth. The father may choose to place his seed anywhere in mother earth. Even though he still has to push back a few branches for the sun’s rays and the sweet fall of the rain to fall on the seed.

The sun is the father’s love that he shines on the seed, the rain is the food and care that he rains on the seed. The mother holds the seed close to her breast when it sprouts, but now it’s inside her womb and gives what she has to the seed. The seed will sprout in time and the father will place a shadow of itself over the seed, for it to grow into after its father. Still stuck to the ground, the sprout will place its roots tightly to the ground so it won’t be carried off by the powerful winds that blow. The mother will also be there to hold up its beautiful sprout above her.

Even if the weather changes from a clear day to a dark filled sky with lightning blotting through the clouds; it may symbolize the storm of words in battle between your mother and father in action. When the sky clears and there are still are a few dark clouds in the sky, the effects are now visible in your eyes. The sprout looks at the once rich green, now with patches of brunt grass on its mother’s skin. Now the sprout gazes at the father that once was tall with long branches filled with dark green leafs. Now with a long scar across its side and his leafs torn off and swept upped by the winds gust.

Half his branches are bare with a few leafs still clinging on its father. The sprout is shacking to its core down to its rooted feet. Yet soon it feels the touch of its mother holding tight to its child, like she always dose. As the sprout grows older and taller it sees things closer to him that was out of its reach, when he was still clinging to its mother’s chest. Its parents place their ideas, hopes, dreams and their knowledge in their now grown apple tree.

On the other hand that’s not the only thing that they’ve placed in their child. They’ve placed their pain and hate for each other in their now grown apple tree. The grown apple tree looks likes its father with a sprinkle of its mother here and there. However the environment that it grows upped in has changed its mind and views on his parents to love and hate. That would battle so often at each other in front of it as a sprout, hate for the battles and love for the care of it so long ago.

The tree sees the world beyond its parents and fellow sprouts that it grows upped with. This apple tree now searches where to plant its seed in the earth beneath it and to see which bundle of soil would be a fitting mother to raise its seed. As the one that was scared of its parents battles, it searches for a mother who seen what its seen and feels what it feels to never fight and care for each other and their child. The apple tree is a father and the soil is the mother, and both are ready to make no mistake in raising their child. Now inside its mother’s womb and the once a small sprout, once a lone apple tree, is now a father eager to see his son rise and grow from the ground”. 

They way I talk to Tess impresses her mind and view of me, wisdom beyond years, understanding at what is overlooked so often. Feeling as thou I am speaking about her life and my own, we are connected more with each other about how our lives are similar. It’s simple to say that most people live lives that are like this, I just simple made a story that spoke to them and gave a sense that some one feels the way they do at that point or other points in their lives. We don’t hastate to hug each other when the talking is done and the late night has drawn sleep to the city. Like each night a group of men in large mammoth trucks collecting ever trash can on each curb ready to be taken away to large factories to be sorted and recycled by the hands of machines.

Dozens of these mammoth tanks would take time to work the whole city over; the city law curfew sent everyone home were they slept and unknowingly knew what was working outside their windows, working men operating machines for an honest living. The bikers aren’t out, but the cars that hug close to the ground like bugs are out, with lights of red & yellow flashing by in a zoom leaving a trail of its rear lights behind like a lightening bugs in the night flying by the pond. The gears of machines stop at factories, workers drive home tired, desk jocks leave their company office or cubical for home with awaiting family. Waiters walk the streets who brave the days for the upcoming dreams that are dreamt at night in their homes. Fisher men at the dock come to shore to rest for the next day’s catch; even the surgeon goes to sleep.

The would be dark streets, are sit with bright street lights for those who are still out and need the guiding lights of the city. Sprinkles on auto time spray lawns at 10:00pm; a few people awake for demanding night shifts at work and ready them self’s to do what the call jobs. With time on my clock I don’t mind lying in a bed with a woman I now love and think nothing else with her, since that night it all changed.  We lay on the couch watching “Young Frankenstein” playing on the classic movie channel, the old stile funny seems more than what is playing on television and in theaters now. I can evolve with the times but some things I can’t move along with, we giggle and smile at the movie show.

After the movie we go to bed were love is made with our flesh, like before we undress each other and unit our flesh in a close dance of pleasure in my bed, now shared. Sins I made won’t be forgiven and I don’t mind making another where I sleep with an unmarried woman that’s with me. So I moan for pleasure’s sake and give all I have to my lovers body, I take what she gives to me, kisses with close hugs where she can say sweet nothings in my ear.