textfiles/magazines/HOE/hoe-0852.txt

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   ooooo   ooooo  .oooooo.  oooooooooooo       HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #852
   `888'   `888' d8P'  `Y8b `888'     `8
    888     888 888      888 888             "A Year in the Making of a 
    888ooooo888 888      888 888oooo8               Waiting World"
    888     888 888      888 888    "                by Basehead
    888     888 `88b    d88' 888       o               9/28/99
   o888o   o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8
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        There came a time in the young boy's life when he needed more than a
 wind in the trees, and the company of his imaginary friends.  He needed
 something to be immersed in, something that would swallow him whole.

        The times he sat among the autumn leaves and the branches and cradled
 the thought of this thing were his pride and joy.  The rain gods heard the
 conversations he had with himself, and were displeased.  They rained down on
 his private moments and sent him fleeing into the house for shelter.

        Everything the boy owned refused to move of it's own free will.  He
 cursed his bike and his toys and his mattress, but they heard nothing.
 Three large dolls that sat upright in three chairs around a small table in
 the corner stared blankly, their button eyes showing no signs of life.  When
 he poked about their eyes and neck, shouting, they just slouched and sagged
 lower and lower in their seats, and their expressions of sardonic amusement
 remained fixed.

        At night the clouds settled into thick white pillows on which sat
 stale air and the cries of beasts too numerous and frightful to imagine, and
 the boy's mind raced.  He sometimes imagined one of the great black horned
 cats with its red eyes would hop on to his windowsill and pad across the
 floor to where he lay in bed, only to vanish when it might have been upon
 him instead.  He left the windows wide open each night, and when he awoke,
 he tasted the stale air in his lungs and prayed night had passed.

        When snow came, it brought no joy, only a chill so great that the boy
 needed to bundle up in bed to avoid freezing to death.  He knew the
 winterbirds would come soon, and he thought how he might sit upon the place
 where the autumn leaves once were, his breath puffing clouds of condensation
 in the air, and wait for one to land on his finger.  Then he would capture
 it in a tin he'd made for his new friend, holes poked in the lid, and tell
 it to sing for him when he became restless.

        No winterbirds came.  At least, none landed on his finger and so he
 walked among the hills blanketed in white, his small footsteps getting lost
 in the drifts, until he could barely see the chimney of his house.  There he
 lay on his back, making snow angels, and wishing one would come to claim
 him.

        Much to the boy's delight, the days became longer (slowly, but
 surely) and the snow turned to rain, and he could no longer hear the
 winterbirds.  Sitting in the stone doorway on the porch, he enjoyed the
 bright sky, and when dusk settled he saw fleeting lines of dissipating light
 shoot across the brightness like comets, and in his mind's eye he imagined a
 great many witches on their magic sticks, sprinkling the night down on him
 little by little, and he was comforted in his coming to believe that someone
 else was aware of his existence.

        The sun baked the ground now and the frozen lakes thawed.  The boy
 would crawl out on to the pond on all fours and try to find a weak spot, all
 the while imagining the great icy underworld he might find beneath, filled
 with sights and beings and happenings that would amaze and astonish him.
 There would be the first telling crack, then they came faster and faster,
 and suddenly that great world beyond was not what he'd expected and he
 wished himself onto the shore.  Somehow he would wake up shivering and damp
 and clammy in his bed, and there would be a fire going.  When he became
 hungry he might have called out but he knew it wouldn't matter.

        More than once the boy made attempts to conquer the highest trees he
 could find.  There would be many other houses and boys like himself, he
 thought, if he could only make it to the top of the highest tree and look
 around.  No matter how high he climbed, there seemed to be one more branch
 above him on which to step, and he became too tired to climb any higher.
 Wearily, he descended and he thought he could see woodland creatures racing
 across the ground below the tree and he stepped down and down further as
 fast as he could in hopes that he might follow one to it's home or where it
 fed, and live as it lived, for he was tired of living his own life.  There
 would be nothing to follow when he hurdled the last branch and stood on the
 soft mud at the base of the trees.

        When the nights once again to grow longer, and the foliage about him
 turned all the colors of the rainbow, he wondered if he might again
 challenge the rain gods to take away the only thing that brought him
 satisfaction.  He still longed for that feeling of total immersion, however
 damaged his dreams had become.

        It was perhaps that day or a day very near to it that the boy felt
 older than his years.  He would not find happiness in the places he was
 searching, and so he set off on foot in a straight line toward the sinking
 sun, and he left his world behind.

        The papers would speak of tragedy, but the young man knew better.

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 [ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS!  HOE #852 - WRITTEN BY: BASEHEAD - 9/28/99 ]