ellyssian | Pieces of Me: Prelude to Ruin

Time, time, time
An imaginary line
Mine not yours, nor yours mine

Fates Warning - Prelude to Ruin

And what better to remind you of how time passes than the anniversary of the day of your birth?

Going back a bit into the past, oh, say to April or May of 1986. Wrapping up junior year in high school.

Rocky's Magic Bus was already almost a thing of the past, but we were a fairly tightly knit group. So when an old friend of most lost his brother, all of us were there for the wake.

Flash forward, briefly, to 1995 or 1996. When time flies, hair grows grey, and Harmony was the first to point out that it was happening to me.

She was a co-worker, and came up behind me. "Don't move," so I didn't. I was at my QC bench putting the latest batch of meters through their paces. Weather was nice, and we kept the doors open. We had just chased a lost and confused sparrow out of the building, and had fairly regular encounters with the local bumblebees and wasps and such. While I was wondering if she was going to swat the back of my head to squish whatever had landed on me, suddenly I felt her yank.

Grey hairs are apparently important to women. Personally, I would have been happy leaving it there. But I have digressed enough. Harmony has a purpose in this story beyond a minor illustration that hair goes grey as you age (or, in my case, as my children aged - the very first hair was actually found the day after Justin was born, but he doesn't have anything to do with this story.)

To the point, one day Harmony - who was from Worcester, but was dating a man from Watertown - needed to get a ride to Watertown. To and from, if I recall correctly. And for some reason she tells me a story about how her boyfriend had, many years ago raced down Arsenal Street, and the car he raced against went into the Charles River, and only one out of two of its passengers came out again.

Two brothers, the eldest driving. He was going to graduate in 1986 in just a few weeks, the Camaro was his graduation present, and his brother was friends with many of those on the bus.

We were nice boys for going to the wake, such nice boys. His mother and grandmother were nearly in hysterics. At the funeral, which I did not attend on account of being friends of friends of the brother - the wake was considered appropriate enough - his mother shook him, screaming for him to wake up.

Shortly after I graduated in 1987, but while my brother and the rest of the underclassmen continued the rest of the school year, a friend named Terry, who overdid the drugs, hung himself in his bedroom.

At the same time in 1988, even as I half-joked that I wondered who it would be this year, I received news from a friend at the Channel that Jimmy - a bass player who was gaining some local fame - drowned off Revere Beach. Apparently, he and some others "borrowed" a rather leaky boat, and by the time they discovered this, they were fairly far out in the bay. Alcohol and an inability to swim did not help matters much.

In 1989, I had prepared myself, somewhat. April and most of May had passed without incident, and it was just a few days before my birthday.

I had a strange dream.

I had a series of nightmares for years - common stuff: being chased, falling, perpetually waking. I came up with ways to short circuit all three of those minor ones, and then I was hit with this one. It had all three, as the escape from one led to the other, until, finally, what had been chasing me caught me.

Looked like the mummy, kind of. Something kept it from just ripping into me, though. Felt like wreckage, and it felt like I was underwater. In fact, the mummy was kind of swollen, bloated as if it was waterlogged. Some of its wrapping was like webbing, holding me down. The creature was strangling me.

When I woke up, I fell back into the bed - the sound woke my brother in the next room. I was out of breath, and fairly convinced that if I hadn't managed to wake up then I wouldn't have at all.

The next day, I received the news.

It was Omar. Another year, another death. Another bass player. Another drowning. Another in the Charles River. His girlfriend, who reacted to his health kick - exercise, diet, and all - by thinking he was going to break up with her, took a right turn while travelling east bound on Memorial Drive, just past Western Ave.

Her car landed in three feet of water. They were able to get her out, but the doors were locked, and his seatbelt was on. The webbing held him under, and he drowned. In three fucking feet of water.

Somewhat ironically, Omar had very nearly had his life take a very different route: prior to his death, there was talk of working together on a project, possibly involving

nhmetalchick's friend, but prior to that, Omar travelled out west to try out for a band based there. They had lost their bass player, Cliff, in a tour bus accident. Rumor places Omar as runner-up to the gig that Jason landed.

So much promise in youth. So much energy and power.

Reaching for something they just can't quite get a grip on.

But someday, they'll mature; grow into it. They'll plan for that future that doesn't seem important or reachable.

Some of them will make it. Some of them won't.

We should be held so high and not looked down upon.
We are the root of the country.
The roots so firm and tranquil,
When will the spirits be welcomed,
Listen the music is heard again.
When there are lofty high roof tops
Carved walls and yielding crops
When the palace is wild for lusting.
When the forest is wild for hunting.
Existence of any one thing
Has never been
But the prelude to ruin.

Fates Warning - Prelude to Ruin