Life After Media
When I was a child, I carried Anne Frank as shadows of
bullies and burnt buildings fell over us in the South Bronx of America. She was
given to me to keep by Mr. Mark, my white-haired English teacher at P.S 25. He
looked like a grandfather slightly hunched with a heavy burden of quiet grief.
Not wanting him to be alone, I would stay after school to help him tidy up the
class. I was faster than him because I imagined myself into The 8th
Man, a Japanese anime TV series. I upgraded from wanting to be Astro Boy to a
detective who was killed in the line of duty and brought back as an android
capable of super speed and changing his face. I also wanted to be Mr. Spock,
science officer on the USS Enterprise. He motivated me to find books to help me
build a computer from the wreckage of our town.
Emotions are illogical, I whispered to myself over and over before my
mother’s husband tortured me in the time of the Hanoi Hilton where the Geneva
Convention was violated, as were prisoners of war. I withstood the humiliation
and the pain but one tear managed to escape. My half human side was crying.
I was very proud of it.
Underwater, I could hold my breath longer than any kid at
the Saint Mary’s Park Recreational Center where walls are lined with super
heroes from Marvel Comics. I was Namor The Submariner, the prince of Atlantis.
In the bathtub, my mother’s husband tried to drown me. Then something like a
holographic menu appeared in my brain. It ran a list of options before it
settled on one: PLAY DEAD. My body violently convulsed and went lifeless. He
shrieked when he thought he had killed me and ran out of the apartment too
small to contain the suffering of a child who dreamt of a better life for
everyone. I made up my mind and closed my eyes as I took a deep breath before
jumping off a bridge in The South Bronx. I landed on a slow moving freight
train on the way to the heartland of America. The winds ran through my hair
like the hand of an angel.
I was free to fly to higher education. Next stop: The
University.
Enter The Dorm Neo Nazi.
And Cain killed Abel.
After 9/11, I recovered lost memories while rebuilding a
house in the mountains of The Garden State where aliens landed on the airwaves
of the 1930s and set off panic among We, The People. I cried more for the child
I was than I ever did when I was a little boy with a red towel for a cape.
Rebirth is painful.
Time to work.
I picked up a sledgehammer and tore down the fourth wall in
the kitchen. I saw the beckoning mystery of the forest in the wintertime. The woods are lovely but I have miles to go
before I sleep, wrote a poet named Frost.
I can’t sleep but dream wide-awake. This is life after media. This is
the better angel of my nature in cyberspace.
This is The End of Waiting For Super Man.
How can I be of service?
I have an idea…
