By the grace of the good Lord on September 25th 1980 at 5:32pm EST in the University of Florida’s Shands Hospital, I was born unto the surface this Earth. My conscious mind cannot recall the weather on that day but I have always assumed it was beautiful; sunny with a cool pleasant breeze that has made its way through the thick humidity & heat of my home state. This is what the weather has been like in my home state on September 25th every year I can remember. The cool breeze which hasn’t been felt all summer finally makes its way to me. Its one of the things I like most about my birthday. For many years starting when I was in middle school, I’ve felt an uncontrollable sadness on my birthday that I cannot explain. Its a feeling like someone passed away or something was lost long ago on that day but I don’t know what it could be or why, nor can I put my finger on exactly what the emotion or thought is attached to.
My memories from early childhood are happy; brightly lit & dream like with a comforting haze over them. They’re not as clear and sharp as memories that came later in my life. I’m not sure anyone remembers taking their first steps and I doubt most can recall the last time they sucked on their pacifier before finally giving up the filthy addiction. When I calmly focus on my mind and reecall my 1’s and 2’s what comes to mind is a flood of memories not all of which are crystal clear. Mostly it is fall leaves crunching under my small tennis shoes, seeing the big tree’s in our back yard with their ever green leaves, looking up at them feeling small. I also recall being upset in my crib although I didn’t know the words, I was concerned I was being left alone forever in my jail cell for a few moments. I remember being told the word no but I do not recall being punished in any ways I would call disturbing or unethical. I don’t recall the first time I got a spanking or if it was meant to hurt or if it did not hurt at all. As some readers know, the fear of getting slapped vigorously and without mercy usually outweighs the actual spanking itself. I’m not sure when my first punishment in the form of a spanking occurred. If it started back then it would be news to me.
I don’t recall fighting or arguing with my parents very often save the occasional despicable Brussel sprout or sickening sweet potato, both of which I loath for obvious reasons. I do not believe for even one second there are people who do enjoy the taste of a brussel sprout and I maintain that no one person has ever in the history of humankind made a statement which could be equated to saying “I am having a craving for Brussel sprouts”. Nobody on, above or below the earth has ever had a hankering for brussel sprouts and nobody ever will because they are absolutely disgusting. This is a fact supported by literally anyone anywhere at any time and I’m including primates in with the survey’s I have theoretically conducted on this subject. If you were to visit a zoo or a retired circus animal encampment with a bag of boiled brussel sprouts in a cooler so they stay warm and disgusting, you could see for yourself. All one has to do is toss a few handfuls of brussel sprouts into the cage of a monkey or an ape. It won’t take long for the spider monkey or bonobo ape to pick up the rancid swamp dumpling and analyze it. If you don’t believe me please go see for yourself. You will know when the primate is done smelling and tasting the small slimy vomit scented balls because once it has, this primates primary objective is going to be finding some of its own bowl movements which are always close by. Like clockwork the next move by the small spider monkey or slow moving bonobo will be hurling its fly ridden feces directly at your face, with malicious intent.
Of course I naturally and intuitively attempted to emulate the aforementioned circus scene at our family dinner table anytime I was spoon fed something that I did not find pleasing, but being physically overpowered was a regular occurrence and they had me strapped into a chair so I couldn’t escape the often fun sometimes horrific dinners. I used the time to my benefit and starting toying with utensils so I could be more like Abba and Daniel. Imma of course used the silverware as well but I wasn’t so much trying to be like her. I was more focused on being like my brother or my Abba.
Mostly what I recall are the feelings or energies associated those blurry long ago years. I also remember many smells and sights. There is a warm comforting feeling I get when revisiting those feelings. A feeling like floating on water. Its much akin to the feeling one gets as they begin to fall asleep on a rainy afternoon after having a relaxing joint or drink with lunch. Certainly a feeling of being comfortable and content. There are some specific events or experiences from when I was young that I vividly recall but for the most part what I think of is the way I felt back when I was only 1-2 years old. Interestingly enough, I didn’t have the knowledge or teaching of things like feelings or emotions when I was that age. I was mostly focused on the things around me and what they felt like as well as what they smelled like. When I think back about how vividly I would smell things at times it makes me wonder if I can smell anything at all now. If I’m near the ocean and I have the desire and the time to focus, I can take repeating breathes of air in and out of my nose with great fury and force eventually this will give me a 1-2 second wiff of something that resembles the ocean smell I took in for the first time years ago that day in the car. All of a sudden for a few brief seconds I can suddenly smell it again but as soon as I detect the scent, its gone.
Daniel & I always used "Imma" and "Abba" to call our parents in Hebrew, instead of the typical American "mom" and "dad". Apparently, they had lived in Israel on something called a 'Kibbutz', where my brother was born Feb. 7th 1977. Our family photo albums contained a substantial number of photos from any period in time and this included 2-3 albums from Israel. There were words and phrases Emma would say sometimes, but English was her first language and the one she lead with.
I would look our old and new albums often, trying to learn what I could about life before I came along. There were so many pictures of me in the 1980 album. Pictures of me being born, smearing food all over my face on my first birthday & doing other baby things which I didn’t look at too often as I didn’t have a reason to. Mostly I looked at the pictures of my parents from when they were younger. There was an amazing photograph of my Abba on a motorcycle cutting around the bend of sharp turn on a race track. His knee was so close to the ground it looked as though it was touching and he was looking straight ahead, going fast. Abba looked totally awesome and cool in the motorcycle racing photo. I couldn’t even fathom the notion of entertaining the idea that I could be that awesome one day. I knew it was likely my father and my brother would always be better than me at everything and they certainly would be much larger than me always and forever, I was sure of it.
The Israel themes were very prevalent when I was growing up. I knew how to say “I want ice-cream” in Hebrew which was one of my goto’s for show casing my knowledge and personality around that time. Imma was the one who talked about Israel the most and would say things to suggest she missed her life and her friends there. She was starting to become fluent in Hebrew and she enjoyed the culture and the food. We had a Sesame Street VHS tape at one point that was entirely in Hebrew. Imma told me that when I got older she would begin teaching me to speak Hebrew which I very much liked the thought of. I already knew how to say “I want ice cream”; I was confident I was doing great already. I could tell Imma missed Israel but she assured me if they hadn’t moved back to the USA, I would have never been born. Even now I understand the concept but I cannot picture it whatsoever in my mind. I've tried many times but the simple fact is it is impossible for me to imagine an Earth that I am not a part of or connected with. I knew I was important, but I did not yet know why I was important or to whom I was important to.
My memories always consist of tree’s and I can remember looking at them from my crib when I was very young. My room was the second door on the right at the end of a long hallway. I had a corner room as did my brother and we had one wall that touched. From our living room you would walk down a 5-6 foot hallway which took a left turn once its 6 feet ended and continued on for aproximately 30 more feet. At the beginning of the hallway walking towards our bedrooms to the left was our kitchen and to the right was our living room. When the 6 feet ended and the hallway took a left turn, if you turned right there was a metal door leading into our backyard. Upon taking the left turn there was a closet immeditly to the left and further down on the left was the intake/filter for our air conditioning as well as the thermostat which controlled our heat and our A/C. Upon taking the left turn down our long hallway at the very end was a mirror. The seemingly simple mirror stat stationary on the far wall since I can recall. When coming in through the back door, walking to my room or going to the bathroom I had no choice but to stare at my reflection while I walked down the hallway. After taking the left turn and seeing a mirror 30 feet away with a backdoor behind and a closet to the left, just a few feet down on the right was Daniel’s room which later became our room. At the end of the hallway on the right was my yellow room with a crib and my toys. Each room had one window looking out over our green heavily wooded backyard and our smelly overgrown pond. The hallway took another left turn upon reaching my bedroom door. The final stretch of the hallway saw a bathroom to the right and the master bedroom straight ahead. The master bedroom had a water bed in it, an item my parents kept as long as they could. There were two end tables on either side of the water bed and one window looking out towards our neighbor’s, The Box’s, house. At the end of the master bedroom there was a bathroom with a walk in closet. The bathroom had wooden slat doors on it that hinged open and closed.
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I recall being quite upset in my crib and throwing things out of it. I believe I used to throw everything I could out of my crib when I was quite young. Mostly I remember being woken up by smiling faces which I smiled back at, but I do remember the carpet in my bedroom back then. I was a thin yellow-ish carpet which was done to match the yellow walls I had There are a few times I remember sitting in there and crying because I couldn’t get out but I very much wanted to. Those blasted bars were always blocking my way & I always trying to my best to climb up over the wooden prison bars. I had studied the layout of my holding cell and finally, I had found what I was looking for: a flaw in the design which kept me jailed and confined to my bed. When I concentrate now those memories of looking at the tree’s and the odd feelings I used to have all seem like dreams which I can only remember bits and pieces of. As I focus on the bits and pieces that I have, there is something else which comes into my mind as well which is more of a feeling than a memory. Its a feeling that I even now I cannot quite explain but there is something about it which I’ve always been very much drawn to. For some reason when I focus on being that young and I focus on looking out my bedroom window into the woods and the green tree’s, I start to feel as though I’m being swept away somewhere special and magical where I feel absolutely amazing, as though I’m flying or floating in the trees. The best I can say at this time is that when I think about this feeling or the memories associated being young are combined with another memory or memories that I cannot quite put my finger on. In my mind, or perhaps in my dreams, I somehow I am in the woods and I am in the tree’s. Its almost as if I become part of the forest and everything feels like a green velvet of soothing softness in both my mind and in my body.
These feelings and dreams or memories bring up visions of grand flat forests and stone or concrete buildings that have been built in the middle of the forests, much resembling 1980’s modern architecture. When I see the scenes in Star Wars Return of the Jedi of the ‘rebel’ base on the planet Endor(sp), there is always a twinge of something in the back of my mind associated with those distant far off memories or dreams in my mind. Its not the forest itself, but the stone structure built in the middle of the forest on Endor. Its not quite the same thing as my memories or dreams from when I was very young, in fact the more I focus on the movie the less it seems like the same thing visually. Its a subject that is difficult for me to explain because even now as an adult its difficult for me to understand fully. Whatever it is, dreams, memories, or memories of feelings, it is something that seems to be equal parts a physical feeling and equal parts visual stimulation of some kind. I’ve always been very visually stimulated, and as a result I’ve assumed everyone is just as visually stimulated as I am by things. I simply like looking at things. Some things, and even some people, I’d like to look at longer than other things or people.
Many of my early memories are of playing in our yard around our house. In my early years I didn’t go tromping off into our pond or our woods by myself. I didn’t have a desire to. In addition to not wanting to I can only assume I wasn’t allowed to.
*** POND /
We had an overgrown unkempt pond in our back yard which was approximately 100-150 feet from our home’s back door. It had sticks and tree’s growing up through it and was covered with duck weed. The green duck weed which sits on top of more stagnate water in Florida is common place and one can usually infer some things about any water in question by the abundance or lack of duck weed. The duck weed that sat on top of the water in our pond was a soothing light green color which was quite attractive compared to what it lay underneath. The brown and black silt of hundreds of years of leaves & dead animals was under the duck weed. Nobody willingly jumped into our disgusting wild overgrown pond; I believe we were all fearful of falling in. suggestion to jump in on purpose or go swimming in our silty There were two large oak tree’s that had somehow managed to survive the soggy wet rotting and had form a small island about the size of a dining room table in our pond near the edge that was closest to our house.
My knowledge of the small two tree island started by watching Daniel hop over to it with his long older brother legs, leaving me to wait for his return on the main land. Daniel was the one always making bridges in the pond using old logs and sticks to make an impromptu bridge. .; It was quite far away and surrounded with murky brown water which smelled much like he forest had diarrhea If and when we disturbed the water and what lay under it. ***************
The woods and the ponds in them were home to millions of large and small animals. We had slithering wet and slimy looking moccasins, deer, hawks, owls, squires, rattlesnakes, a few bobcats, small black bears and rumors of escaped monitor lizards from the Galapagos islands. The monitor lizards were rumored to be somewhere in the swamps because a neighbor of ours had monitor lizards which had escaped their cages after a hurricane had swept through some years prior. Apparently it was quite the hubbub at the time complete with locals keeping their pets indoors while others roamed the streets and forests longing for something to shoot at. Even though I hadn’t met Mr. Offenberg(Sp) yet, I suspected he may have let some of those lizards out on purpose. I played out the scenario countless times, putting myself in some man’s shoe’s I’d not yet met. It seemed like it would be somewhat humorous or even fun to let these creatures out in swampy Florida just to see how they make their way in the environment. Monitor lizards from the Galapagos island are extremely adaptable can even produce young on their own if isolated with no mate. My parents told me that the cold weather would have killed them off any time I asked about the 1 or 2 which were never found. I was told that Mr. Offenberg, who once kept the lizards at his house, used to teach at the University of Florida and had even been on the PBS show National Geographic. Both the University and the PBS television show I was quite familiar with.
**CASTLEBERRY
We had a fort in our back yard named “The Castleberry”. It was named after a city in FL named Casselberry which of course sounds exactly like the word ‘castle-berry’ depending on one’s own vernacular. My father had constructed first and original Castleberry around 1979-1980*photo albums. It was made of large 4x4 pieces of lumber which were placed deep into the moist sand and thick wet black soil which lay underneath. Anywhere in Florida if one begins to dig they usually are first confronted with sand depending on the elevation. Different tree’s and soils can be found depending on the state of one’s elevation or lack thereof. As the elevation increases in florida so does the amount of sand you will find. The different types of soil found at the different elevations is what typically determines which tree’s will grow in that area. The higher up you go above sea level, the more pine tree’s you will find growing. The lower down one goes the more lush the vegetation gets. Anyone can see this for themselves by simply driving down I-75 which runs down the middle of Florida.
*********
and even though it was torn down and redesigned a few times, the name never changed. I was usually playing in or around the CastleBerrie with my GI Joe’s or digging up sand & dirt, both of which were activities I’d picked up from my older brother and I quite enjoyed them especially the GI Joe’s. My favorite was a character named “Tunnel Rat”. A name I didn’t fully comprehend, but he was my guy. When I was young, I didn't have very many G.I Joe's but my older brother had a significant amount The wooded yard of our house held and kept my attention, my imagination didn’t drift very far from that place save day and sleeping dreams of Stepping Stones or the church we went to occasionally. I hadn’t figured out the schedule to either and I wasn’t convinced there was a need for such unnecessary trifling concerns. I had GI Joes to play with and holes to dig.
******* Older text:::::
My memories from early childhood are happy; brightly lit & dream like with a comforting haze over them. They’re not as clear and sharp as memories that came later in my life. I’m not sure anyone remembers taking their first steps and I doubt most can recall the last time they sucked on their pacifier before finally giving up the filthy addiction. Mostly what I recall are the feelings or energies associated those blurry long ago years but I also remember many smells and sights. There is a warm comforting feeling I get when revisiting those feelings.
A feeling like floating on water. Its much akin to the feeling one gets as they begin to fall asleep on a rainy afternoon after having a relaxing joint or drink with lunch. Certainly a feeling of being comfortable and content. There are some specific events or experiences from when I was young that I vividly recall but for the most part what I think of is the way I felt back when I was only 3-4 years old. Interestingly enough, when I was 3-4 years old, I didn’t have the knowledge or teaching of things like feelings or emotions when I was that age. I was mostly focused on the things around me and what they felt like as well as what they smelled like. When I think back about how vividly I would smell things at times it makes me wonder if I can smell anything at all now. If I’m near the ocean and I have the desire and the time to focus, I can take repeating breathes of air in and out of my nose with great fury and force in an effort to eventually give me a 1-2 second wiff of the ocean smell I took in for the first time when I was only 2-3 years old. If I w nearork at it for a few minutes I can suddenly smell it again but as soon as I detect the scent, its gone again. The last time I was at the beach somewhat close to Butler Beach, I could smell more swamp than ocean.
Daniel & I always used "Imma" and "Abba" to call our parents in Hebrew, instead of the typical American "mom" and "dad". Apparently, they had lived in Israel on something called a 'Kibbutz', where my brother was born Feb. 7th 1977. Our family photo albums contained a substantial number of photos from any period in time and this included 2-3 albums from Israel. There were words and phrases Emma would say sometimes, but English was her first language and the one she lead with.
I would look our old and new albums often, trying to learn what I could about life before I came along. There were so many pictures of me in the 1980 album. Pictures of me being born, smearing food all over my face on my first birthday & doing other baby things which I didn’t look at too often as I didn’t have a reason to Mostly I looked at the pictures of my parents from when they were younger. There was an amazing photograph of my Abba on a motorcycle cutting around the bend of sharp turn on a race track. His knee was so close to the ground it looked as though it was touching and he was looking straight ahead, going fast. Abba looked like a total bad ass in the motorcycle racing photo. I couldn’t entertain the idea of me being that awesome one day. I knew it was likely my father and my brother would always be better than me at most everything and they certainly would be much larger than me always and forever, I was sure of it.
The Israel themes were very prevalent when I was growing up. I knew how to say “I want ice-cream” in Hebrew which was one of my go-to actions for show casing my knowledge and personality around that time. Imma was the one who talked about Israel the most and would say things to suggest she missed her life and her friends there. She was starting to become fluent in Hebrew and she enjoyed the culture. We had a Sesame Street tape at one point that was entirely in Hebrew. Imma told me that when I got older she would begin teaching me to speak Hebrew which I very much liked the thought of. I already knew how to say “I want ice cream” in Hebrew, I was confident I was doing great already I could tell Imma missed Israel but she assured me if they hadn’t moved back to the USA, I would have never been born. Even now I understand the concept but I cannot picture it whatsoever in my mind. I've tried many times but the simple fact is it is impossible for me to imagine an Earth that I am not a part of or connected with. I knew I was important, but I did not yet know why I was important or to whom I was important to.
I can remember looking at them from my crib when I was very young. My room was the second door on the right I had a corner room as did my brother. had one wall that touched I recall being quite upset in my crib and throwing things out of it. I believe I used to throw everything I could out of my crib when I was quite young. Mostly I remember being woken up by smiling faces which I smiled back at, but I do remember the carpet in my bedroom back then. I was a thin yellow-ish carpet which was done to match the yellow walls I had There are a few times I remember sitting in there and crying because I couldn’t get out but I very much wanted to. Those blasted bars were always blocking my way & I always trying to my best to climb up over the wooden prison bars. I had studied the layout of my holding cell and finally, I had found what I was looking for: a flaw in the design which kept me jailed and confined to my bed. When I concentrate now those memories of looking at the tree’s and the odd feelings I used to have all seem like dreams which I can only remember bits and pieces of. As I focus on the bits and pieces that I have, there is something else which comes into my mind as well which is more of a feeling than a memory. Its a feeling that I even now I cannot quite explain but there is something about it which I’ve always been very much drawn to. For some reason when I focus on being that young and I focus on looking out my bedroom window into the woods and the green tree’s, I start to feel as though I’m being swept away somewhere special and magical where I feel absolutely amazing, as though I’m flying or floating in the trees. The best I can say at this time is that when I think about this feeling or the memories associated being young are combined with another memory or memories that I cannot quite put my finger on. In my mind, or perhaps in my dreams, I somehow I am in the woods and I am in the tree’s. Its almost as if I become part of the forest and everything feels like a green velvet of soothing softness in both my mind and in my body.
These feelings and dreams or memories bring up visions of grand flat forests and stone or concrete buildings that have been built in the middle of the forests, much resembling 1980’s modern architecture. When I see the scenes in Star Wars Return of the Jedi of the ‘rebel’ base on the planet Endor(sp), there is always a twinge of something in the back of my mind associated with those distant far off memories or dreams in my mind. Its not the forest itself, but the stone structure built in the middle of the forest on Endor. Its not quite the same thing as my memories or dreams from when I was very young, in fact the more I focus on the movie the less it seems like the same thing visually. Its a subject that is difficult for me to explain because even now as an adult its difficult for me to understand fully. Whatever it is, dreams, memories, or memories of feelings, it is something that seems to be equal parts a physical feeling and equal parts visual stimulation of some kind. I’ve always been very visually stimulated, and as a result I’ve assumed everyone is just as visually stimulated as I am by things. I simply like looking at things. Some things, and even some people, I’d like to look at longer than other things or people.
Many of my early memories are of playing in our yard around our house. In my early years I didn’t go tromping off into our pond or our woods by myself. I didn’t have a desire to. In addition to not wanting to I can only assume I wasn’t allowed to.
*** POND /
We had an overgrown unkempt pond in our back yard which was approximately 100-150 feet from our home’s back door. It had sticks and tree’s growing up through it and was covered with duck weed. The green duck weed which sits on top of more stagnate water in Florida is common place and one can usually infer some things about any water in question by the abundance or lack of duck weed. The duck weed that sat on top of the water in our pond was a soothing light green color which was quite attractive compared to what it lay underneath. The brown and black silt of hundreds of years of leaves & dead animals was under the duck weed. Nobody willingly jumped into our disgusting wild overgrown pond; I believe we were all fearful of falling in. suggestion to jump in on purpose or go swimming in our silty There were two large oak tree’s that had somehow managed to survive the soggy wet rotting and had form a small island about the size of a dining room table in our pond near the edge that was closest to our house.
My knowledge of the small two tree island started by watching Daniel hop over to it with his long older brother legs, leaving me to wait for his return on the main land. Daniel was the one always making bridges in the pond using old logs and sticks to make an impromptu bridge. .; It was quite far away and surrounded with murky brown water which smelled much like he forest had diarrhea If and when we disturbed the water and what lay under it. ***************
The woods and the ponds in them were home to millions of large and small animals. We had slithering wet and slimy looking moccasins, deer, hawks, owls, squires, rattlesnakes, a few bobcats, small black bears and rumors of escaped monitor lizards from the Galapagos islands. The monitor lizards were rumored to be somewhere in the swamps because a neighbor of ours had monitor lizards which had escaped their cages after a hurricane had swept through some years prior. Apparently it was quite the hubbub at the time complete with locals keeping their pets indoors while others roamed the streets and forests longing for something to shoot at. Even though I hadn’t met Mr. Offenberg(Sp) yet, I suspected he may have let some of those lizards out on purpose. I played out the scenario countless times, putting myself in some man’s shoe’s I’d not yet met. It seemed like it would be somewhat humorous or even fun to let these creatures out in swampy Florida just to see how they make their way in the environment. Monitor lizards from the Galapagos island are extremely adaptable can even produce young on their own if isolated with no mate. My parents told me that the cold weather would have killed them off any time I asked about the 1 or 2 which were never found. I was told that Mr. Offenberg, who once kept the lizards at his house, used to teach at the University of Florida and had even been on the PBS show National Geographic. Both the University and the PBS television show I was quite familiar with.
**CASTLEBERRY
We had a fort in our back yard named “The Castleberry”. It was named after a city in FL named Casselberry which of course sounds exactly like the word ‘castle-berry’ depending on one’s own vernacular. My father had constructed first and original Castleberry around 1979-1980*photo albums. It was made of large 4x4 pieces of lumber which were placed deep into the moist sand and thick wet black soil which lay underneath. Anywhere in Florida if one begins to dig they usually are first confronted with sand depending on the elevation. Different tree’s and soils can be found depending on the state of one’s elevation or lack thereof. As the elevation increases in florida so does the amount of sand you will find. The different types of soil found at the different elevations is what typically determines which tree’s will grow in that area. The higher up you go above sea level, the more pine tree’s you will find growing. The lower down one goes the more lush the vegetation gets. Anyone can see this for themselves by simply driving down I-75 which runs down the middle of Florida.
*********
and even though it was torn down and redesigned a few times, the name never changed. I was usually playing in or around the CastleBerrie with my GI Joe’s or digging up sand & dirt, both of which were activities I’d picked up from my older brother and I quite enjoyed them especially the GI Joe’s. My favorite was a character named “Tunnel Rat”. A name I didn’t fully comprehend, but he was my guy. When I was young, I didn't have very many G.I Joe's but my older brother had a significant amount The wooded yard of our house held and kept my attention, my imagination didn’t drift very far from that place save day and sleeping dreams of Stepping Stones or the church we went to occasionally. I hadn’t figured out the schedule to either and I wasn’t convinced there was a need for such unnecessary trifling concerns. I had GI Joes to play with and holes to dig.
