A Cellarful of Nose - Future Shoes

This stuttering figure I describe myself as is not a recent
invention. Yes, I have a goddamn brain tumor. But as I looked
back, deep into my life, I see that the afflictions I attribute to the
tumor were always there. I was always this person.
Though I skipped a grade, and won some scholarships, I was
never a particularly good student. I hadn't the presence of mind to
be a good debater. I was too lazy to be a proper analyst. I lacked
clarity, even as a child, to be a master at things.
My memory is shitty, true, but everyone's memory is shitty at
52. I was generous enough to declare amnesty for my father for
being old and forgetful – why wasn't I entitled to grab a piece of
forgiveness for myself?
And even after all the deficits are tracked down through the
years and tacked down like butterfly wings, I still have gifts that
hardly anyone else seems to have gotten. Mysterious traits of the
mind and heart, odd habits of passion and thought.
When I was a little boy of about 5, I daydreamed a lot about
the religious tenets I was able to soak up while squirming through
Sunday Mass.
I knew that this life was a shallow plane, and that eventually
we advance to the thing that matters, whether God embraces us at
Judgment, or lets us slip through his fingers to the fires below.
I spent an awful lot of time plotting a legal strategy and
presentation.
The tone: beseeching.
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