It’s unbelievable to be given homework to create a tour book
to draw tourists to my poor town and make true a wish on living life like a
Great American Novel, one that reads like comic book sci-fi worthy of The New
Public Library, The Fortress of Solitude of the boy I was who was always
writing to draw the better alien of his imagination.
It’s out of this world fantastic that I have sell a story to
help pay rent for my disabled mother before the landlord bangs on the door of
her apartment in need of repair.
There are no great stories without heartbreak and no refunds
for answered prayers.
I must warn you that this journal in some parts is going to
be seriously funny.
Hopefully, it will be good for you to cry, as it was good
for me.
My life came to an end in a place of beginnings, The NYPL.
Once upon a time, I carried Anne Frank in my arms while
shadows of burnt out buildings and bullies fell over us in The South Bronx of
Captain America.
The Savage Skulls (or the SS for short) had swastikas
stitched on their gang colors.
The terrorists had their recruiting tactics. It was great
that I was trained in childhood to resist brainwashing by the best shows in
television. One of them was called Mission: Impossible on my first channel of
choice, CBS, home of the all-seeing eye in the sky.
I was potty-trained in front of that widely seen logo. I
look back and see my head as the pupil of the eye as I also see a bit of my
butt. Afterwards, I picked up a screwdriver at the age of five and made the
connection that revealed a city made from tubes. It was beautifully spiritual
without religion to be inside television. It was Tron before Tron.
Inspired by a pointy-ear half-breed science officer, I went
from what the first president of the FCC called television to another
wasteland, a real one, to find parts to build a computer based on a design
found in a book called from Sand Tables To Electronic Brains in the time of The
Fairchild Corporation that made semiconductors that set the stage for Silicon
Valley to boot up with creativity. I remember that because of a gift in
childhood called Photographic Memory. I recalled every word of every book I
read.
So how can I forget going where no one has ever gone before
on NBC?
Star Trek was about if I imagine it I could do it. I had
math mind. I learned to tell time by myself in the second grade by staring at a
clock above a blackboard of numbers. But I was limited by poverty like Michael
Faraday, an intuitive genius who changed the world and paved the way for Albert
Einstein, Stephen Hawkins and others.
I had restrictions forced on me by the jealousness of
African-Americans and Puerto Rican sixth graders that chased me after school
for making our English teacher proud of me for reading at 11.5, high school
level. And Cain killed Abel for being thoughtful. I was a freak of nature to be
beaten up and imprisoned by fear like Galileo.
I imagined myself one of the X-Men, mutants, the new N-Word.
Yeah. It’s gets worse.
My mother’s husband thought he drowned me in the bathtub. He
didn’t know I could hold my breath longer than the kids that pretended to be
Aqua Man in Saint Mary’s Park swimming pool. He was corny compared to the
prince of Atlantis, Namor The Submariner. But I knew my lungs were going to run
of air and death was certain. My mind raced with options until it settled on
one: play dead. My body jerked and then went limp. He ran out with an awful
shriek. I hid under the bed and finally made up mind. I closed my eyes, took a
deep breath and jumped off a bridge. I landed lightly on a slow moving freight
train heading toward the Midwest. Once upon a time, I had silver six shooters
and cowboy hat to protect Saint Mary’s Park, the former estate of The Founding
Father who wrote the three little words that added up the big idea: We, The
People.
I look back on this train of thought and see adventures in
poetry. I see myself not so much an American as I was a guest that looked upon
this country as the next best thing to being on The USS Enterprise. I aim to
reciprocate. What I gift can I give? Ms Raesade, my sixth grade English
teacher, advised me to just write what I know
I know movies. They’re more believable, you know.
And no laugh track need apply.
To Sleep, Perchance To Pitch Nightmares To DreamWorks: Comic
Book Cyber Journal Of The Better Angels Of Our Nature By Danny Aponte of P.S
161
Thank you for allowing your creative spirits to grace my
Face Book.
