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Waynes Album

He sat dejectedly in a chair that had seen many better days. A worn and oft fingered picture was in his hands again. His eyes dry but the heart was full of the unshed tears of a generation. Unwashed and uncombed as yet a shaking hand reached up to crumb it's way through the thick foliage of his head. 'Foliage.' Outside the dead and dry branches of the season were trying to come back to life. The photo was dead and dry to or was it? He shifted slightly. The rickty chair found its' counterbalance. The ash of an unsmoked cigarette grew long in the saucer where it rested. "Grew?' Smoke curled high and undisturbed to the celing of the room.
Sparse light was filling the crack at the edge of another dawn. Hazey clouds were on the horizon. He wondered if his mind would be clear or cloudy this day. Some thing he wanted not to feel was germinating at the edge of his remembering. It was taking hold as surely as the light at the edge of the horizon. 'Germinating?'

Shallow breathing turned to agreatdeserate exhale. as if the forced exit of his wind would stave off the returns of the day. 'Return?' like a ghost with a claim the features in the photo became sharper. He abssently reached for the burning cigarette. Inhaling with need he blew the smoke across the old picture giving it a microsecond of eerie reality. It was enough, the seed took in his thinking. 'Root?'

Metaphors of civilian life... the grotesque pain of living of being alive, but many were not, and for what ? He shuttled the still lighted ciargette into the neck of an empty brown bottle. It hissed as it met liquid dregs.

'Dregs?' human dregs, the baby killers, the answerers to the orders. The sharp barbs of the anti-peacers, the chic smug protected who had the mouth of the devil and the freedom to speak it. All the remembered words hit like a battering ram in his head, an exponential cacophony of sounds and pain. It burst like a photo flash into his concious mind illumintaing everything. The feelings churned and memories filled him. All like pictures in an album. Framed in his being like a museum exhibit there was a revolving door but no escape, or exit.

The old wood stadium chair spoke in rickety protest as he turned and placed the photo on the table. He stood up. He needed fresh air. One hand reached for the nikon and the other raked through his hair again. The life old habit barely noted to him. With a will he crushed back the moist heavy feeling of his heart. He needed air. When he was on the beach , the day light was gone from grey to almost rose. The tide was out for the morning still in its' backward run from the high tide mark. 'Run?' He carefully put the burned butt of the cigarette now cold and dead into his shirt pocket. He raised the camera up to peer through the lens. looking breifly down he saw at his feet the salvation of teh day. A red orange agate. He stooped to look at it. It was dead, cold, but not lifeless. It glistened though it was not wet. The inclusions of it, some called flaws. ""Nah"" they were not flaws they were the workings of nature on its surface, sanded polished chipped and smothed over by the churning waves. Decades of this action gave it its' beauty, "huh" he chuffed outloud to no one. He worked his camera in several angles, looking for the 'shot' that every photographer hoped would be the trophy shot. The whisper soft click and whirr of cameras were tonic to his embattled mind and memories. The tonic he needed more than any other. There was but one vivid focus in his mind. One picture in his eye. Thirteen clicks of the lens. He stood then picking up the agate as he straightened. "Wonder how that would feel in a shoe he aked out loud?" He set the small stone back into the pebbly shoreline. He smiled a rye and knowing tight grin. "Tshh" he knew exactly how it would feel!