Wilson's Creek Essay Rough Draft

Wilson’s Creek National Battle Field Hal Reynolds English 101, Sect 108 Wilson’s Creek National Battle Field is a sight in Springfield Missouri where on August 10, 1861; the second major battle of the civil war was fought. According to a local sight for the city of Springfield, more than 2500 soldiers on either side of the conflict had been killed by the conclusion of the battle of… The sight has a rather informative visitor center, and preserved on the grounds are the historic John Ray house, and the Edwards cabin. Trails both large and slightly more obscure lace the property, leading to various sights of significance. As well as being a very important attraction for both Springfield, and the state of Missouri, the park has come to have personal significance for me. Though I have not been to the park in many years, I, for some reason or another, found myself visiting the location. A fourth grade trip to the park was marked by Mrs. O, my teacher at the time, giving us a run down on the dialogue had at the Edwards house just prior to the battle. The notable thing about this story at the time was that we got to hear our teacher say the word “Hell”. Other trips to the park have been more about exploring the parks many trails. It is a beautiful piece of ground, and as you walk along the old trails, some of which I believe are just well beaten deer paths, you can get a little feel for what the grounds must have been like all those years ago. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that The grandfather of my mother’s father (My great great grandfather?) was, it is believed, the first person killed at the sight the day of the battle; catching a musket ball to the head while eating his breakfast…
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"Counting My Regrets To Pass The Time"

"Counting My Regrets To Pass The Time"
I pulled this from the YOLO prompt post because it stuck out to me. In a way its kind of a caution, I suppose, and a sort of end game evidence that the whole YOLO thing should be embraced. Again, I find the whole YOLO phenomenon to be pretty abrasive, and really, I think people do enough stupid shit on their own that they don’t really need a permission giving mantra to act a fool. My opinion.

But, as I stated in the Yolo post, I have spent the better part of my life being an overly cautious person. Ironically, I have probably made more stupid and life altering mistakes than the majority of the population will ever have a bad dream about. I think as good a reason as any for these senseless mistakes is repression. That is too say, trying to be so careful that life becomes all frustrating and weird, until all that spontaneous energy finally has to spill over somewhere, for good or ill.

I have had instances where that "I finally snapped" moment to indeed result in a positive outcome: kiss the girl, stand up to the asshole, break the proverbial ties that bind, etc.. Unfortunately, without a little bit of practice with relaxing and taking the world by storm, more often than not these bubble over points are usually marked by some very unpleasant consequences.

What Does YOLO Mean To You?

You only live once huh? True enough I guess. Where I think that the mantra YOLO has become an excuse for some really stupid behavior, and though I never actually SAY YOLO myself, if only because everybody else is doin it, I do use a kind of this philosophy in my everyday life.

I try to be cautious mostly. Sometimes that caution is just a little too over bearing to really be conducive to a fulfilled life. Sometimes, you just gotta cut loose and let the chips fall where they may. To me, at its best this mantra literally means you are gonna die. And you don’t get any do overs. Life is too short to spend it cooped up ion relative safety, never taking a chance in your life, just to try and preserve that very life which, let’s face it, is gonna be over before you know it. If there is an option to be explored, an adventure to be had, or a high pay off risk to take, why not take it. We don’t have any idea what this life is really for anyway. I tend to get by on the assumption that the meaning of life is just to live life for the sake of itself. Don’t squander the opportunity that you have been given to live a life that is truly amazing, weird, difficult and interesting. Hey, you only live once here. I don’t want to live to be 110 years of age only to find myself on my death bed, counting my regrets to pass the time. I won’t do. Sure, I’ll continue to be cautious in certain aspects of my life, but when it comes right down to it, when random adventure comes my way, I gotta hop on the train.

The Sign

Long ago, there lived a man by the name of John Oswald. Legends of him had been told at many a gas station; about his careful way of life, his strange demeanor. I had never heard any of these legends.

One night, I had a goal, a mission from my creator himself. The mission, steal a sign from D highway to present to my friend of the same name. I stole my mother’s car from her house, my father’s chainsaw from his, and I was off to a desolate stretch of highway to acquire the sign. I was 15 years old.

The sign presented with some difficulty. For one thing, I had never chain sawed anything before. For another, there was traffic. I decided to go with a less aggressive approach and try to take the screws out of the sign. To do this, I had to stand on the car, get it done, and arouse no suspicion from passersby.

In the process of trying to do this a truck, of course, pulled in in front of my car. I was sitting in the driver’s seat, discretely, I might add.

A hooded figured stepped from the truck. It began to shamble over. I ran my hand over the tire iron in the floor bored, prepared to bash this horrible apparition until the movement ceased.

The man approached, and I got out and stood behind the open door.

"Car trouble", I proclaimed. "Damn thing overheated." The visage that stood before me did little to ease my mind. Neither, for that matter, did his constant attempts to try and get me to go with him to his home, which was 'just over the hill' to get the necessary supplies to fix my vehicle.

I had to stall. It was surely my only chance of survival. Furthermore, I couldn’t allow myself to be separated from my life saving tire iron of justice....err....sign stealing....Whatever.

So I had to bullshit. And bullshit we did.

His name was John. He was heading home. His wife had left him. Somewhere around this point in the story John produced a small bottle of whiskey from his hoodie pocket, took a hard swig, and offered me the bottle. Could I refuse? Hell no. I took the drink, and I took it in stride. As the warmth washed over me, I was emboldened.

"John", I said. "Can you keep a secret? There's nothing wrong with my car man. I’m here for this sign."

Silence. He eyed me carefully, then the sign, then me again. For a moment I wasn’t sure what I had done. Then the figure spoke.

"Hell", he says, “Back your car up and I'll run over the damn thing with my truck."

 

The Old Cellar

It is cold. Rainy. Overcast. The kind of gray day that makes a person want to run and hide. I think hard about a place I would rather be than here, far from home on a gloomy day. I am told money is no object. The possibilities it seem are endless, yet there its only one place that I can picture in my mind.

The deep, dimly lit basement of what would almost seem to be some sort of industrial center. The ceiling is high. The corner, dark; and in the center, or perhaps one corner, is a larger and ominous stove. By the stove there is a cot, though I think it would like it more comfortable that what you might imagine the standard cot to be. Nearby, a desk of some sort. Maybe an additional place to sit. The glow furnace; the only light that fills the room. It seems somehow comforting, like a large, concrete womb. I know it sounds dreary. As I think of it, I think of how odd that I can think of no other place to go on a day such as this.

 

The fire. The dominate, overwhelming smell is whatever is burning in the fire. The smell of concrete. A hard sort of smell, if so it could be described. Moisture in little corners of the room give almost the aroma of a cave. The cot itself, like old army fabric; that kind of scratchy, nylony substance that seems not to be a fabric at all. Some sort of canvas? Maybe. I don’t know, but the smell of it has its own, independent little personality. Oil maybe. Bits of oil in the room. I smell them. The desk even smells of it.

 

Laying on the cot, the surface of it is firm and secure. You know you are in it because it lays back on you. The heat of the fire on skin, I must occasionally flip side to side in order to keep one half of me from cooking. I go temporarily to the corner, feeling the heat recede, like immersion in water after baking in the hot day sun. The desk is an old one, rough to the touch. An occasional splinter can be gained by a careless brush across its surface. The cool, floor: damp only in the furthest corners of the room.

 

There is not much to see down here- not at first glance- and I think that’s part of the appeal. Of course the light from the stove, and its mysterious contents, is the major force in the realm of sight. Like a huge pot belly, its chimney rises to the high ceiling and on out into whatever I am missing in the world. I need not know what I miss though, because not a stitch of outside light may enter the chamber; if indeed there is any. As I lay on the old cot- green, of course, what else? - I stare into the darkness around the room. The desk shines back a little light.

 

Pop. Pop. Sizzle? Don't know if I’d quite call it a sizzle. There is life in the old stove. I listen. It sounds not so much like it is talking, but thinking very loudly. I hear its story, a rambling as old as time. Except for one drip, far removed from the last, and way off in the corner, it’s the silence that I hear. My ears turn also inward, following the strong example of the old rambling stove. My heart beat. Breathing. If I listen very closely, the sound of my blood. Is it my imagination?

 

The air; not stale, but definitely not so fresh in origin. It tastes like a cave, but not a cellar. The desk is stocked sparsely with little snacks, mostly sweet and salty in variety. As I live and breathe- and move, I must say- one side of the room tastes very different from another. The dipping corner, the source of all the noise, tastes like a root; the under half of some tired old tree.

 

It is hard to imagine this place as every having an occupant, yet shadows of an old mind seem to linger on the walls, seen only as they jump at the occasional flick of light from the stove. The old man wrote his book here. Weeks upon weeks he never left, convinced that the world was coming to an end. They said the old man was crazy, and sane is not what I would have called him, but here is where the old man lost his mind. It reads out in the script, between the lines, as first the comfort of the place enclosed him; then, the loneliness overcame him.

 

Grey

Blah. Grey day. Its a dark, rainy day. The clouds roil over the land. They cast their shodows over all the little people. How is your day"? they ask. "How are those responsibilities that youve irked out for yourself? Go. Do youll little tasks. Live your little lives. I will be heree, watching. Enveloping you with my cold imbrace.
Steely gray. The color of slate and shale. A shade somehow more devoid of life than black, but with a distinct voice all its own. Grey things in life denote a serious, sort of modern feel. The gray of old was a standard. Today gray finds itself ss almost a novalty. A world of eccessable color has to grey into a choice, rather than a base.
But not on a day like today. No, today grey rules the land; with an iron fist, or perhaps, more appropriately one of steel it would seem. It give ruse to our insecurities. It lets our little gloomt demons brweath. Could there be a benifit to this release of meloncoly? Perhaps. But its hard to see what it could be through the rain clouds. Just rain clouds, not even storm clouds. Storm clouds have more personality. Eyeor would have been pleased.

Our Different Words

I was walking down the street on a Thursday night, definitely knackered from a crazy night at work. The streets were quiet and deserted. Most of the buildings loomed as dark, silent witnesses, bending their necks to try to catch a glimpse of the warmth; like the soft, buttery glow of that bled into the street from Suzy’s Kitchen

The diner was sparsely populated with some wonkey looking characters. I took a seat at the counter next to a couple of hippies.

“whadda’ya have?” asks the waitress.

“Something with caffeine,” I reply.

“You can stand a spoon up in the coffee,” she says. “You want it?”

“Definitely.”

Turning to me, the hippie man says, “You look like you could use some happy, summer colors in your life.”

“I don’t go out for all that bubbly crap,” I say.

“I’m talking the kind of bubbles you get between your toes at the beach, friend,” he smiles back. “You look like you need a day off.”

“Maybe,” I allow. “But nobody else is gonna pay my bills for me. You wanna get by, you gotta do it yourself. You can’t count on nobody but you.”

“Fungo.” my furry friend replies. “A nasty concept if ever I heard one. Why take it all on your shoulders? Why not cut yourself some slack?”

“I got kids,” I say. “Gotta support ‘em somehow. No, I think I better keep ole nose to the grindstone.”

“Hey, we got little goobers at home, too. Aint that right. Sugar?”

“That’s right, Monkey-darlin’,” she says, dreamily. “And crazy little terrors they are, too.”

“Well, that’s all well and good,” I say, with strained patience. “But I hope that you won’t find me rude in saying that I have nothing but disdain for your crazy, hippie subversion. I’m an American, damnit. No, there’s no way I could support my family on whatever it is that you two pull in.”

Sugar looks up again. “You are laboring under the assumption that our lifestyle is indicative of poverty, man,” she says. “It doesn’t work that way. We live in a community. What comes around goes around. Everything is cyclical. We make it with alittle help from our friends.”

“Yeah, well, no offense, But I think I’d rather tongue-kiss a badger,” I say evenly. “I think it’s about time I hit the old, dusty trail. Waitress, how much do I owe ya for the coffee?”

The grizzled-old waitress saunters over. “Here ya go, Hun,” she says with a smile. She hands me the ticket. Scrawled all across the front is a phone number and a little message: Call me sometime, Sweetness. XOXO, Margaret.

“Nooo,” I state, flatly.

Rising to leave, I slap some cash down on the counter and get the Hell out of there.