A Day in the Life of Chaos

Conchiteen Rondain Alcala “Chatty” When we are young we watch life begin. Our friends and even ourselves have children and commence the process of building a life and a family. If we make it through the frustrations and difficulties of marriage we reach a short period of stasis and then life commences its most cruel of tricks.  Life becomes death. It starts among our parents and those we have looked up to. Tragically it becomes interspersed with surprises as those we always thought healthy succumb to the boney fingers. Sometimes I feel like life has moments in the dark when we all stand naked and a dart is hurled impaling an unsuspecting victim. It can seem so random.  My mother died at 59. So young it has always seemed, especially as I will soon pass 58. It’s funny how as you grow older, old seems to become younger. When I remember her sickly and dying form I can’t believe we almost shared the same age. Early death is the most tragically unexplainable. The kind where there

  Navarone Playset When I was a young boy in the 1970’s, my  dominion was the carpet.  Between its 70’s shag fibers thousands of battles took place as my soldiers spread out in endless formations.  Bit by bit my mother’s Kirby vacuum would suck up small pieces of them.  Guns, knives, hats and scarves.  All would disappear in due course.  I treasu red my toy soldiers.   From America I had knights, cowboys, Indians and Civil War soldiers.    Green army men who would occasionally do battle against the prized Nazi’s a young friend of mine had.   His name was Shane,  and he had the best toy sets usually obtained at Christmas.   My favorite was a small mountain fortress with cannons sticking out posing as the fortress in the film "The Gun’s of Navarone."   He also had an Alamo play set filled with Mexicans and Texans.   Hamley's Regent Streat, London One Christmas morning in Alaska I awoke to find a giant playset my father had created for me.  Ever the architect he had constr

I am not sure why as we grow older and try to remember the past often our thoughts drift to our youngest age.  Perhaps it is our own psyche recognizing the importance in those formative years on how we came to know the world.  Maybe it was the most interesting part of our lives.  Perhaps it is a yearning for lost innocence.  Whatever the reason I found myself today harkening back to memories of one of the most brutal locations of a young child’s life, the playground.   For a young child the playground embodies liberation, freedom, friendship and hierarchy.  It also is an arena where it is kill or be killed.  It is a regulated pandemonium when adult supervision is minimized and like Lord of the Flies children express their dominance over the others.  It can be in games, submission or actions of deprecation.  I can still recall Todd Mueller or was it Bobby Andresen pinching my neck and forcing me to bow while they said “Bauer, bow to the emperor.” I learned early on that a key to s