People often tell me I am “this way” because I spent my childhood almost exclusively in moonlight. I was never allowed to leave the family home while the sun was shining. I rarely believe them. Maybe they are correct. They’ve also said that it was my extreme poverty or my ridiculous silver spoon wealth. Depending on which story they have been told, which story they have believed. They blame either poverty or filthy lucre. But fiction can stunt one’s growth. This is true. Other people’s fictions, their beliefs, can stunt your growth. In this sense, one can understand the rationale of the recluses of this world. Why not hide away from everyone, to discover who it is that you really are, or should be?
When I was young, I sought the companionship of the very old. They alone seemed to have the time to contemplate the things which interested me. Oh, not just any old person. I mean the ones who had studied life, those who were now uselessly wise. My family needed answers. We were blue children, we were sometimes ashamed, we gave our first set of furniture away. But we ate such interesting meals, read such interesting books, captured such interesting animals: baby storks, alligators.
Other children said that we were not from the same planet as them. And this was true. We were extraterrestrials, in a sense. And we did spend much of our childhood in the trees, climbing barefoot. When I met another child, by accident, in the woods, say, I would run as fast as I could, to hide in my bedroom. My wild breathing could only be calmed by looking at the book with the life-size, hand-painted illustrations of birds. The one which my ancestor made with his one good hand (the other severed by court order on a sunny afternoon in a public square).
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