I think my mom really shaped my life.
Yeah, I guess I’ll start there.
Going through my entire life starting there.
I was 4.
Standing in a bright room, contemplating something I think. The sun was coming in, nearly blinding me. I just stood there anyway, let the piercingly uncomfortable light pour warm glow over rosy nose and cheeks. Rosy cheeks and sickel’s compass come, maybe…
Intensity never bothered me like it did other people I guess.
I was like that, but kind of a dumb seeming kid, unintuitive.
I could walk into a wall.
Or at least so extremely gullible you could lead me down any hallway or alley or play any dirty trick, I fell for everything. They called me ‘Neal-Peel-Wheel’ at school. Elementary school. Reminds me of when my brother was kidnapped.
He called me ‘Neal-Peel-Wheel,’ too.
He was also, two years old at the time, and just followed these bullies -Jamie Lance- (his real name). I forget the other fucker’s name.
I knew him from Ravensorth Elementary school that led my 2 year old brother from our driveway mind you, on his bigwheel 3 or so miles, all the way to Lake Acatink park.
Left him in the woods. Nice guys.
I wish I could have eaten their brains and drowned them in their own blood. Yeah. Bitter? Hmm…Wise men say that ‘when you hold a grudge, you are letting someone take up residence in your mind, rent free.’ That is true sometimes. I could see it that way. Most of the time. Maybe. It is true in many cases. So is the reverse. More on that later.
I think they hadn’t even touched him. The bullies. Jamie and what’s his fuck.
That’s the gullibility I’m talking about though. We both had it, that innocence maybe. There are people I know who wouldn’t have fallen for that, even at two years of age. Lili, my daughter is one of them I think, little smarter than we were at that age.
The room, though: When I was 4. – It was those patchy shallow old carpets that resembled vomit. Why the hell did they make green carpets anyway? Seventies. Uck. The point of the bright room is that I also spent time there staring into space, thinking, and I even remember what I was thinking at that moment, too…
It was that ‘I am 4.’
“I am 4,” I told myself.
I knew it on that level of self-concsciousness. Wish I’d known at that time what a gift that really was. At least my parents were intellectual enough to nurture it to an extent that on one hand, didn’t exceed their culture, on the other, was 43,000% better than any other parents I would ever come to know with few exceptions.
That said, Joseph Campbell, Ayn Rand, Marshall McLuhan, Ben H. Bagdickian, and others as well as ‘the group’ of my 4 closest friends whom I will introduce later, would become my second family. I took all of them to heart.
“I am 4.”
“What does that mean?”
This is the kind of self-reflective abstract thought that would come to characterize one of the vital differences of me with just about everyone else I would meet from there on out. I’m 34 now.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could go back and tell myself that. School myself. That would be nice. Hell, prolly wouldn’t believe myself, although I would certainly have been intrigued.
Anyway, I had good parents. Great parents. My Dad, my mom, both intellectual, artist types I guess you could say. Yet, hippie gone yuppie in a way. Fuckin eh, they had kids, they did their best.
Both were at Woodstock, both got high there I think. More my Dad. That’s a stupid thing to say though…
…I guess I say that cause I heard other parents who ‘were there’ that say they didn’t. Yeh right. Suburban people are strange. Very. I would learn this, a large life-theme I’d say.
Suburbia.
If I wasn’t the boy who fell to Earth, my awkwardness and innate utter lack of social ability at the time, knowing people, other people, would make me such. I looked retarded in my Ravensworth Elementary yearbook photo. God. Nearly cross eyed.
Girls never looked at me then. I looked at them though. Always.
In Elementary school. I had gone to Brenmar before Ravensworth, as we lived in Centreville apartments, and then, proceeding this, Edsal Road VA, and then Ravensworth and Springfield VA.
Stay Tuned Tomorrow for ‘Elementary School’ 😉
***
– Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved –
Neal Cormier is an artist and writer originally from the Washington D.C. area.
– www.NealCormier.com – His concentration is visual art–especially oil painting and graphic novel illustration.
He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of which Vesper Heliotropic is his first full length novel publication with Amazon, Barnes and Nobles (eBooks) and Lulu Inc. (for paperback & hardcover) Neal recently had a showing at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He also, and even more recently, had a first book signing for Vesper Heliotropic at The Midtown Scholar, a local hipster style bookstore in downtown Harrisburg, PA.
Neal has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafés, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France.
After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with his fiancé, Kristin.
List of Art & Media By Neal Cormier
Art & Blog
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The Novel’s Website
www.VesperHelioTropic.com
– Vesper Heliotropic is a general teen/adult sci-fi ebook, paperback and hardcover, and is a Steampunk(ish) serial novel. The first written publication is OUT NOW VIA LULU.com on PAPERBACK and SPECIAL-JACKETED HARDCOVER, and is available for THE AMAZON KINDLE as well as BARNES AND NOBLES NOOK EBOOKS. VESPER HELIOTROPIC, THE CRYSTAL TURBINES SERIES GRAPHIC NOVEL IS ALSO OUT NOW ON FULL COLOR GLOSSY PAPERBACK! 46 Pages Full Color Interior and Exterior – ONLY $19.99! –
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Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES by Neal Aaron Cormier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES © Copyright 2011 Neal Cormier All Rights Reserved
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