There are times, times like this, when you sit here and think about how time is slipping through your fingers. Now I want you to sit here and think about all those folks who went out and lived life to the fullest, grabbing the bull by the horns then tossing it to the side knowing there are bigger beast to tackle.

There was a man, who’s name was Ted. Ted was my uncle, that is how I came to know him. He was big, in a way only the turbulence of the 1950’s could have created. My memory of him is in the stories he told, truths he embellished and the junk he collected. He has passed away recently but I thought I would make him immortal.

    I was a turtle living in a wilderness haze, but if i turn around I can see the shadows of my past as clear as pictures and I often slip back to them between the thin lines of gray. Ted had a shed in his back yard, I don’t know if he knew how poetic that was. I guess we were all just waiting for explosions. In the shed were relics, or junk to most men who see objects as possessions.

    My brother and I  received two relics from the shed as a way to make room for more, once one has a junk problem it can sway dramatically out of control. I received a raccoon taxidermied to a piece of drift wood. My brother ended up with a pheasant of sorts that our dear mother sold to her drug dealer.

    Me and that raccoon as well as Ted were all left to the perils of time, to exist obscurely, never understood. Me and the raccoon sat in basements till I put the taxidermied raccoon out in the yard and left it for the elements. I took up to shooting it with a gun, it sat out there in a picturesque landscape in front of the river, shadowed by a plastic raven. I think Ted would have enjoyed it, being a navy man since 16.

    Ted was also a prison guard and that inspired me to do work of the same. A short stint working overnights at a insane asylum that was as dolled up as a Vegas hooker. 4am with the prision bound riker’s island boys, 16 themselves in hard times and harms way. I read one flew over the cuckoo’s nest to them silently for three months. Then my dad split town, and Ted brought me my dad’s bed for me to use. Sleep tight.

    The last time I remember seeing him was when my Father re-married for the third time. It’s a charm. I was in a whiskey daze on my tenth drink by now, we where outside the reception having a smoke, sharing small talk. Ted always telling stories. I remember being lost inside his baritone and thinking how my grandmother left things. How she never wanted anyone to be sad when she passed, remember the good times. I knew it was the last time I was going to see him. Sometimes you get the feeling. I knew I would receive no more irrelevant relics that meant so much. Between full on inebriation and sleep I rolled some smoke from page 666 of the bible, so if there are greener pastures beyond the clouds, and you think your tacking that trip, tell Ted i said Hi and that I was thinking of him