ocfireflies

Can I trust you?

I have a secret or two I want to share, but fear the hidden police will- once and for all- lock me away in a secret vault in a secret cell with nothing left, but all my other secrets left untold.

Starlets, stars and starless… Secrets can make you famous, notorious and sometimes, shy. Secrets soothe. Secrets share. Overnight or in a moment of vulnerability you slip up and tell someone you thought cared: a secret.

Can I trust you?

Surreptitiously, secrets can fly off in every direction like feathers off chickens stuffed in crates on backs of trucks flying down the highways. As the trucks roll down the highways, the feathers fly off in every direction. Once they have flown away, there is no way of knowing where they will end up. No way of telling where the feathers will land. No way of predicting: friend or foe. Perhaps, the secrets land in places where you are not known.

I have a secret to tell. Can I trust you?

I have a ghost in my machine:

A wily, unruly ghost secretive and unpredictable-

A mystical spirit urging me to sing my private song-

A covert conversation commences.

Which secrets should I tell?

The ones that can send me to hell and back-

The ones nobody would ever guess-

The ones that left invisible scars on my back-

I can trust you. Right?

You have nothing to gain.

You have nothing to lose.

What I am about to describe really happened:

Great Aunt “Little Nina” died in a most horrific way.

In 1910, she accidentally fell into a vat of molasses.

What secrets did she take with her?

Are the ghosts in my machine her ghosts?

Am I her only friend?

On levels buried deep in my soul are ancient sinners, saints, generation after generation of mysterious secret holders wandering aimlessly through my machine. There is no formal promenade as to when they arrive, how long they stay, or why they will not go away.

What I am about to describe really happened:

My Great Uncle “Little Garrel” died in 1939 when he was hit by a car in a place where weeks could go by without seeing a car.

What secrets did he take with him?

Is his ghost my ghost?

Am I his only friend?

What I am about to describe really happened:

When I was Great Aunt “Little Nina’s” age, I caught my bed on fire.

Sitting on the floor at the foot of my bed with its sugar and spice comforter and matching skirt, I took the pack of matches and began striking one at a time. I would strike the match, look at it closely, and then blow it out before the fire reached my little fingers. I stared too long, felt the fire, threw the match down and the skirt of the bedspread began to burn as did the green carpet. I tried blowing it out like you would blow out candles on a cake. Instead of making things better, things got worse. I paced not knowing what to do. The smoke began to fill the room. I walked out, shut the door, and walked down the hallway into the dining room where my parents sat at the wooden table reading the morning news.

I told them, “Don’t Go in My Room!” and then I ran out the door and down the dirt bank and into the house of my grandparents practically jumping into the arms of my grandpa- who later would not let my parents spank me, shake me, strangle me…because my grandpa said, “The trauma of it all was punishment enough.”

Is that little girl still ghosting my ghost? Was that me?

One hundred years from now, will my secrets haunt progeny the way they have haunted me? Will another have dreams, visions and episodes of de ja vu? Will they have moments of clarity followed by feelings of doom? I hope not.

I hope they are celebrating the Summer Solstice. The sky is clear and creeping along as it turns the day into night. You are still feeling the leftover sun, maybe even a little burn from where you swam that day in the river, but you do not mind. You have a sweater if you need one. You relax. You breathe in the beauty. Across the river, there are only woods. Sky begins to touch the forest tops until you can no longer distinguish one from the other. Magic begins. Suns from galaxies begin to smile. The musicians play louder. Bolts of laughter can be heard coming from every direction. And then you see it. You really see it. And you can’t help, but smile:

“OH! SEE FIREFLIES?”

The Boston Molasses Disaster, also known as the Great Molasses Flood and the Great Boston Molasses Tragedy, occurred on January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. This is a photo from under the elevated tracks.

The story you're about to read isn't an urban legend per se — it's all true, in fact — but there's a longstanding popular myth associated with it. On hot, summer days in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Boston, they say, a faint, sickeningly-sweet odor wafts up from cracks in the pavement — the stench of 85-year-old molasses.

Molasses Clocked at 35 MPH ... in January!

The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

Stock passenger cars of the early 1930s would go up to 50 mph, and some later V-8's and V-12's went over 80 mph. By the end of the 1930s, cars were reaching the modern level of 100 to 120 mph.