There's a Star Wars kite that flies through my imagination. It fights a plastic parrot over a lonely section of the city. Cars zoom past and we all ignore them. The kites dart and dodge. They batter one another. They're  not really even there. But I can open the front door of my apartment and see them flying across the apartment tops in a pool of blue sky.

On a rainy day I can still imagine the summer sunlight, the kites fluttering, dipping with each tug, and two little boys with hands wrapped in string.

I suppose it might not mean anything that when I needed to move again, I moved right back into the same apartment where I used to live. In an entire city block of carbon copy apartments it's the same exact one. About thirty feet outside the apartment is a little area of cement. Dates and initials are carved from the mid 1990s. I lived there with my mom and my sister. My mom died in 1998 from an aortic aneurysm. My sister now lives somewhere in the mountains south of Bakersfield (about 70 miles north of LA). I'd left the apartment around 1996 and thought I'd never look back.

Sometimes it's really disturbing living someplace I thought I'd left far behind. It's tough convincing myself that I really did make progress in my life. I've seen and done a few things since then.

My mother watched "Singing in the Rain" a lot. I can see her doing that when I'm passing through the living room.

Sometimes I go and kick dirt off the initials in the cement. I think of dreams I once had while living in the apartment the first time. I can still see those too.

On occasion, when the front door opens, like today, I can hear a little boy crying from atop a swatch of grass. I gaze upward as his Star Wars kite breaks off into an uncontrolled arc across the sky. It goes crashing outside of the apartment sea, over a fence and alley, and into a row of homes, never to be found.

TAGS: Bakersfield writer, California Writer, Central Valley, creative nonfiction, family stories, kite wars, memories, Nick Belardes

NICK BELARDES is the author of Random Obsessions (2009) a book of oddities where you will learn that Mothman might be your big brother, Napoleon had stomach aches, and Thomas Jefferson's grandson was an ax murderer. In 2005 he released the dark novel Lords: Part One a fictional account of the mysterious "Lords of Bakersfield." A writer, poet and author, Belardes turned TV/online journalist overnight after blogging his way to success on Bakersfield issues. His articles and essays have appeared on the homepage of CNN.com and other news sites across America. Lately, he has started to write less journalism in order to focus more on writing books and performing activist poetry that might wake up some of the lethargic brains of California's Great Central Valley. He lives in Bakersfield, which is in the valley's southern end. You can find Nick on Facebook and Twitter.

Related Posts Bonnie Hearn Hill, ‘Aries Rising,’ And The Smile From Outer Space by  N.L. BELARDES Duke Goes Joyriding by  D.R. HANEY I Miss You, Julie by  N.L. BELARDES Duke Haney and The TNB Generation by  N.L. BELARDES The Toilet Seat Smashed My Wiener by  N.L. BELARDES

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Memoir, Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.