Earliest Years in Education

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I was raised catholic, and went to a catholic school for my earliest years in education. I couldn’t tell you anything about my teachers then, or the class rooms, but I do remember when they built the handball wall—I was quite into that then—and I can picture the faces of my old friends there, either on the blacktop (which is what we called the parking lot we played in), the playground covered in wood-chips, and the field of grass near the back of the school. 

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We also had to attend a mass every Friday. I can still remember the school’s church quite well; a relatively large dome wherein light would flood through windows, under which exposed wooden beams held by metal wire were holding lights and fans; four rows of pews divided by three aisle and cold concrete flooring; and a hanging sculpture of the crucified Jesus, in all his sacrificial misery, nailed again, in perpetuity, to two unevenly crossed beams of wood, floated above a concrete stage. I find that churches, or really any place deemed sacred, are difficult to forget. Something about ritual, and social repetition, cements one’s environment in their memory. I remember thinking, for a brief moment as a young child, that light pouring through stained glass had to be one of the most beautiful things a person could see: an odd unification of natural and intentional beauty. Nevertheless, the place instilled me with a certain level of dread. The money-lenders became the temple’s primary audience, and literature conflated with divinity a sellable product.

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“Hell is a quiet room where the past dances silhouetted against stucco walls; Heaven is memory foam fit for forgetting” (Lines)