[ martian days ]

A recent image search on "Hakim Bey" came up with this little fellow...Since he seemed eerily familiar, I leapt into a frenzy of google-research, at last settling his identity as Orko from the He-Man and Masters Of the Universe series-
this in turn evoking hazy memories of early childhood days and playground ennui:

In a small forest behind the motorway we acted out our bizarre fantasy scenarios, using the characters found on thrashy cartoon networks such as Sky and Children's Channel (-which we watched as cable-pirates, receiving the signals from our neighbour's antenna-), detective books, or pulpy sci-fi and "indian heroes"-comics...

The kids who ruled the block ruthlessly delegated the parts: I was under no circumstances allowed to play She-Ra, this thunderous heroine reserved strictly for the more popular ranks in the pecking order- if I was obedient and made no fuss, I was most graciously allowed to act He-Man (-the unwanted character-), Robin Hood, or most frequently- one of the Babylonian Guards who protected the Gold City spaceship from hostile attacks by the Death Star Orcs or Aslan's enemies...

Silver Arrow, the legendary indian who fought wild west bandits together with his white blood brother Falcon and the lovely squaw (-and the tribe's only judo expert-) Moonbeam, were also favourite subjects- I had to play Tinka, her tame baby puma...Luckily, Tinka was quite an aggressive little cub, and could free her captive friends from the corrupt sherriff's wagon by means of biting and scratching through solid steel locks, cleverly carrying with her the machete knife they had lost and saving their freedom. In fights with Sauron's Dark Knights, she would always win.

What I regretted most, apart from turning my back to these dubious shenanigans altogether for more mature but scary romps to the blocks on the other side of the river (-we once caught sight of a man showering for open curtains, giggling as we hid behind the parking lane wall to watch him pirouetting inside a cloud of bubbly foam while obviously barking along to the radio we couldn't hear-), was running away from the rhubarb garden of this eccentric old bloke who lived on the forest border-
( He told us to stop as we tried scrounging with us some half-rotten apples under the trees, the sound of his creaky voice AND his schaefer dog was enough to get us running for gold medal olympics, but we later learned he was a most peaceful little man who pickled his apples and lived off the land while (ghost-)writing obscure novels about life in the scottish marine...That would've been a conversation and a half...)

We forgot all about him though, balancing on the garage roofs and daring each other to jump down on the concrete ground without breaking our necks or the precious Transformers hidden inside our pockets.
These people living in "real" houses seemed as alien to us as anyone out of a King Robot cartoon, and were no doubt even madder- Who would want, we thought, to share their meals with a flea-ridden dog with incontinence and (-probably-) rabies?
Dogs were feared by the volume of their aggressive growls and razor-sharp teeth, P. the next-door bully had his leg bitten raw by some rabid labrador on an apple scump-spree- Respect is something you learn, so it wasn't for nothing we hated these beasts for the fright they spread...For some reason, only people who lived in villas seemed to own dogs- We wondered whether this had something to do with the apple trees, maybe the dogs were radioactive from the acid rain and had mutated into slimy beasts with their only task to rid their gardens of slugs and cheeky thieving children?

-Anyway. My favourite spot in these days was the abandoned power station by the river, I'd climb up and hide from the bullies and watch as a bird's eye over the highrise blocks and the concrete and the children- Far, far away, as tiny Lego people, distant screams and laughs and the concrete structures as Clarkian settlements on some green-grassed outpost planet from a different galaxy...Later my friend Christine and I used to send each other mirror signals from each side of the river- gleaming blind spots dancing in front of our eyes, like the Alien Sun.

-It's curious after all these years, the bits and pieces you choose to remember.

RELATED LINK, SHORT STORY:
[ Ray Bradbury: All Summer In A Day ]