RTN writes stuff. He’s also worked as an instructional designer for over 20 years.
Want to read a sample of Oneironauts? Okay, cool.
Prologue
From a dreamy beach I compose the final words I will ever need to put down in written form. Beneath my darkened legs and surfer trunks atoms form granules of sand, perfect transmitters of the day’s weakening heat, an excellent location to gaze unrestlessly at whales splashing playfully before a violent setting sun and enjoy a cocktail of your own preference. From here, I compose the only words I will deem fit for memoir, words of remembrance and realization.
To think about all the nonsense involving those silly people in Las Vegas now and in particular how I got so intertwined with it amuses me in a fashion I never anticipated in my younger, hungrier days. But as is typical in existence I have gone on to another stage, a new chapter with new assholes to occupy myself with, and those characters only come to mind at moments like this present one on a beach with a tasty drink in hand, when a thick silence blankets the clutter of the busy world allowing the seeker to see the beauty witnessed by artists, too grandiose to convey via any medium, a moment meant to savor mutedly before it slips to irrelevancy.
While some merit exists to the claim that I am to be held accountable for the events and tragedies of the infamous Vegas Tale, I would wager my role in the affair was less pivotal than the other players. Imagine a mother arrested at the age of sixty because her freak child of thirty-three murdered an ape. There is no correlation between the mother and the blame for that crime, and likewise those allegations against me could never hold up in even the lowest of Intergalactic courts.
All that fuss is in the past now, isn’t it, so why relive that drama when the evening star burns and my drink nears a refilling? Instead of painfully taking the time to dig up all the lefts and rights of who wronged what and why what effected who, a far more entertaining method of remembrance is the casual replay, the slow review of the major events, the comical moments, the unarresting memories. Those are the best dimensions history builds, the best footnotes for an old man to read. Those are the practical jokes that are not funny until years after the prank. They make the great stories from life which becomes the fantastic fictions of legacy.
Old jokes are like old friends, old places, old smells, old roles, old emotion, and old motives. At their time nothing would seem to trump their weight, but in an advanced age, as dusk greets night, nothing can seem more frivolous. And nothing could me more delightfully humorous.