Paul was waking up, starting over each morning, forgetting the day week month year white space expanding ahead & there are birds & snacks & handholding infinitely

 

but then

 

melted concrete patches; how to operate a telephone switchboard; worked at the warehouse back then; visiting Loraine at school, above her desk a periodical table; a postcard from South Dakota with a wheat field being consumed by a combine; tonight’s TV lineup; frozen pizza for dinner last night; today’s weather; traffic stopped at the railroad crossing; signed Paul, not Dad; the swingset built in the backyard giving Loraine & me splinters; moving, changes

 

& here, now, a moment that has already passed.

Paul was a call bank. Row after cubicle row stretching out in the converted warehouse space. The high ceiling & open airspace served as a large echo mechanism bouncing the consistent sound of scripted speak about the bank & back.

 

 As if someone was whispering behind you all the time.

Paul was a picker & packer at a warehouse.

Paul was a timesheet.

Paul was a warehouse.

Paul was brainstorming. How do you start a memoir not with:

            Paul was born on a rainy Sunday.

?

Because while this is the moment of birth, it is not necessarily the defining moment of creation for Paul. Paul had also heard

show don’t tell.

Sometimes Paul thought blogging was the start. But for impact & interest in reading, Paul wanted to start
with an event that could permeate a live with its metaphoric implications.
The curser on Paul’s word processor blinked as time passed between

 present & past &
childhood &
tuna sandwich yesterday
at lunch had sweet relish in it,

 the kind that Lyric
does not like &
keyboard strokes &
what was the name of the
hospital Paul was born at &
a lack of commas &

 & &

 the same grey
sweat pants worn
everyday
after work &
graduation ceremonies
pure impersonal nature &

 breathing air in a
darkened room
tastes different &
digital strain on the eyes &
forgetting where he

started.

Perhaps fabrication was the key. Unnecessary gravity to a singular event. As if

warehousing working after high school started Paul. Money in pocket &
a dream to not live at home anymore. But not to include the desire to separate self from family in the writing

as not to cast a shadow on parents 

so, instead, a taste of capitalistic opportunity, will power, a linking to
summer days  playing Monopoly in the teahouse with
Guy, Loraine & James,

moving away is fun, is a game, is taking chances &

growing up, because a little money from the picking &
packing done at the warehouse build ideas & rent &
a resume & a starting place for a story to begin with connections that could extend throughout his memoir
full of likes, as’s, was’s, an example being like:

life is a continuous search, one that I started to understand at my first job as a warehouse picker & packer. Like finding a starter or alternator part, each day is like a discovery. The sense of completion at finding a part.  When an object I had passed hundreds of time, never noticing it before, surfaces as the vital piece to fill the order. When I know where to go by instinct. When one day it is all heavy pieces. When one day the finding is all small components.  It’s a game, like life.

Paul was alternators.

Paul was starters.