Tag: Friends

The Boy in a Box and Other Traumatic Memories from TV.

D. Michl Lowe2 Comments

For several years now, I have been slowly writing down every memory I have. I have been trying to make a complete timeline of my life up to the point where I am now. Its not been easy. I find memories continue to float back into my thoughts. Here recently, I have been getting nostalgic about movies, TV shows, and videogames I remember experiencing and trying to find them. Some of them are fun memories, but others were… odd.

Some of those are easier to find than others. For example, Condor Man, a classic Disney movie from 1981 that stared Michael Crawford was always a movie I went back to as a kid.

Condorman Trailer linked below.

Condor Man Trailer

However, there were other experiences that were harder to nail down. My dad picked up a family on the side of the road that were broken down with two little boys my age. They stayed at our house for the night and the two boys brought a NES game with them.

We played for an hour or so before bed and by the morning they were gone. All I remembered when looking back was that you were a ninja who could transform into animals. It took some googling to discover the name of the game was Ninja Crusaders on the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

Link to a review of Ninja Crusaders linked below.

Ninja Crusaders Gameplay

Now to the reason Im writing this article. When I was young, we had one tv in the house. It was down stairs in the basement and it got four channels, 3,8,11, and 13. There’s a possibility that we got more, but those are just what I remember. The movie I remember was apparently shown on PBS in WV during the early 1980s, but from what I have read, PBS was on channel 33 in Charleston during that time. So, in reality, I’m not sure what channel this movie was on, but I remember it clearly. What I rememeber, was a little old woman who receives a mysterious crate in the mail. Upon opening it, there was a little boy inside who wasn’t quite human. I remembered him as being a bit like a robot.

The movie was called Konrad. It was a made for tv movie feom 1985. It stared Huckleberry Fox as Konrad (the strange little boy) and Polly Holiday as Berti (the kind old lady). As a child, I rememember the opening minutes of the film and was deeply disturbed. I recently showed it to my own kids (13 and 16) and they agreed, it was really weird and creepy. Feel free to watch the full movie if you like below, but honestly the first 10 minutes is enough to see what I mean.

Full movie linked below:

Konrad (1985) Full Movie

The 2nd movie that really messed with me as a child was The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the Eighth Dimention. What I remember watching was a scene from the very beginibg of the movie. Buckaroo is driving a rocket car reminiscent of the car from Back to the Future. He gets teliported to the Eighth Dimention and when he returns there is a goopy alien ball stuck to the bottom of his car. I dont remember anything else from the movie back then.

Now, that mught be the end of what I rememeber, but that is certainly not the end of that movie. I recently watched the whole thing and it is both absolutely terrible, beyond weird, and not worth your time to actually watch. I would also like to mention that it took me years to discover what this movie even was. Chat GPT had a really hard time helping me discover both this one and the Konrad movie.

This is something that has really bothered me for years, but has been fun discovering these lost memories from my past. Even though these memories don’t hold anything really that special, remembering them from a child’s point of view is interesting. Like seeing a ghost when you were a kid and remembering how scared you were, but thesebare ghosts you can rediscover and reveal them for the smoke and mirrors they really are.

Link to the trailer for Buckaroo Bonzai linked below:

Trailer for Buckaroo Bonzai!

Experiences as a child are like that at times, mythic and large. You remember the path through the woods that seemed to go on forever with the huge cave at the end of it. When you return as an adult, the path is just a little over fifty meters and the “huge cave” is just a small overhanging rock. This is why I like writing down my memories. It preserves the mythic perspective. I wrote a story down once about a snake that lived over our swimming hole when I was a kid.

I always swore this snake was at least twelve feet long and as thick as my arm. I wrote it down as such. Besides, I was like ten years old when I last saw this creature. In speaking to my cousin who was about fourteen at the time, he informed me it was more like six feet. I like my version of the story. The memory of a twelve foot black snake throat protected our swimming hole is a lot more fun to tell. Sitting alone on the carpet in front of our large wood paneled Magnavox CRT.

My memory of a strange robot boy being delivered in a crate and a man finding an alien blob ball under his car is a lot more fun than the movies themselves. That’s how childhood is; bigger than life. Full of new and amazing experiences. Even time spent on front of the TV that only had three or four channels at the time could live on in my memories. I often wonder how many of these kind of memories lie dormant in other people’s memories. They might remember them from time to time, but never share them with anyone else. Welcome to the back room of my mind; it’s a really messed up place, and I love it.

D. Michl Lowe

Looking Through the Window that’s Not Really There

D. Michl LoweLeave a comment

If you look at the picture above, you might be remiss to think I stare at the wall all day and to some degree you would be right. However, the pictures haphazardly taped to the wall around me are all important parts of the creative process from my book. You might not be able to fully tell by looking at it, but the maps have minor and major changes made to them. The one on the right has the most.

The black and white pictures on the left are mostly armor, clothing, and weapons from throughout history. I admit, I would rather have a nice bay window behind my desk to glance out of, but I like my little corner. The temperature is cool down in the basement and at times even quiet. So there’s an allure to the basement space that makes it nearly ideal for a writer.

However, I take some umbrage at saying I don’t have a view. I do have a view. In fact, I have a very unique view. My view is a window into a world where I am God. I don’t say that lightly either. Writing is an interesting pastime. Writers spend a large portion of their lives creating story and character. In other words, they make people who live out lives in worlds of the writer’s creation. Whatever happens to them, at them, by them, all of it, is the design of the writer.

We get to play at being God. I was talking to a new friend of mine and we were discussing different books we had read. This new friend and I suddenly realised we had both read the same book and nearly at the same time exclaimed, “man, that character was messed up!” speaking about a particular character who had a rough life growing up. When we read a story, or watch a movie or tv show, we allow our brains to move us into that reality. We become.part of that world, if for only a little while. It’s a truly magical and wonderful ability we have.

So I do have a view. I view the World of Pillar. The Mammon Engine is not just a book, but a place I feel I watch through the window of the computer screen. I am getting to know the characters of Thistlewart, Dasa, Christoph, Meshiah, Nicodemus, and Schalk. I watch them and listen to them. They speak to each other and in turn, they speak to me. I get to spend to each of them and talk to each of them through the mouths of the other characters. At times, these characters are more real to me than people I see on the news or people I pass on the street. I am intimately aware of Meshiah’s doubt. I feel Thistwart’s shame and Christoph’s anger at God. Dasa’s loss and depression are at times my own. Dasa is pictured below.

Maybe someday, when I finally finish this book, you will fall in love with this world and these peoples as I have. Maybe for you, you will begin to understand why staring at the wall has been so fascinating to me. Maybe you too will feel the shame and anger and adventure I feel. I hope you get that chance, and soon.

D. Michl Lowe

One Last Hug

D. Michl LoweLeave a comment

I had a dream about a dead person. A person I knew long ago. I didn’t know this person as an adult, I knew them when I was just a kid, a kid in high school. In the dream, we were at a festival of some kind, there was music, and people milling around talking and having fun. People were meeting with old friends and chatting, there was laughter and good food. This person and I were going to perform in some way, I don’t know how maybe we were going to sing. Anyway, this friend of mine was doing some stage makeup for me.

This wouldn’t have been uncommon for this person to do this for me back in the day. They often did our makeup before the performances I was in; of which there were many. Anyway, she was doing my makeup, talking to me, gently whipping away mistakes, and just being their normal self. Suddenly, the haze of the dream was drawn away from my eyes and saw her. I knew she had died and knew I was in a dream. I stood up with intense sadness in my heart and began crying, the tears rushing down my cheeks.

Then she stood with me. “You’re dead,” I cried. “I know you’re dead, but you’re here.”

“I am here,” she said. “It’s okay. It’s really okay.”

I stepped forward and hugged my friend. It was a hug from years and years ago. When I was just a kid who was hugging a friend that he loved. She cried too, but her tears were not tears of sadness, but of joy that she was able to hug her friend again. I realized I was the only sad person at the festival. The people were around us were talking, laughing, and loving each other in friendship and family. It was a beautiful thing, and yet I continued to be sad.

I woke up, tears wetting my pillow, stunned. I’ve had several dreams like this in the last couple of years. Dreams where I have seen friends of mine who have gone on before me into the afterlife. My mother-in-law always says that when you dream about someone, that’s the Lord’s way of bringing that person into your mind to have you pray for them. What do I do with dreams of the dead though? I’m not completely sure. What I do know is that I pray for their families and those left behind.

I’ve lost several friends and family in the last several years and I think that may be catching up to me. Loss is a difficult thing. Sometimes, you weren’t as close as you would have liked to have been. Sometimes you were very close and the loss seemed personal, like the person’s death was a slight against you. Not that they wanted to leave, but that God wanted to harm you by taking them. The sadness and anger can be almost overwhelming. I don’t feel angry. I don’t blame God. Maybe I haven’t been hurt enough to feel that. All I know is, I miss my friend, and I’m glad I got to give her one last hug.

D. Michl Lowe