Mellow Yellow

Mellow Yellow

When I first heard the words, I felt as though the fog had lifted and I found myself staring at the reality of my future. I had feared the advance of time and therefore the future, primarily because it couldn’t be predicted with any certainty that is. Uncertainty frightened me because I was rooted in the environment of Christianity. The mystery, as well as both the promise of salvation and, or the gamble that the devil was seated across from me on my bus ride to school, followed me like perspiration in an elevator. 

It was during that speculative period in my life, that becoming a yellow submarine appealed to me. Although I have a problem with claustrophobia, I assumed the color yellow, being as uplifting and outgoing as it suggested, would help me ascend into a nirvana of my own making and survive quite nicely. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Claustrophobia is more than a state of mind as suggested by the author of the book, “Tales Tell No Lies.” It is the memoir of a Wisconsin immigrant lead miner who became trapped in a, badger hole, as they had been labeled, and left there for the entirety of the Christmas holiday season. Having no family, he was not missed until the rent came due on his room in Lydia Thomas’s boarding house.

Timothy O’Riley did not survive the ordeal, but his etchings on his lunch pail did. The lunch pail was found in a souvenir shop by Homer Hoskins the author of the afore mentioned book. He painstakingly transcribed the etchings onto parchment and found that by reading the etchings in the reflection of a mirror, it turned the incoherent ramblings of a mad miner into the relevant revelations of a nineteenth century dreamer. The books content, which was captured painstakingly from the lunch pail, proved to be of less importance to Hoskins than the means by which he obtained them, leaving the miner O’Riley, a mere footnote in the story itself.

The story, although having no particular significance, to anything really, gave me the inspiration to begin believing it was possible to become what one wished to become, do what one felt he must do, and relieved my anxiety about claustrophobia. Soon after finishing the Hoskins book, I decided to use some of the investigative techniques he envisioned to test the practicality of my dream. But where to start.

It became clear to me in a dream that yellow was the conduit to my future metamorphosis. 

I found a hardware store that was being starved by its traditional clientele because of the change of allegiance to the newest import emporium. Like so many of the local businesses, the local hardware owner had designs on relocating to the soon to be deemed unsuitable living areas of Florida.  Due to the rising seas, attributed to human disregard for the natural order of things, it was predicted to be unlivable within the next decade, which the realtor neglected to mention. I bought out the entire inventory of yellow paint. I painted my room, as well as the hall, the entire upstairs to be precise, yellow. 

It gave my spirits a decided canary uplift. My spirits soared even though my eyes ached from the invasion of dispersed light from the south facing windows. I solved the problem with varied colored tissue paper, glue, and the inspiration of the Chicago skyline. My landlord rarely came to inspect his property, so I was not overly worried about negative speculation as to my state of mind. My downstairs neighbor asked about my unusual curtains, but that was the extent of intrusions into my dreams destiny.

I know nothing of submarines, how they function, what is necessary to keep the water out and the necessary air in. Bill my neighbor and local unlicensed psychoanalyst, suggested we spend time investigating my need to escape the confines of life. He stressed the possibility, that if I did manage to become a submarine, I might die. He mentioned my inability to swim and my often-mentioned fear of water, as a contributing factor. He asked in his melancholy manner, what my second choice was if the submarine transformation didn’t work out. I had not thought of failure as an option and told him I’d need his help to reorient myself to the possibility of becoming something other than a submarine. He patted my head and said we could begin on Sunday, after his walk in the park.  It being his day off, he said, after his walk he could devote as much time as I could afford.

I spent last night weighing the pros and cons of fulfilling my dream. Sure there are things I didn’t consider, but when on a journey to fulfill a mission it is impossible to predict every wrinkle in the fabric of a life’s plan. I found the notion that I had a plan, remarkable, a mission to free myself from the mundane existence of the ordinary world citizen, a departure from my reclusive nature. 

I received a phone call from Bill. He said he couldn’t make it, something came up. He asked if I was available on Monday at 2 PM. I didn’t know what to say. I had obligations, a job, my neighbors dog to walk, always too much to do, so much pressure. Before he hung up, he asked a question I had not considered. “Did I want to be a yellow submarine or did I just want to live in one.” I hadn’t considered the difference. After mulling the dichotomy, I had to admit I would have to sleep on it. I told him; I’d be there at two. I’d take a late lunch; the dog could go one day without being exposed to the foul air and dangers of the city, I could if necessary, rearrange my disciplined schedule.

The following day at two O’clock I arrived at Bill’s. His wife an extremely short woman, refused to let me in. she said she didn’t know me, and she’d have to consult with her husband who had not returned from the tax office. All I could do was return home and pretend Bill did not purposely abuse my prime time for selfish reasons. 

The night before, I had the strangest dream. This woman calling herself Mary, came to me speaking words of wisdom, or so she implied. Something about let it go, let it alone, no, let it be. I had no idea what she meant. But then the church was so voluminously vacant, and she seemed to be attempting to say so many things at once, none of them reaching the necessary level of clarity. And a field of strawberries was singing, “We all live in a yellow submarine.” That was my dream. Not the dream I was having, but the dream I was hoping would become real. And then everything began to change. The submarine was moving away, and I needed to get across the street, but a band was marching down the street and I couldn’t get across. I asked one of tuba players what they were celebrating. She said, “Lonely Hearts,” and threw me a kiss. Then I woke up. Everything smelled like sea weed, and this guy named Parker told me to be ready, “Life can pass you by, and you won’t even know it.” Then I woke up, the phone was ringing.

It was Bill. He was coming over. It couldn’t wait. I got dressed, put on my cleanest dirty shirt, dragged a comb across my head, and went to our communal kitchen where Alfred was making oatmeal. He offered coffee, so I poured myself a cup, and went to the porch to wait for Bill. He arrived, skidding to a stop by the curb, he jumps from the car and runs up the steps. His face is flushed, and he is out of breath. He tells me in machine gun fashion, that he’d had a dream and it was all clear to him to now. There was something wrong with me, drastically wrong, but he believed he was given the solution, “The key to the music box.” It seemed a rather obtuse interjection, but then it was Bill.

“The confusion you are experiencing about whether to be a yellow submarine, or live in one, is simply your left brain attempting to influence your right brain. Apparently, you are, and have been, conflicted about many things in your life, and this argument is the result of that. Have you ever had a debate about which sock to put on first, or which pant leg to occupy first? This Dalai lama guy says the submarine is your left brain telling you, you can’t breathe. You are being smothered by your inability to decide, on what he insinuated, was everything. Living in the submarine is your right brains attempt to influence your future, by making a place in life for you. A place where you can be you, without the fear of rejection, being just another hope going out to sea never to be seen again.”

Bill, after his explosive rendition of a town crier, collapsed onto the porch. He didn’t look dead, so I left him there to sleep it off. I went up to my room to see if the color would aid my decision as to which brain to listen to. It was then the fire alarm in the kitchen went off, breaking my concentration.

Alfred had left the breakfast pizza in the oven again. He has a short attention span and often forgets what he has done, or what he is supposed to do. It gives me hope at times to know there are people who have more contentious problems than I do. 

Bill’s words would not leave me. I made my way through the smoke and screams from the alarm. It was as if it too, was attempting to tell me something I needed to know but wasn’t listening. I fed the burnt pizza to Rudolph, the neighbor’s dog, and prepared to return to the kitchen to turn on the fan, when an apple fell from the tree in the back yard and hit me on the head. My first thought was that I was being attacked, but then I realized the tree was attempting to get my attention. “Gravity,” of course.

Sometimes inspiration comes in the most indiscriminate of ways. I had placed all my bets on a pictured future with a yellow submarine, and had failed to see in my future, up in the right-hand corner, a sea gull. 

I am off to find Bill, sit him down, pour some of Alfred’s coffee, 180 proof into him, and tell him about my misconstrued interpretation of my earlier revelation, and how I was now determined to find the lesson, of the gull.

Bill was gone. I couldn’t remember if I’d misplaced him or whether he’d come to me as Mary had, on a wing and a prayer.