I'm hidden from myself but know where I'm hiding so I'm not hidden from myself but from reality behind myself, as if I began playing a game of hide-and-seek when I was ten and the child who's it to find me never has.

One Saturday morning amidst cartoons and commercials, I stuck my tongue out far as it would go, closed my eyes, touched it to the screen scooted back rubbing it everywhere inside my mouth. Then I got back up on my knees and shuffled up to the screen and pressed the top of my tongue flat on it for half-a-minute. The next trip I lapped it freely feeling the beating trapped electricity. That night I had nightmares -- the screen cracking and me dissolving; the next morning I named the flavor 'silver'.

In the evenings Mom would say: "Looks like you kids've been finger-painting the TV again." She'd go grab the Windex and the towel from the refrigerator door.

A rectangle of white sand, a whiteface cliff, a gray fence, a red fence, the flesh-colored back of our house: I'd play until I couldn't see all night long during the summer. Under Mom's window I tiptoed, scooted, crawled, whispered, readied the troops for seven a.m. war. One night I turned the water on, shut it off, ran, stood quiet at the side of the house; eating breakfast Mom said she thought she'd heard the water running.

The cliff-face was an immobile theatre curtain. I hammered sticks into the folds, set men on them, stepped back and threw rocks.

I dumped boulders onto the front line.

There were hospitals in which men were glued and taped back together a two-limb minimum. Once decapitated they were dead their bodies buried, their heads given as prizes. One general had twenty-eight heads displayed on his walls.

Each man owned a house. They were paid right after battle, the wounded less. Dry green-gray clay was gold. It was clawed from the cliff with the back of a hammer. One summer I discovered a huge deposit in a cliff at the beach, and spent three days lugging beach-towels-full the mile and a half home.

Ice plant people wore ice plant tip helmets.

Hill people wore splinters in their heads.

The hill people would be run into the hills. The ice plant people planted ice plant throughout the yard which the hill people would sabotage. The ice plant people would be run into the ice plant patch up against the house. The hill people would stockpile ammo and build huge fortresses which the ice plant people would overtake.

Warriors came out of battles untouched. After ten battles warriors were promoted to generals.

The headless dug out of their graves and gathered in the grass-weeds by the gray fence. One at a time they'd sneak out and get their heads back and behead the man who'd gotten theirs and glue that man's head on top of their own. The headless became the slaves of the two-heads.

The headless revolted. The two-heads fled to the ice plant patch. The ice plant people flushed them out. There was a terrific battle that left just two two-heads alive. One became leader of the ice plant people, and the other became leader of the hill people.

There was a month's peace before we sold the house.

There was a ravine that didn't have a name like 'the woods' or 'the sloughs' full of sage, manzanita, tall scrub brush, and two scrawny trees between and under we'd walk on knees or belly crawl there was a place near the middle where we could stand and still be hidden. Rajah and I would play hide-and-seek; I'd throw a stick and he'd fetch I'd run the opposite direction. When he'd get frantic from barking I'd crawl some then stand up; he'd come running, grinning, wagging his entire red body.

We'd have ice plant fights; usually it was just my brother against me (Rajah barking), but sometimes there were others. We'd throw dirt-clods sometimes even rocks; we'd throw pointy sticks. We'd fight until dark, or until someone got hurt.

She wasn't beautiful, not pretty but seductive; she wasn't responsive but vivacious. We'd wade through games of tag which lasted whole hours between change of hands. We'd perform surgeries shirts off only, fingerwrite across each other's back and face and chest and belly, tickle-giggle the real words out. After a while I'd slip a hand down the front of her shorts she'd fidget and giggle then twist over mad; one afternoon my hand stuck when she rolled and I tumbled over her off the bed crashing pulling her down on top of me laughing we stared, almost kissed. She'd only offer me her affection when others were around, bluff nonchalance when I gave her mine; one day playing tag she caught me kissed me, awarded me a quick feel.

We'd crawl under-into her faintly urine bedding with a flashlight, fondle 'just the upper half' make-believe, taste, push our heads together till it hurt. First thing in her room we'd dive onto her bed.

Cleared house today; looked at safes; found V.'s joss sticks under the gray metal bookcase.

I didn't want to see "bloated" and "white" and "dying" they'd been divorced since I was one, he'd married someone else I couldn't picture his face, it'd been months since I'd seen him then only an hour in a dark restaurant. Told he wouldn't recognize me or speak I approached him with anger spilled the pitcher of water on purpose.