I log into "Monkey Island 2" after downloading it on the
iPad and I visit all my friends that I haven’t seen since 1992. I go down to the grassy beach on Scabb Island and I look at the ocean, remembering all my real 13-year old friends standing around me, telling me to use this and that item. They are all grown-up now and they live some place else.
Not like my pirate friends sitting on logs next to an open fire. They are still
here, even though it’s been so many years. We don't talk much; I just stand
next to them as I listen to the waves in the background.
I look at the trees leaning towards the water, the quiet lighthouse and how the
fire is making a glowing color on the grass. I haven’t been here for 20 years
and the memories are suddenly rushing over me. I close my eyes and for a moment
I am back in my childhood room. The Scandinavian winter is cold and it is dark
outside. The frost is on my window and the trees are silent. I wonder if anyone
can see my 15-inch VGA monitor from the street?
I head out into my own night. I run across the Island and around the mountain. I
want to explore every part of Scabb Island; the crystal clear air, the clouds
in the sky. Oh, how I wanted to fly over this Island when I was young, far
above the ocean of Penisula just to spot this ambient place and visit it for
real.
My parents are calling me for dinner while I am at the Woodsmith’s house. I
look at the dim lights and how the Woodsmith’s hammer is laid out just the way
he likes it. I get a plate and run back to my room. I eat in silence in front
of a comic book, while I listen to him hammer on that peg leg just like he
always have and always will.
I'm playing as the Soviet Union is shattered and there are Riots in LA and I play through
the Barcelona Summer games. I don’t look up as the UN is sending troops to
Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bill Clinton is becoming the 42:nd president. The
world is changing so fast, but in here, everything is within my pace. This
world doesn’t let me fall behind. It always waits for me.
I open my eyes. I move
my finger across the small city built of shipwrecks and I step down the stairs
of "The Bloody Lip bar”. I walk down in the cozy dark with a high wooden
ceiling and an old piano. It is just me and the barkeeper here but he let’s me
walk around as I please.
I place my hand on the screen, the heat is there, I try to caress this world
with my fingertips… trying to go back to the same time. How this bar used to
speak to me. How I’d feel that I could be myself when I was here. Nothing could
reach me among broken ships in the Caribbean moonlight.
I am suppose to be
finishing a report for tomorrow, but I am to busy watching the stars shining
through the roof in Wallys cartography shop. The candles are still burning on
his large wooden table. They have burned for so long. I want to tell Wally what
happened to that crush I used to have in high school, how we never talked even
though I used to hang out in here while writing her name in bold letters in my
math book instead of doing homework. Just as Wally, I’d be working with my
pencil, but mostly I’d think about how I would see her in front of me the next
day. How sweet and vivid that love was.
I visit the houseboat and I'm standing in the door way looking at Captain
Dread, I'm about to speak to him for the first time again – as I used to do for
so many times, but I hesitate. Maybe because it has been so long ago, maybe because I don't know where to begin. He reminds me of a friend who I went to see
“Aladdin” with and who bought a “Metallica” CD after the movie. Later he would get his own
electric guitar. Now he has two kids of his own and they are older than when we were when we first met.
I don't want to bother
Captain Dread. Not this time. This time I leave without him even noticing I was
there. The organ tones in the background becomes a flute that is now playing softly. I used to fall asleep to the
tunes of this music and I realize that I am about to do it again as I go back to the campfire. I
like being here, in a moment and time that will never disappear.
