"Millions of unsold
games and consoles were buried
in a New Mexico landfill
in 1983."
-- NY Times article,
January 29, 2012
Imagine an expedition:
intrepid souls, bent on
recapturing our childhoods.
Ten of us, or twelve, Atari hunters.
We dig and dig.
There are layers to get through
that go back thirty years,
maybe more.
The 2000's layers are littered
with anti-Iraq war posters,
plastic bags from gluten-free bread,
political bumper stickers. Hope. Change.
From the 90s, stacked high,
bulky beige computers,
heavy and square, tied together
with tangles of wires and cords.
We know we've hit the 80s
when we reach a trove of shoulder pads
removed from women's business suits
that would no longer sell.
Then, under all that, finally,
the familiar brown and tan console,
black controller sticks, white cartridges
like 8-track tapes, little silver switches.
Buried beneath that layer,
I find myself sitting on the floor
in a living room in San Diego, warm
summer 1979 afternoon dissolving
into warm summer evening
and still-warm summer night
without my noticing it,
eyes locked on the family TV set
as I sit in the dark, legs crossed,
five feet away from that glowing screen,
staring up, my dog curled up sleeping
next to my leg, and then the Atari,
the only other being
occupying that small expanse
of goldenrod shag carpet, watching
intently as a square of light bounces
from one side of the screen to the other,
yawning, unable to go to sleep yet,
trying just to catch it
one more time.
