O Give Me a Home

An old man visits closed and decaying buildings which he remembers entering many years before as a small, frightened nine-year-old, then mines his now fading memories for this stark recounting of growing up in a large, state-run, military orphanage. He remembers newkie lessons perhaps too well-learned and a kiddie dorm perhaps too well-ordered; he remembers a fellow orphan who finds a way out and another who would rather stay in; he tells of violent daytime battles and innocent nighttime rendezvous; and of a happy-go-lucky garbage man and a not so lucky marksman; of unconsummated first love and an unexpected last message. All of these memories are interspersed here and there with interludial vignettes of orphanage life and are ultimately flanked, like caliginous bookends, by two sad goodbyes, one wistful and one anguished, but each demarcating a decisive fork in life's road.