“We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels across the floor….I was feeling kind of seasick, and the crowd called out for more….”
I have taken the election results harder than anyone in my extended family, anyone I know at work and even in my favorite coffee shop. I have taken the pain silently in wonder. Is it that I can see so much more clearly into an unclear future or is it that I simply can’t see at all? I could not see Trump coming. I could not go there into that hard cold place that so prejudiced my opinion of my fellow Americans. But it did and I can’t come back from it. Am I alone and does it matter if I am.
I have been alone before. It’s not so bad but it’s to some place anyone ever wants to stay.
A giddy celebrating mass of humanity surrounds me, all doing tangos and polkas as if Jesus has come back, repackaged as a stripe suited circus creature with a grand entertaining style of attraction, drawing everyone around into the tent, into the seats to view the three rings of coming performance. Maybe the elephants will trumpet, the horses carry lovely female loads and the trapeze will be filled with lithe gorgeous humans, all doing successful triples. But I am here, sitting in this metaphorical open lonely field, waiting for the giant tent to go up and somehow knowing I’ll be sitting here by myself again when the tent comes down and the show is gone.
And I will be alone again, having known all along…or maybe not at all.
“And so it was that later, as the miller told his tale, that her face, at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale.”
Procol Horum 1967
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It was a delight to read more about you and your brother sharing good times,
instead of your reflections after Vietnam, found in Thank the Living Christ
Thanks Chuck for your support and reading things in depth like you do.
Your friend,
Jim
It was a delight to read more about you and your brother sharing good times,
instead of your reflections after Vietnam, found in Thank the Living Christ
I often find myself amazed at the times I came of age.
1968 in particular.
TET, MLK, RFK, riots, marches, conventions.
But the years just prior and post ’68 with the assassinations, civil rights, music, bussing, space program, hippies, drugs, man on the moon, Woodstock and a war that wasn’t a war in your living room every night.
I was born January ’49.
Was curious how you felt about the fate of when you were born.
I was a kid of about eight when my Dad was stationed at the Coast Guard HQ in Honolulu.
My brother and I rowed around Ford Island in an old row boat going from war wreck to war wreck collecting souvenirs
and having a great time. When you were born can have a great impact on how life goes.
When I hit Marine training in Sept. of 1967 it’s like all the news
and everything went into a time stasis until I emerged from the hospital after the Nam in late 1969.
I found out I missed a lot while I was just trying to stay alive.
The seventies seemed like wading though a molasses doldrum.
The answer to your question is a long form of I don’t really know….
Semper fi,
Jim