Imagine tumbling knees and elbows, down a long staircase, end over end, and just when you think you’ve reached the end it gets a boost and the down-bound, gravity driven ride keeps on going. But then you wake up or your mom calls you to breakfast, the tumbling goes away and the illusion goes with it. Between Covid and red neck politics, I get the tumbling feeling. Yesterday, the President argued at a rally, “We’ve won the war with the virus. . .” but Johns Hopkins University reported over a thousand fatalities for the preceding day and 86,000 plus, new confirmed cases; it’s not like you don’t know who to believe.
If only my mom would call me down to breakfast, I’m ready for a new story. In a dream last night; I don’t usually dream in detail, I was in a crowd, too close, too many people, no Personal Protective Equipment, no distancing. It was surreal. I thought of death by firing squad. In that action, up to a dozen marksmen take aim and fire but only some have live rounds. The others fire blanks so that nobody knows for sure, who fired the fatal shot. It leaves some wiggle room for a squeamish shooter. “It probably wasn’t me so I’ll believe it was the other guy and move on.” On the other hand, which shooter fired the lethal bullet doesn’t matter at all to victims or their families. Strange, how people decide who to extend concern and sympathy for when it comes to life and death. Bullets or virus, if it’s not someone we care about, does it matter?
If I let myself, I could give up and just sink in a sea of pandemic and self righteous hypocrisy. But I’ve been to the edge of that rift and there was no relief there either, God is too busy making America great again. Maybe I’m at a stalemate, resolution would be too much to ask for. I am going to time myself out. Maybe if I sit in the corner with my face to the wall, a story from better days will let me off the hook for a while. Pick a year, any year. Try 1970; Western Illinois University. As a Graduate Assistant, I worked in a shared office with five other GA’s. Our work loads were huge, scheduled or on call 24/7, that is the nature of the system. Sometimes my wife and 2 year-old were awake when I got home or when I had to leave. So an opportunity for us to go on a date was both rare and special. In midwinter, the Student Union Board hosted a concert. Singer Judy Collins would perform on the field house stage.
I would be in the Grad. Asst. office, on my own time, crunching numbers for a research paper. Tickets were included with paid fees up front for undergrad students. They printed four thousand tickets that were either snatched up by students on the first day or sold outright. But my office was in the building, had my own keys. With an opening act scheduled for 7:00, concert goers started coming through the lobby doors after dark. I had been there all day. At a prearranged time I went down to one of the locked back doors, opened it and let my wife in. She was dressed her best with a pint of shrimp fried rice from the Golden Dragon. We talked while I ate, into the opening act. Timing was perfect, with open seating it was time for us to go find our seats.
It was a turbulent time; Protests against the war in Viet Nam were an everyday thing. Folk music could have been labeled ‘Protest’ music and Judy Collins was on the cutting edge. She was special. We were the same age, both turned 30 within a few weeks of each other. She sang like an angel and it always sounded like she was singing just for me. Long and tall with hair down to her waist and a big, Martin, acoustic guitar, she held us in a trance for two hours with songs like ‘Someday Soon’ and ‘Both Sides Now’. The song I was waiting for came late in the program. ‘Suzanne’, written by Leonard Cohen it begged, it lamented, it gave a voice to doubts and suspicions we all harbored over the war and the bigots who waged it. It questioned everything that we once held sacred; could anything ever be holy again!
“. . . Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water . . . he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower . . . But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open . . . Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.”
What we didn’t know was that she was hopelessly addicted to alcohol, that her personal life was in shambles. The music made her famous but it couldn’t fix the ‘broken’. I’ve never been close enough to fame to even imagine what it's like but I do know ‘broken’. Still her music lifts me up. Fifty years later, Judy has survived her addictions, reinvented herself, made her own peace. Now, all I would hope for is to steal away a few peaceful hours. Given a chance, I can remember, I can close my eyes and feel the key turn in the locked door, give my date a hug. I can mouth the words to every song, share time and space with those I love, even if it’s all in my mind, and I will be good to go in a little while.
If only my mom would call me down to breakfast, I’m ready for a new story. In a dream last night; I don’t usually dream in detail, I was in a crowd, too close, too many people, no Personal Protective Equipment, no distancing. It was surreal. I thought of death by firing squad. In that action, up to a dozen marksmen take aim and fire but only some have live rounds. The others fire blanks so that nobody knows for sure, who fired the fatal shot. It leaves some wiggle room for a squeamish shooter. “It probably wasn’t me so I’ll believe it was the other guy and move on.” On the other hand, which shooter fired the lethal bullet doesn’t matter at all to victims or their families. Strange, how people decide who to extend concern and sympathy for when it comes to life and death. Bullets or virus, if it’s not someone we care about, does it matter?
If I let myself, I could give up and just sink in a sea of pandemic and self righteous hypocrisy. But I’ve been to the edge of that rift and there was no relief there either, God is too busy making America great again. Maybe I’m at a stalemate, resolution would be too much to ask for. I am going to time myself out. Maybe if I sit in the corner with my face to the wall, a story from better days will let me off the hook for a while. Pick a year, any year. Try 1970; Western Illinois University. As a Graduate Assistant, I worked in a shared office with five other GA’s. Our work loads were huge, scheduled or on call 24/7, that is the nature of the system. Sometimes my wife and 2 year-old were awake when I got home or when I had to leave. So an opportunity for us to go on a date was both rare and special. In midwinter, the Student Union Board hosted a concert. Singer Judy Collins would perform on the field house stage.
I would be in the Grad. Asst. office, on my own time, crunching numbers for a research paper. Tickets were included with paid fees up front for undergrad students. They printed four thousand tickets that were either snatched up by students on the first day or sold outright. But my office was in the building, had my own keys. With an opening act scheduled for 7:00, concert goers started coming through the lobby doors after dark. I had been there all day. At a prearranged time I went down to one of the locked back doors, opened it and let my wife in. She was dressed her best with a pint of shrimp fried rice from the Golden Dragon. We talked while I ate, into the opening act. Timing was perfect, with open seating it was time for us to go find our seats.
It was a turbulent time; Protests against the war in Viet Nam were an everyday thing. Folk music could have been labeled ‘Protest’ music and Judy Collins was on the cutting edge. She was special. We were the same age, both turned 30 within a few weeks of each other. She sang like an angel and it always sounded like she was singing just for me. Long and tall with hair down to her waist and a big, Martin, acoustic guitar, she held us in a trance for two hours with songs like ‘Someday Soon’ and ‘Both Sides Now’. The song I was waiting for came late in the program. ‘Suzanne’, written by Leonard Cohen it begged, it lamented, it gave a voice to doubts and suspicions we all harbored over the war and the bigots who waged it. It questioned everything that we once held sacred; could anything ever be holy again!
“. . . Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water . . . he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower . . . But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open . . . Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.”
What we didn’t know was that she was hopelessly addicted to alcohol, that her personal life was in shambles. The music made her famous but it couldn’t fix the ‘broken’. I’ve never been close enough to fame to even imagine what it's like but I do know ‘broken’. Still her music lifts me up. Fifty years later, Judy has survived her addictions, reinvented herself, made her own peace. Now, all I would hope for is to steal away a few peaceful hours. Given a chance, I can remember, I can close my eyes and feel the key turn in the locked door, give my date a hug. I can mouth the words to every song, share time and space with those I love, even if it’s all in my mind, and I will be good to go in a little while.
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