March 2, 2006
NOW IT'S DARK
Somewhere, in the dark, shadowed crevasses of my being, a nice guy lives. He was a Boy Scout. Walked enfeebled old gentlewomen across the street, carried their grocery bags with every manner of fiber, roughage, and muesli up those three echoing flights. Volunteered for paint chipping, pillow fluffing, baseboard scrubbing. Writer of essays for the Daughters of the Confederacy, not for the $10 prize, but for the tears the ancient ladies let at my inspired paeans to Alexander Stephens, my youthful invoking of the Marshes of Glynn in homage to Sidney Lanier. Player of trumpets, so to make my mother proud in parades, reluctant engager of 4-H club summer camps, despite my deathly fear of beef tongue.
I was a Good Boy. A Son of the South. High Expectations.
What happened? It is perhaps more demographic than dispositive. The Sixties. Anger. Rebellion. The fact is the Greatest Generation was unprepared to unleash lethal hell on their spoilt offspring, and I, for one, took the advantage, having been a prebuscent channeler of Sun Tzu. But to do such at 11? Ach, no. At 14, yes. I did. Due to debilitating illness to the Senator. From crew cut to flat top to Caesar bangs to a bit of a part on the side to don't let it touch your ears to down my back. I cannot believe how shallow and vapid boys were in the '60's, and early '70's. Able young men eschewing military service because of their hair. How fucking vain! But that hair was somehow important. Now that hair is all falled out, and the selfsame shave their heads lest people know they are balding. Me? A Filipino barber shorn me like a sheep in 1974. I was just turned 17. I honestly didn't miss that hair. I missed the girls it drew, though. Which shows how shallow the distaff side of the equation was, too.
Glower. Boomers glowered a lot. Where's mine? A dark unhealthy coveting, a distasteful sense of entitlement. I stand accused. I was raised to think the world was my oyster. But who had my fucking oyster? Glower.
A rapprochement in later years. Parents old. Not that old, but you've broken them. They look old. We did that to them. Wore them the hell out. They never complained. I suppose they should have. Should have lined our entitled asses up and shot us. Should have lined me up, anyway, up against the wall for a nice Czarist shooting. I could have been the hemophiliac Alexis. Except for the part where Rasputin fondled me in his ministrations.
80 degrees today. Beautiful. All the more reason for alarum. I believe my Gen took the baton, and sold it off for filthy lucre, and expediency. You Gen X, Y, Z, D, and VD'ers scoff. I think, though, you'd have done the same. One gets one shot. Human Nature insists we debase that opportunity.
Is the story of the prodigal generation going to end as well as did the story of the prodigal son?
I notice blood is still dripping from the altar of expediency, now mixed with bits of shredded parchment from documents written around 200 years ago.
Human Nature insists we debase our one-shot opportunity, and overcoming that Human Nature is our sole task in life.
So, are we the ones who will fuck it up?
Posted by: Jack at March 2, 2006 11:27 PMJack,
I pulled a muscle patting myself on the back for the 4,213th straight day. But I do not have an answer to your question.
Posted by: Velociman at March 2, 2006 11:34 PMFrom the Poet laureate of Georgia:
Sidney Lanier. 1842–1881
213. Song of the Chattahoochee
OUT of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again, 5
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall. 10
All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried Abide, abide,
The wilful waterweeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide, 15
The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay,
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide,
Here in the hills of Habersham,
Here in the valleys of Hall. 20
High o'er the hills of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, 25
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
Overleaning with flickering meaning and sign,
Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold
Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys of Hall. 30
And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl,
And many a luminous jewel lone 35
—Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist,
Ruby, garnet, and amethyst—
Made lures with the lights of streaming stone
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall. 40
But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward the voices of Duty call—
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, 45
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o'er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall. 50
Every generation looks on itself as savior until it reaches the age of knowing it is the despoiler. And every generation despoils, but the landscape of the despoiled changes. Europe. Korea. Nam. The stock market. The internet. And so forth. The next generation will develop a new landscape, pristine and clean, and then despoil it. Such is life.
me, I shoulda been drowned in a barrel of rainwater, I deserved it. Badly.
Posted by: og at March 3, 2006 8:28 AMYeah.
"...used to be such a sweet, sweet thing,
till they got ahold of me.
Opened doors for little old ladies,
Helped them cross the street."
I think Alice may have been exaggerating a little, though.
Posted by: jdallen at March 3, 2006 8:39 AMWhile men wrestle with the tattered remains of their prodigal missions, the women cradle the fallen in their soft arms. Their bitter tears wash the blood stained faces and they wish they had done more...
Posted by: Libby at March 3, 2006 12:49 PMBeing a parent is great cosmic revenge for being a smart-assed kid.
Posted by: rankin' rob at March 3, 2006 1:34 PMAh, but to recognize one's sense of entitlement is at least half the battle. Recognizing that it isn't a unique affliction, that anyone with a modicum of self respect has struggled with the same...quite deflating.
Posted by: Key at March 3, 2006 7:37 PMThe hardest struggle in the battle to overcome one's sense of entitlement is accepting that one is not entitled to think of oneself as the worst human being in the universe.
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Posted by: eman at August 18, 2006 5:06 AM