The Tragedy III
The Lost Tapes
Seems obvious but important to note that, looking back I can say with great surety, kids don’t want change. They want to stay as far away from change as possible. They want to do what they are doing and they think they can do it forever because they don’t realize that change is inevitable.
When real physical change creeps into the body the world becomes full of bright new ‘pursuasions’. With new awarness we turn away from ‘kids world’ to embark along the pathways of our search for love; the missing ingredient that we think will calm the quiet despertion that grows with each disappointment faced throughout life.
I saw the desperation in their eyes that summer long before I understood or became aware that the tragedy had occured. It wasn’t until decades later that I understood.
Their parties were a desperate need to fill the empty spaces of their lives after those first disappointing years of marriage when shadows of the void begin showing up around the edges, when it became clear that marriage wasn’t the answer to the question or a destination the where the search for happiness would end.
Maybe kid’s fear grows as they become more aware of the strange behavior of adults; their need to get drunk, the clinging man or woman too cowardly to resist temptation, the growling resentful wives consumed by rage, needy women lured into illicit affairs by lecherous men or … the choice to die, one more choice along the road of choices another choice along the many pathways, driven by a single aspect of life; the never ending search for love.
Now I understand the sad, desperate looks I can still see on their faces all those years ago. A yearning for the missing ingredient. The spark that would ignite the engines of their lonesome souls.
DEAC
He sold insurance. He was successful.
A respected businessman and community leader. He taught me how to handle a shotgun and we often hunted and fished together.
His philosophy of life was that anything of value can only be achieved by hard work and pain. Suffering builds character!
He had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh. People had a hard time saying no to him. While most people liked him, he was a shyster and wouldn’t hesitate to screw any person out of five bucks if he thought he could get away with it.
Those few enemies he had hated his guts.
A U.S. Marine, radioman and sharpshooter during World War II, you could say he was a lucky man. Not because the bus he was riding on that night was broadsided by a train trapping him in the wreckage, with a crushed foot, rather the accident prevented him from being shipped out the next day to Iwo Jima.
He spent the rest of the war recuperating in hospital near Seattle in Washington State.
SKIING BEHIND THE CAR
He was an adventurous soul unafraid to take chances.
One Sunday morning out of nowhere, he proclaimed, “I can ski behind the car.”
A preposterous thing to do! But he did it and despite the fact that he told me he had never made a mistake in his life, I’m sure that by the end of that day, his arm in a sling, wracked with pain from gravel imbedded road rash and debilitating contusions, you might think he’d at least consider that he made a mistake. But, he wouldn’t admit or even consider that he had. Only that he had no regrets.
NO REGRETS
Did Deac consider his role in the tragedy a mistake? Did he feel guilt because of the tragedy? Did he regret his dalliance with Janey and the tragedy that resulted? Or, in HIS world of denial did he tell himself he had no regrets? Did he even realize he played a role in the tragedy? If so he never confided in me.
MYSTIFIED
I was mystified by behavior that I had no reference for before that summer. After all, I was only ten years old at the time.
I didn’t know that Deac and Janey had been seeing each other off the radar for weeks. If I did, I wouldn’t have known what they were doing.
What I DID see were the ugly looks Donna gave him and his feigned attempts to act nonchalant. Even I could tell he was acting strangely talking incessantly about events that happened during the day as if he were enlightening us.
INSANE JEALOUSY
Donna’s volatile temper, her insane jealousy, the bitterness she felt toward Deac roiled like an angry sea just below the surface. During tempests of fury her ocean of madness, spilled over, drawing everyone within reach into her storms of fury even those she loved the most.
We lived in troubling times never sure when her volatility would spark the flames of jealous insanity when we least expected.
BROKEN DISHES
Then one day I walked into the kitchen while Donna was breaking dishes on the kitchen floor, calling Deac a son of a bitch. While he calmly stirred the spaghetti sauce,I passed by unnoticed.
By the time dinner was served the floor had been swept. They regained their composure and were civilized toward each other while we ate. For a while things seemed ok.
They weren’t.
Next: THE INCIDENT
Kurt Struble Writing 
This is one of my favorite pieces not just because it describes what childbirth might be like but, I think it’s beautifully written. I like how it flows and trips along with cadence and sound.
Hey! I can comment about my own work can’t I? It wasn’t even ‘Me’ who wrote the thing. I remember it well. “I felt a slight glow on the pads of my fingers a kind of pulsing and I began to stroke the keys and it felt like my digits were being guided by Aphrodite herself.”
Not quite. More like, my inner roulette wheel spinning words and with the luck of the draw I was able to catch a few every once in a while.
Anyway. BIRTH! The most significant event of our lives! (And, at such a young age!) After all being born into this fucked up world is no easy job. It’s true! Ask any new born kid!
Birth! It’s the door we step through to gain entry into this place with its good and bad and every increment in between, evil and good and all the polar opposites that are the price we pay for living on a planet with a North and South Pole. Shit!
Then, there’s the mistakes we make! Think about how many concussions you’ve given yourself after slapping your self in the forehead saying, “You dumb shit!” Or, I coulda’ had a V8 but with the can.
But that’s life! Right?
The never ending parade that cascades before us, our journey through light with density that we are contained within and can exist in along with other beings just like us and we like them; plants and animals, trees and birds and all those finials from biology no species better or worse we think we are the high ideal but, all we’ve ever done is destroy things.
Yet, BIRTH continues.
Perhaps we judge our lives by how significantly apart we grow from the newborn child’s ultimate experience; the outside and the inside world coming face on with each other at birth, a double brightness, a kind of symbiotic relationship with light given/taken in/returned/then, given back in a never ending cycle.
Just like love and marriage. Right? Except, you can’t have one without the other.
Or, on the abstract level, seen in its entire and completely different and absurd light and really hard to understand level; if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it is there a noise?
THAT’S ONE FOR THE AGES ISN’T IT REXI?. Fuck yes! There’s NOISE because there’s SOUND because the WHOLE PLACE heard the tree fall by the birds and the other trees and the lichen and the bear who was rubbing his butt when the tree fell. Jeez. What a ridiculous posit that, if a human being wasn’t present there MIGHT NOT be no sound. That’s kind of pre infantile thinking isn’t it? Oh? It’s not important? Good.
(That, and the angels dancing on the heads of pins discussion always gets me. Sooooo interesting. Someone should put THAT posit on a post it note and file it in the floor file.)
I think that every day it’s possible that at some point in time when time is the right time and the stars and all that other crap fit together just right I could find myself in the ‘real’ world behind all of the facades of daily life. We need those facades but they can be all consuming!
To suddenly experience the revery of speechless awe at the world around us. We all KNOW that other place is here, waiting to be experienced. Is that desire what keeps us going?
I think that, as life moves along we judge the degrees of success with our lives by the baseline of CHILDBIRTH. Which brings us back to the poem.
The words in that poem flowed through my fingers with such DELIGHT!
Wull … it’s ok to comment on my own work isn’t it? Actually, I don’t even know who wrote this piece remember? I was just the postman. Check out the post, “When I Was Born.” I hope you like it as much as I do. Au’revoir.