7709. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 137)

BELOW THE WATER LINE 

(pt. 137)

Leaving the seminary, for me, was another ordeal.

The night my father picked me up to drive me home, 

I don't remember , it was mid-week, cold and dark.

He had been notified, I suppose, somehow, my family

had, that I'd be returning home. Nothing else was said.

It was in the same way I'd left Avenel to go there that

I left there to go back to Avenel. Never said good-bye to

anyone, never was seen gathering up my things, or

none of that. I'm not sure how it occurred. Everything

was always weirdly secretive and disciplined there.

There were no official papers of termination or any of

that stuff given over. I wasn't walked out with one of the

priests, or anything like that. It was more like, in the

dark, my father pulled up, we slithered the car on up 

the grass to the doorways, piled in my stuff, and left.
I don't really think we said anything much to each other
the entire way, just the usual niceties and some stuff about
what I had to do upon arriving back home with school.
It was a fairly pathetic ride, worth about ten cents.

My whole life's been like that  -  all these dumb-ass

tough things, just done quickly and almost 

surreptitiously, as I always walk away sad at what's 

transpired. Bad, like flies around a too-sweet mouth.

-

Just the half-year before this I had been the toast of the

place. My role as Judas in the last Passion Play I was in,

was pretty quickly called stand-out. Lots of applause and

comment, busloads of kids from schools around the state,

people gawking, cheering. Then, just after that, before 

leaving, I'd won what was called the 'Oratorical Contest'

for South Jersey, all the high schools and stuff had entered

someone. I read two separate pieces to get through the

semi and final wins, and then I won the contest itself.

It got written up in the Jersey papers, I was rewarded 

with a nice, gold, medallion type thing with a tri-colored

ribbon attached. I still have it here somewhere, Engraved

on the back, name and date and all that. I practiced my 

speaking skills endlessly for that : I used to walk off into

the woods, like that Demosthenes guy from ancient Greece,

with a mouthful of small pebbles (cleaned). That was his 

technique, way, way back when, for improving diction

and clarity  -  which is odd because when you have a 

mouth with ten or so pebbles in it, trying to speak is damn 

difficult. All you get is 'Hrmmmphhhgh Hettrtdf, Gmmms',

like that. Jumbled sounds. But if you play it really hard, 

and pay attention, and memorize pretty good too, what 

you're saying, when said without the pebbles in your 

mouth, sounds really crisp and clear. Overcompensation

or something. I would do that, a long afternoon. I read,

for the first, a long Robert Frost dramatic poem called

'The Fear', about a New England couple and some 

imagined episode at their vacant home. And then, what

really got me over the top, I read Martin Luther's 'Address

Before the Diet of Worms.' It's not about eating worms, 

and it's not a diet either, and the place is really called 

'Wurms' a town in Germany where he caused a stir by

nailing up his theses to challenge church and Pope. This

was his address before being convicted or whatever, and

a Diet, over there at that time, was like a 'Congress'. As the

Japanese 'Diet' is today  -  the ruling legislative body. So,

I did good, my minds were elsewhere (yes, plural), and

before too long I'd established still another identity. Again, 

not that priestly, which probably irked everyone. Dramatic 

reading is pretty cool, because it's all balderdash, and just 

emotion for effect and with absolutely no meaningfulness 

at all. So you can stretch it and reach, and bring it just

to the edge of over-doing. I was pretty good at 

recognizing limits. I don't know why people lap this

stuff up so much, but they do  -  acting precisely is a

pretty easy thing to do. What you don't know, you can

just wing. That Governor guy, Richard J. Hughes, he

came too, right there, and gave me my medal. Who 

knows why, but that's the kind of crud stuff Governors 

and things like that have to do. Pandering and begging 

for votes it is, too. All those parents and things, they love

 it. And then, not really too long after that, my long slide

upward towards whatever, was over. Not a crash land, just

more of a soft land on a cushioned, noiseless carpet. Poof!

And I was gone. I can't say I cared, but who knows.

-

My problem is, always has been, being too sensitive. I let

every little thing hurt me. The seminary was like that, 

my whole life had been like that, and to this day it's all the

same. Always getting scrunched up and hurt -   just like the

stupid train wreck, I wind up all shattered underneath the

dashboard. I get started with something, or grow real fond 

of something or someone, get things going to a nice comfort

level, and then, bam! I get blasted right out of the water, and

hurt again, when they decide to no longer want to do it. Left

high and dry and sorrowful. I never learn -  places like the

seminary, they're all shifting alliances anyway, people 

coming and people going. You think solid, real life would

 be different, but it's not. I guess it can't be  -  people 

already have all their connections and alliances, and 

you're just then in the way. It was like that in grade school

too. I can remember being shattered when someone would 

just drop me. All that swagger and bravado junk, it was 

all a front. I've always been a weakling.

-

Remember that tree house I wrote about, in Avenel? The

one up in the oak tree behind my house, at the tracks? I'd go

up there for hours, just to sulk sometimes. Stare out at those

distant NYC buildings, and let my mind do the rest. Hurt was

hurt, and all that mattered, but in actuality nothing mattered

at all. I was far away  -  my path had already been cut for me

through the woods I had to cross. That was all out before me, 

and I knew it; I'd just sit there staring out and wondering how in

the crazy world I was going to manage to do all the things that

had been presented to me as a Mission.  I had already acquiesced,

and said yes, by coming back into Life. To finish the go-round 

now, alone or not, was all I could ever do. I sure did hate the 

loneliness. I would have carried anyone along with me, just to

ease the burden. Everything else paled. This was it.

-

One of the most beautiful things to me ever was the cold, and

the Wintry weather   -   not for any of the reasons you'd think,

 but actually just because of girls. I'd love to see girls, all wrapped

up in their big Winter coats, with scarves and hats and all those

things they have to keep them warm  -  all you'd see was the 

small bits of their faces and their nose. And their eyes. The

most beautiful thing in the world  -  a girl's eyes. Especially

when you see them all swaddled and bundled, in the cold. It's all

mystery and it's all communication  -  Spirit to Spirit and heart to 

soul. The bundling and the covering, that just all adds to it. Hard
 for me to say what I mean. It's human love, and it's an artistic 

sensibility too, and a message forever and ever and for and 
through the ages. Like there really is no time, when you view  
things with your Spirit. There never was a need for the 'spoken' 
word; everything was communicated voicelessly, and the use of 
words, in my estimation anyone, was through silence, through 
reading and writing, certainly not through talk or verbalizing, 
which was always ending up as meager time-fill, pleasantries 
and stupidities. no value at all. I wanted distance from things,
 and I wanted silence.
-
Arriving back in Avenel, it was a bit of decompression for a
few days, but I immediately knew it too wouldn't work. I always
thought there should someplace for kids who won't make it, to
go to, some halfway house someplace between running away and
suicide. I found out later there was, it's called drugs. New York City,
in the next few years, was to be full of that, though not for me. But
the walking awareness of death and destruction  -  the mental 
dismemberment of which I was not part of and was actually polar
opposite from  -  haunted me. I had nothing now. Everything still
ringing in my ears was just fucked-up sound memory of a late 16-year
old mind; like last year's outdated and already badly-viewed car design.