I remember being seventeen. We said, "drugs are good," and we meant it, and we were so very cool, and that was so long ago; long before any of our friends had died tragically. I was a romantic; a child of the Renaissance; I could recite poetry, and even write some, and I knew love was forever, and that was before alcoholism had claimed my high school sweetheart before she ever saw her mid forties.
I believed in truth, and even dared believe I knew what it was, and knew our generation was going to be the one that really mattered, and made this world better. I don't know what that was before. I talked to my mother the other day, and she told me how horrible this world has gotten, with all the pain, and suffering and violence.
"People are all just shooting and killing each other," she said, sadly, and I had to remind her of that little thing that happened during her teens that everyone nostalgically looks back on as World War II, when maybe 55 million people were killed violently; many of them civilians, including women and children, and how Jews were systematically rounded up and either worked to death, starved to death, tortured or experimented upon. Man, those sure do sound like the days.
I remember being seventeen, and feeling rejected, and so down and horrible that I didn't know if I could stand to live another day, but that was long before the day when I couldn't imagine not wanting to live, and being grateful I even get one more day at all.
It's easy to remember things, like when music was always good, and there was no "Get the Knack," or Captain and Tennile or even Tony Orlando and Dawn; just sweet, perfect music on every radio station, twenty four/seven, and angels came down and made us tuna sandwiches with mayonnaise and onions on rye.
I remember living in this perfect and yet terrible world; a world created by God, or nature, or whatever you wish to believe in, and inherited by Man, and left to rot like a dying carcass in the sun, and how that world somehow seemed to manage to cling to life day after day, year after year, decade after decade, on and on, until you run out of words to describe it.
I remember a lot of things, and sometimes, I remember what my point is, or was, and that is a very good day; a very good day indeed.
I believed in truth, and even dared believe I knew what it was, and knew our generation was going to be the one that really mattered, and made this world better. I don't know what that was before. I talked to my mother the other day, and she told me how horrible this world has gotten, with all the pain, and suffering and violence.
"People are all just shooting and killing each other," she said, sadly, and I had to remind her of that little thing that happened during her teens that everyone nostalgically looks back on as World War II, when maybe 55 million people were killed violently; many of them civilians, including women and children, and how Jews were systematically rounded up and either worked to death, starved to death, tortured or experimented upon. Man, those sure do sound like the days.
I remember being seventeen, and feeling rejected, and so down and horrible that I didn't know if I could stand to live another day, but that was long before the day when I couldn't imagine not wanting to live, and being grateful I even get one more day at all.
It's easy to remember things, like when music was always good, and there was no "Get the Knack," or Captain and Tennile or even Tony Orlando and Dawn; just sweet, perfect music on every radio station, twenty four/seven, and angels came down and made us tuna sandwiches with mayonnaise and onions on rye.
I remember living in this perfect and yet terrible world; a world created by God, or nature, or whatever you wish to believe in, and inherited by Man, and left to rot like a dying carcass in the sun, and how that world somehow seemed to manage to cling to life day after day, year after year, decade after decade, on and on, until you run out of words to describe it.
I remember a lot of things, and sometimes, I remember what my point is, or was, and that is a very good day; a very good day indeed.
