PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I would like to record one detail from my experience of entering college on September 9th, 1976, forty-seven years and four days ago.  This particularly memorable aspect has always been present in my mind, but I have only recently come to understand it.

We were scheduled to leave the small rural village in which I had been raised by about 9am that morning,  I had not seen my First Beloved since the prior Tuesday, and that only briefly due to parental restrictions (fear that, at the last minute, I might be persuaded to abscond and dash the hopes on which they had boasted to their siblings for most of my eighteen years).  A long dinner given for me the previous night, by some older friends who, having attended the same college, told me a little bit of what to expect, had been interrupted by my mother's frantic call that the hour was too late and I should be sent home immediately in order to rest well enough for the busy day ahead of me.

That busy day arrived; the car was packed; and, as I climbed into the backseat, I clutched a folder with a few pages of my poetry (what I then called poetry, crude and clumsy as it then was) to my chest.  I could not even look northwestward to the house at the upper end of our sloping street in which dwelled my First Beloved.

Before we went to the highway which would take us the college town, we stopped at a bank branch of the bank---not my parents' bank---that, during my senior year, I had begun using in order to further sever the similarities between my parents and myself.  That particular branch featured a "drive-in" window---considered, in those days, to be a novelty.  My father pulled the car into the lane, drove up to the window, and transacted my business, withdrawing money from my so-called "textbook" fund.  I was so overwhelmed with grief that I could not speak.

Yet, in my silence, I noticed a particular aspect of the light---the day was beautifully sun-drenched and cloudless---in this last part of the summer of 1976.  I had only seen that particular version, or aspect, of the light once before---on a Saturday in June (I think it was the 18th, but I cannot be sure), before my Beloved had helped me to find my c.b. handle, and the identity that allowed me to finally escape from my parents' shadow.  That light (on June 18th) seemed to form a bookend, so to speak, with similar light on September 9th---the summer of 1976.

I did not realize the kind of spiritual rhyme (to use a phrase modified from the words of Ezra Pound) represented by these two visualizations of that light (since that date, I have always called it "that light").  I have not realized its meaning, fully, until now---three months or so after my sixty-fifth birthday.  The sun is a star---as we all know (fourth grade science class, 1966-67).  My handle, to which I was led on Saturday, July 10th, 1976, was Starwatcher; which, decades later, evolved to Starward (with thanks to the Poets, Vergil and Thomas S. Jones, Jr.).  Although I, on Thursday, September 9th, 1976, felt like my whole world was being shattered a moment at a time, the light---by which a star may be watched---had not and would not fail me.  The light continued to arrive and surround the day, just as it had on June 18th; it bookended and bracketed that most spectacular summer.  Furthermore, the handle (or, in today's terms, the screen name) I had received had not abandoned and would not fail me.  It went with me to the college; and, in a way, it was like an internal center of gravity around which the mundane details of this new part of my life at college would revolve.  In early January, 1977, the handle was to be verbally assailed at a dinner table by a couple of supposedly enlightened and highly educated seniors---and it held firm, without collapse (without so much as even a tremor), and freed me from further obligation to take my meals with them.  (An unspoken tradition in the Dining Hall, at that time, was that freshmen who were invited and admitted to sit at tables primarily populated by Seniors were not permitted to speak freely; we were expected to listen attentively and speak only when called upon by our "betters.")  I was not sure if the seniors who insulted me, on that day in January, 1977, were most shocked by my defense of those who spoke on c.b. radios (either professionally or socially), or by my boldness to speak up during their lecture to me about my unacceptable connections to that particular "sort" of people.  

On the night of Thursday, September 9th, 1976, I wept myself to sleep quietly, as my roommate snored in the other bed in our room.  I felt almost entirely disconnected from everything I had known and cherished---since my earliest kindergarten memories to that marvelous and splendid summer of 1976.  Yet, within the storm of tears, choking sobs, and hitching breath, a calm spot existed---the authenticity and personal authority of my handle/screen name, beginning to organize and integrate the chaotic elements of the college life on which I had embarked; as it had brought me out from the shadow of my overbearing parents, and had freed me from the burden of my mundane first name---which, since sixth grade, bullies had mocked and used as a byword of contemptuous scorn and disdain.  (I should here, perhaps, mentioned another aspect of the c.b. that never fails to bring a smile to me.  The c.b. that I had purchased for my First Beloved and myself was defective from the factory---the defect being that the so-called governing device that kept the radio from broadcasting a more than five watts was not functional.  Our radio broadcast significantly higher, without the use of an illegal booster (called "a kicker"); the avoidance of any kind of illegal attachment was called, by my Beloved, "running barefoot"---a metaphor I loved immediately.  In August of that summer, we had added a power microphone, perfectly legal, that operated on a small double or triple A battery---I forget which.  It further enhanced the range and tone of our transmission.  I was cursed with a high-pitched, pipsqueak voice that our c.b. distorted into what apparently sounded like a deeply resonant bass---I never heard it myself, so I had to rely on how others described it.  People who met me in person, and heard a few words in my own voice, were shocked to know---and some actually doubted---that I was the Starwatcher; and oten, my Beloved needed to vouch for me.)

The next day, Friday the tenth, I had to participate in some useless "meet and greet" meetings.  Later, at the bookstore, having purchased my several textbooks, I also purchased the Selected Prose of John Milton.  At the Library, I checked out a book that was to have a lastingly and lingeringly happy effect on my life, Tom Cullen's masterful monograph, When London Walked In Terror---which I began to read just before midnight brought Friday night into Saturday morning, and finished just prior to Saturday's dawn.  (Milton's prose had to wait for a more convenient time.)  During that reading experience, I determined---and have never deviated from---my intention to concentrate on the fifth murder, the murder of Mary Kelly.

On Sunday, the twelfth, on the way to the dining hall for the evening meal (I had not yet been invited to the seniors' table; that was to happen during the next week), my roommate informed me that we would not be taking any further meals together.  As I ascended the stairs to the Dining Hall, he sat in the lobby below, and that particular breach was never repaired during the next four years, or in the decades since.  I think---I cannot prove---that he may have expected more of a response from me; but it was not to be forthcoming.  From that calm place within me, where the handle/screen name was busily organizing and integrating all of the aspects of my life as they flowed around me, I had no need to verbally retaliate. 

Some weeks later, I actually found the word "Starwatcher" used in reference to ancient Egyptian astronomers who were responsible to mark and interpret the passage of time:  the allusion to astronomy and archaeology, two of my early interests as a child, was particularly pleasant to me.  Shortly after that, I made my first, very tentative discovery of the Poetry of the Poet, Sundial, a poet who believed, as I do, that people need to love and be loved according to the natures given their souls, not controlled by societal, academic, parental, or political expectations.  

All of this was, I now realize, being organized and integrated into an orbit around the handle/screen name, Starwatcher.  And, at the proper time, Starwatcher would give way to, and evolve into, Starward.  And Starward, as an appellation, speaks to my soul about my three favorite Scriptures---Revelation 22:16, Matthew 2:2, and 2nd Peter 1:19.  From the perspective of my old age, despite my medical affliction, I realize now how much I am, and have been, blessed since the summer of 1976. and I offer my sincerest and humnblest gratitude to Love, Who is God, as the Beloved Apostle has taught and told us.

Starward