September, 1967

I:

September

Trapped in my hiatus between classes now I had slightly more than
two hours to kill before my next class, and I decided now to go
north, to explore an area of Piedmont I had not yet seen.

      I thought of that shapeless unknown area now as if it were
uncharted terrain, a vast mystery, and with the heightening
excitement of an explorer setting out on an adventure approached
my bike. Perched in a looped iron bike stand, it was a marvel, so
I thought, of the engineering art. And approaching it my spirit
rose just looking at its clean metal lines and spotless smooth
chrome; its gleaming stars of spokes perfectly radiating out
toward the perfect rubber circles of its wheels. The balanced
proportions and lightness of metal and the logic of this machine,
were, as a whole, a vivid paradigm for the efficiency of the
larger industrial world. Somewhere, at the seminal source of
these machines, there existed a larger human intelligence, which
could shape the raw materials of the Earth into such mechanical
miracles. I was proud to own this beautiful bike, and felt a deep
love for its clean lines, its character, even its tiny faults. I
undid the rubberized metal safety chain which held it secure to
the stand and put the heavy coils into a leather pouch which hung
from behind the seat. Clasping the handle bars, the bike lightly
responding to the slightest gestures of my palms, I walked it to
the street’s gutter and mounted between two cars.

     My stomach ground to the pit with hunger and I hoped that I
could also find some place to get a bite to eat before class.
Soon I was in a vast residential neighborhood, unseen by me
before. The dusky leaves hung very quietly over the street, and
it was a good street to bike on, with plenty of long smooth
asphalt stretches. I desired this quiet now and even the brooding
humidity of the day seemed less oppressive under the leaves and
on the long stretches of street. The houses here were simple,
recessed beyond broad front yards which were in various states of
disrepair. This was a lived-on street, an open street, a human
street, one on which the lives of the people who lived within its
houses emerged and found their expression on its lawns and
sidewalks. The trees and lawns and momentarily abandoned toys
here all came together complimenting one another as a living
human place, and my growing hunger pangs were occasionally
sharpened by the cooking odors which arose mysteriously out of an
occasional house.

     I biked on, glorying in the power of my legs which carried
me so swiftly forward. I was sweating profusely. And the hot air
felt wall-like now as I rushed peddling through it. There was
very little traffic on these streets and few people now were out
on the their lawns. A child on a tricycle paused in his furious
peddling along the sidewalk to watch me pass with an expression
of delighted admiration and waved. Like the fully grown adult
that I was I raised my large arm out into the air and waved back.
For the little child's smile seemed to cry out: Oh what a delight
it is for us to be out on the street together peddling on our
bikes. What wonder and joy! And I swiftly hurried on not knowing
where I was going and saw that this neighborhood, the further I
entered into it, remained much the same: large lawns and modest
small houses, a flat dusty expanse in the humid hot air, only
slightly protected by sparse young trees.

     How unlike my own neighborhood this part of town was! But
then eventually biking down the street my aunt's house was on,
Brown Avenue, the lane of oak trees on her street suddenly opened
up upon a broad boulevard. This was a mere block and a half from
where I lived and along this great boulevard a line of enormous
mansions stood facing each other across an amply grassy knoll.
This was Columbus Boulevard: broad, spacious, and ostentatiously
wealthy, I can still remember the great impression these
buildings made upon me the first time I saw them. Each stood in
its mismatching grandeur, for they possessed an eclectic
diversity of architectural styles combined with an unapproachable
inchoate haughtiness as if the lives within were very far removed
from the ordinary concerns of the world. In Tudor, Gothic,
Georgian, Modernesque, Beaux Arts, Renaissance, Provincial, and a
variety of Victorian styles each mansion ceremoniously thrust out
its grandeur and significance onto the casual passerby out on the
street, while at the same time retaining the very secretive and
private nature of the lives lived within, for in all those years
I lived in that neighborhood I rarely saw anyone even walking
from his driveway to a door, or merely standing about on the
front lawn. The grandeur of these haughty mansions was indeed
impressive, and their inhabitants acquired some of their import,
rubbing off on them, while at the same time there was something
unsettling about the power these buildings projected. For it
greatly distanced the inhabitants, I thought, from their fellow
humanity.

     But that was south down Brown Avenue: on the other side of
Main, where Brown continued simply as 22nd Street, the houses
quickly descended into varying degrees of poverty. And I not only
biked but often walked around by myself in that part of town,
witnessing an amazing variety of human life. Barbecues, beer
bashes, human voices and machine sounds, and the tinny static
music of portable radios filled the air. People would sit out on
their porches at night as I walked by and sometimes an old timer
would raise his countrified gnarly hand up to me with a hearty
greeting. And on the lawns and driveways of these homes the inner
lives of their inhabitants often found expression. Windchimes and
odd religious sculptures sometimes decorated these lawns. Toys
lay scattered about and children played out on the sidewalks near
the open streets. And there were numerous heartfelt home gardens,
simple flowers blooming in a great variety, jungles of lush
flowers humanizing the houses and the often shaggy and unkempt
lawns. Flowers which were meant to be looked upon and loved and
admired, all expressing the inner-heart of the inhabitants of the
houses, blooming and generously spent on creating this free
display of natural delicacy and beauty.

     Though I meant no one any harm on my long aimless walks (as
well as bike rides), I was just as often greeted by suspicion as
the raised hand of friendly greeting. Such is the gulf between
advanced age and youth: there was no way I could understand the
conditions of the numerous lives lived within these simple
houses, the wrecking force of the years, the conditioning
patterns of lives dedicated to hard work, day after day, and the
erosion of dreams and hope. And I walked as a youthful curious
stranger through these streets, an observer fascinated by
everything I saw: untouched by the all too public displays of
intimate life within these homes of the poor. Yet everywhere I
also encountered an odd unsettling and incomprehensible negative
wall, a wall erected by the adult world which contained and
guided me wherever I went, hinting, as with the pale vastness of
the long sky above these long ragged blocks, at a great
emptiness. And at times this sense of a great nothingness chilled
my heart with horror.

     Biking furiously now I tried to smother my hunger pangs with
the quick furious action of my legs. Block upon block of
symmetrical lawns and simple houses lay ahead of me. But the
further out I went the more rural the neighborhood finally became
and, having gone far enough, I turned about and headed back,
resolving to find some place where I could eat near campus.

                             * * *

Furiously I peddled past the dull sparkle of empty lawns, through
a muggy heat, on a silken tarred road over which few cars
progressed. The mood of this workingclass neighborhood was not so
much peaceful as deadly quiet, inactive, as if life here were
somehow held suspended. But actually between what and what it was
impossible for me to tell. No, the mood was not peaceful and was
disturbing in its awful broad emptiness.

     I peddled faster.

     And since I had swung around toward the river I approached
downtown now from the west. Truck and car traffic picked up and
small businesses began to appear in rows beyond the curbs. I
swung down a sidestreet to head toward Main, a sidestreet pocked
and torn by ancient cares, on which there was little traffic. And
my mind blazed with bright thoughts of good food and of the cool
restful restaurant I would eat in as I cautiously peddled around
gaping pot holes.

     Straining my eyes against the wind I searched for the tell
tale indications of some place, any place, where I could get a
quick bite to eat. But nothing there appeared. Numerous pick-up
trucks and cars were parked on swaths of cement and ancient
cobbles before the small businesses and an occasional trailer
truck brooded slowly along the narrow street. The neighborhood
was oppressive with the long sun-bitten languor of workaday
afternoons repetitively culminating in the rush hour, when the
area would become dead and abandoned at night. And from within
the recessed privacy of these small industrial businesses a dayin-
day-out routine appeared sullenly locked within an inevitable
logic of its own.

     But don’t these men eat? I could see the firefly sparks of a
welder’s tool flying through the shadows of an open-aired machine
shop. Tempted to stop and shout into the blackness, thereby
interrupting the man and his work, risking a rebuke, I sped on,
knowing that that intent busy man in a welder’s mask could have
told me where I could find a bite to eat. Here the going became
difficult, for the street was increasingly pock marked with potholes, and the traffic appeared illogical and haphazard. But I
sped on as quickly as I could, closely watching my watch,
determined now to get something to eat before appearing at class.
A simple sandwich would do and somewhere around here there had to
be some place where they were available. Just any lousy little
sandwich stand, grocery store, a guy out on the street with a
flimsy tray hanging from his shoulders selling them wrapped off a
careful pile. Anything!

     I became enraged at this irrationality, the brute refusal of
the physical world to provide me with such a simple and universal
need. Like the needle in the proverbial haystack, I knew that
such a place had to exist, somewhere, close by, for these men who
worked here had to eat. But the minute hand on my watch was
determinedly moving forward and I only had forty minutes left now
before the start of class. I finally decided that on this lightly
industrial, quiet street there were no restaurants, and my man
with a food tray slung tight to his belly would not materialize.
But then I suddenly found myself caught in a trap. Wedged in
between the broiling enamel of a car and the still-heated engine
of a pickup truck I had to allow the methodic passing of a semi
to cross my path.

     Then the truck stopped and I peered up at the sunless
aluminum of the high trailer. I was perfectly wedged between all
this machinery, and the only alternative to waiting for the truck
to move on was to pick up my bike and move around the car against
the wall. The second I had been forced to stop and dismount from
the leather seat I realized that I was pouring sweat. It ran in
rivulets down my forehead into my eyes, in streams along my
slickened back and chest and clung to me beneath my hot and funky
clothes. I felt trapped within machinery and the heated engine of
the truck stoked me like little red devils in Hell stoking the
damned with pitch forks. The unnatural intense heat of the engine
filthily prodded even more sweat to furiously pour, and in a
state of flashing red alarm I awkwardly lifted my bike and
carried it up over the hood of the parked car toward freedom.

     Arizona was not like this, I thought. The temperature,
though often much higher, was hot like a dry brick. And a man’s
pace in the beating sun would be slow. Cautious measures were
taken against provoking pores from flooding and, what’s more, in
the great heat of the sun there was something generous, life
enhancing. But here I had gotten caught in a man-made Hell which
exacerbated the seething humidity and natural heat of the day.
Snuggling within the warm shadow of a building I rested a minute,
my mind swimming now with the Hellish, broiling discomfort I
endured. Prickling, sweat mercilessly poured out against my body.
And I looked out at the hazy sun with an enraged rebuff at what
this day and this overbearing manmade machinery had done to me.
Whatever exhilaration I had felt by flying along the streets of
Piedmont, exploring, was now gone. And the thought of remounting
my bike out in that open sun was alarming. By now, in fact, I had
begun to feel like a filthy wet dish rag, one that had been
allowed to soak in the greasiest of greasy spoons as odd as that
might sound. And my pores refused to stop pumping out a maddening
sweat.

     Yes, I was aghast at the calm complacency of the few men I
saw moving about out in the sun: how could they even slightly
move in such conditions, much less work? The air was choked with
truck exhaust and with something greasy, a gray and black
sootlike substance which clung closely to the humid air. And the
sun was churning through this substance with a great intensity.
Standing motionless under the hot building’s shadow, a warm
breeze brought some, if unsatisfactory, relief. My furious
overheated pores were pumping futilely against this heat, but
gradually I began to cool down, and finally I moved out into the
open intensity of the sun. I had to eat and get to class. And
remounting my bike I immediately pumped more sweat as I first
wobbled and then, dismounting, walked my bike past the furious
overheated machinery of this street. For I rebelled at the
prospect of provoking yet more sweat.

     Air conditioning!

     I was convinced now that it was the greatest invention ever
devised by man. Beneath the open beating sun I dreamed now of
paradises of air conditioned restaurants, with their dry interior
air, cold and unnatural, and mountains of food, fresh hearty
food: sandwiches, salads, rare steaks, cold tangy drinks with
plenty of ice. How dry and cold the air would be! Yes, the trauma
of being isolated and captured within that machine made Hell had
made a huge impression on me. How could anyone work and live
within such an environment? I fled it now as if I were escaping
out of the open Lid of Hell. Here souls could be captured and
ruined and suppressed never knowing the glorious things of life
and the world. And I fled away from this horror which I had
captured fully now within my mind, another location on the map of
man’s adult nightmare world, knowing that with the whole strength
of my soul I would never be captured within it. Never! The men
who moved through this world seemed grim to me, hard as the dark
machinery they operated. And finally remounting my bike in the
hot open sun, I peddled away with all the horror and contempt my
innocent understanding could direct toward that world.

     Then I began to hear an odd distant thumping sound which
sounded vaguely like the beating of a huge bass drum. The sound
was curious not only because I couldn’t identify it but because
of the odd pauses between its acoustic expressions. A deep boom
and then within a meaninglessly long pause another deep boom.
Earlier that morning I had paused on my way to class to watch the
B and P Marching Band practice out on a soccer field. In the
distance the booming of the drums and the roar of the brass had
had a similarly distorted quality, carried and lifted in odd
musical chunks, as it were, by the air, reverberating off nearby
buildings. Could this be the marching band once again? But what
were they doing way over here, in this part of town, I wondered?
My curiosity was greatly aroused.

     I slowed down to a leisurely pace, even wobbling slightly,
to listen more closely. The atmosphere of abandonment on this
disused, rundown street was total. Then I heard a great human
roar, a massive distant roar, like the distant crowd roar in a
great athletic stadium. And then, as I began to near its source,
I heard a solitary male voice shout out which, in the still air,
sounded almost falsetto, piercing oddly high through the air.

     What could this be, I wondered?

     Overcome now with curiosity I peddled on more quickly. Then
another roar and the violent booming sound and then on top of
that, the sudden solitary rising wail of a police siren.
Insistently it screamed and screamed and I began to perceive what
I might be approaching. But was it possible?

     In that year I had seen many student demonstrations on
television but now to be actually blundering onto one struck me
as extraordinary. Then, menacingly, I heard the wail of another
distant police siren rising and, as if in response, the loud
defiant roar of the crowd.

     I became suddenly gripped with terror; a terror which ran
all the way up to the top of my head and through my legs down to
my feet. I felt it throughout my body and I suddenly had
difficulty controlling my bike. But I had to go on and see.

     I had to see.

     Both reason and a great alarm mingled quickly within my
crowded rushing thoughts now, for I had come extremely close to
the source of these sounds. But I resolved to go all the way for
I could not deny my curiosity nor swallow up my honor. For if I
had turned away now it would have been an intolerable act of
cowardice.

     I had no interest in politics, and I was half convinced in
1967 we should actually be in Vietnam. For weren't we fighting
for a great cause, for democracy, and to contain Communism? But
then, in spite of these patriotic views, neither was I hostile to
the students who demonstrated against the war. For didn't I too
share some of their frustrations with the world, with adult
society? I was neutral on the subject of the war and simply had
given it little thought: to me it had always been a mere nightly
drama on my television screen, possessing a certain excitement,
true, but very far away, just as these demonstrations had always
been. Exciting and dramatic and potent with meaning: but very,
very far away and impersonally abstract.

     But now, reality had suddenly caught up to me: I was
actually on the site of a demonstration and B&P had appeared in
numerous headlines throughout the world with the fury of its
student protests. During the preceding academic year, before my
arrival on campus, the state’s governor had been forced to
mobilize the National Guard and for an entire three weeks the
campus had been under a state of siege, with nightly curfews,
police patrols, huge numbers of reporters circulating about. And,
in spite of the formal ranks of the guardsmen and the presence of
their military equipment, there had been constant random acts of
violence. And sitting up close to my television set at home I had
nightly watched the furious battles between police and students,
enthralled by the scene, doubly enthralled, because this was the
university I would be going to in the fall. And now as I
approached the scene on my bike I was entering into the actuality
I had only distantly viewed on TV. And I carried the vivid image
with me of a berserk policeman furiously striking a student on
the head with his baton in the bright forefront of my mind. For I
had seen that too on the TV.

     Quickly I mentally formed an unconvincing rational that I
could hastily turn about and retreat if it ever became too
dangerous. And with a leaden insistence pumped reluctantly down
on the peddles forcing myself onward toward a nearby street
corner. And as the street noises became more clear and well
defined it struck me now as odd that the street I was on was so
completely abandoned and quiet.

     Now I could clearly hear the swollen chanting roar of the
students as they beat out their refrain. No more war! No more
war! Then a clearer, sharper wail of a police siren beating
wildly against the shimmering air and an occasional shout rising
with an alarming unique timbre of its own.

     My heart pumping up now into my mouth I dismounted and
cautiously walked toward the corner, ready to remount in a split
second. To take off as fast as I could. Like a sudden furnace
blast the noise greeted me once I stepped around the wall facing
the demonstration. About fifty yards away the students and police
were facing each other along two long ragged lines. A metal mesh
trash can had been set on fire and was rolling out onto the
middle of the street, bits of burning newspapers and paper trash
trailing in its wake through the mesh. At that second a student
was kicking the smoldering ball of burning trash in the direction
of the police. An awful roar of approval arose from the massed
students. Like a remote spectator up on the balcony in an immense
theater I stood transfixed now watching this scene, but here the
entire street had become the stage. And like a living stage the
action could suddenly burst out and rush toward me at any time.
There were only perhaps fifty short yards between me and the
action on this living stage. And from my secluded, unnoticed
corner I watched the tall gangling student, who appeared even
darker in the sun, quickly thrust his shoe toward the burning
trash can as he kicked it into the police. His work became more
difficult because the somewhat conical shape of the can kept
forcing it to swerve in short arcs and flying sparks and pieces
of burning litter rose and scattered about the air as the trash
quickly became a ball of fire. But cheered on by the massed
students behind him the long-legged, gangling tall student kept
forcing the trash can awkwardly forward in the direction of the
police with a reckless and determined daring. I was in awe of
this student’s reckless courage.

     I could recognize now what the crashing booming sound had
earlier been, and the probable focus of the demonstration. The
front window of a Marine Corps recruiting station had been
smashed in. Without breaking apart the glass had bent inward and
had shredded, outlining with sharp radiating streaks where the
blows had fallen. But now the students' attention was focused
upon the slow progress of the fiery trash can. Rigid with a
spellbound anxiety I marveled at the reckless nature of this
provocation of the police, who stood now in hard and barely
restrained ranks like an awful beast yearning to be unleashed.
The air was solid now with a huge tension: or could it have
merely been the fear which gripped my heart? And my response to
it?

     Tightly holding the handlebars of my bike, prepared to mount
in a split second, I felt totally unfit and unprepared to respond
properly when the inevitable explosion came. I genuinely believed
I was risking my life in this moment and was horrified by the
thought of being clubbed down onto the street by a mindless,
berserk policeman. When this scene finally exploded what would I
do? And in my present state of mind squeamishly wondered, with an
awed disbelief, how these massed students could cheer the tall
student on into kicking that ball of fire into the police line
with so great a passion when they had to know it could mean their
sudden destruction? And alone and unnoticed at my street corner I
was similarly amazed by the complete abandonment of the area I
occupied, hoping that this would somehow act as a powerful
talisman to protect me from the policmen's clubs, thinking no
berserk cop would come after me when I was so far from the center
of the action.

     Now from out of the police line, quickly passing through it,
a Marine sergeant in full dress uniform appeared. He stood out
not only with the splendor and bold colors of his blue and red
uniform but with his proud military bearing. He was a fairly
short man with a powerful chest broadly expanding out against a
Sam Brown. His head was bare and even from this distance I could
see the clear flat outline of a perfect military crewcut. And by
comparison the line of policemen standing at his side appeared,
as a whole, physically unfit and undisciplined. A sad lot indeed.

     Yes, a short man with an enormous impressive chest he walked
with quick confident steps out toward a silver headed, middleaged
police captain. At the instant of the Marine’s appearance the
students began to loudly shout and wildly hoot, hurling a barrage
of verbal taunts and insults toward the sergeant. Then my
attention was abruptly drawn away from this by the crashing,
booming sound once again. Two students had run up to the
recruiting station window and throwing their weight fully behind
the blow had smashed a dark heavy ramming object into the
inwardly sagging glass. Then as they rebounded preparing to hurl
their weight at the window yet again the police suddenly broke
ranks and charged. In a wild panic the crowd ran shouting in
every direction and the cops lunged wildly into their midst,
their batons raised and flailing, beating down on any part of
body or head they could strike; faces, shoulders, legs, chests,
breasts. Transfixed with horror I watched a cop beat down now a
fleeing girl, and as if she were merely a limp ragdoll,
recklessly, violently slapped his handcuffs on her wrists as she
lay sprawled out helplessly across the sidewalk. Now the Marine
sergeant, with an impulsive outburst of rage, kicked the burning
trashcan back toward the tall gangling student, who, oddly
enough, stood calmly tall in his place as if the mayhem all about
him didn't affect him. For the Marine sergeant's gesture was more
symbolic than practical: it was a furious show of contempt and of
a superior authority.

     Now some students were running wildly toward me, the cops,
in a tight crouching furious charging posture, directly behind
them. This was no time to exhort or plead that I was merely a
curious innocent bystander, passing by. And I instantly mounted
my bike and peddled for all my worth back in the direction from
which I had come. I didn't truly know where I was going, only
that the street ahead of me appeared to be empty. That there were
no cops or demonstrators there. Being on a bike I could actually
make good headway and when I glanced back I could see the police
methodically clubbing some students who had reached the very same
spot on the sidewalk I had just been standing in. Up went their
batons, down went their batons, in rapid swift vicious arcs which
swooped out of the air onto the stooped heads and shoulders of
students who attempted to protect themselves with their bare arms
and hands. Other students spilled out of the street now, running
in a wild panic, some following in my wake. I heard a sudden
booming concussive sound, like the starting canon at a college
football game. What could that have been, I wondered, for it
didn't come from the direction of the Marine Corps recruiting
station. Now there was a strange silence all about me. The crowd
of protesters no longer were shouting but everywhere they were
running and the peculiar stillness was only occasionally broken
by the sudden shrill urgency of a police siren.

     But now a policecar with no siren was tearing down the
street right behind me, pursuing a group of demonstrators who
were quickly running on foot. I had no idea where any of them had
come from, but for a lengthy moment several were dangerously
close to my bike and the police car, paying no heed for anyone’s
safety, was pressing close up now onto their backs. Nearly
falling onto the street I suddenly toppled off the bike into a
recessed doorway where three other students already stood pressed
huddled against the glass of a window in its deepest recess. The
policecar immediately sped by. Then I instantly broke out of the
doorway and seeing the police car quickly backing up I had no
choice but to remount my bike and peddle in the direction I had
just come from.

     More students were running wildly toward me now, in an utter
wild confusion, and the police car stopped and three cops
immediately were out of the car shouting at the huddled students
to come out of the doorway, their batons raised. I saw no choice
now but to try to circle back through some parked cars, to try to
furtively slip by in the general confusion without being singled
out.

     Many students were running on foot and now another police
car approached from the opposite direction. I had to stop and was
forced to stand pressed close up to a wall hoping the cops
wouldn't notice me as they directed their attention at the
students who were massed now in the middle of the street. A new
phalanx of cops came running in a paramilitary fashion down the
street from the direction of the demonstration. More students and
more police quickly appeared. I was wedged in and trapped now
against the wall but I feared to go out into the middle of the
street.

     Then with a popping rattling noise a grey canister came
bouncing suddenly down the street, tear gas ribboning and
billowing out into the hot air with the logic of the warm breeze.
There was a great deal of screaming now, the cops shouting
furiously and the hysterical high-pitched intense screams of
girls who were shouting not so much out of fear for their own
safety but out of horror for the brutality they were witnessing.
Another tear gas canister popped and quickly rattled down the
center of the street, very clamorously it seemed to me, as tear
gas trailed and ribboned out in its wake. The air was becoming
quite cloudy now and like wanderers in a strange and surreal
landscape many students began to cough and gag and clutched their
faces as they struggled out in a blind confusion from the barely
visible crowd.

     The infuriated cops kept up their steady brutal work,
flailing in every direction: and like hunters who had too much
game to catch allowed some students to pass by and randomly
concentrated on others. Singling some out. One helpless student,
clutching his face, was beaten down to the pavement by a group of
cops who crowded close around him. In the overall confusion arms
and batons and even elbows were used as prods and clubs and
struck out in every direction. A group of students then jumped a
cop and quickly beat him down and then disappeared into the
overall confusion. Miraculously the cloud of tear gas had not
edged up over against my wall. I had a narrow corridor through
which I could escape now and had no choice but to bike like mad
through this opening. Hoping I could get away. The cops were all
wearing gas masks now and in their decreased humanity appeared
all the more menacing. I heard more approaching sirens. And to my
amazement as I biked out of the choking cloud past a group of
distracted cops who stood out on the action’s edges I saw the
mobile unit of a television crew cheerfully parked among the
police cars. The men from the media, dressed not too unlike the
students, were calmly taping the riot. And incongruously a
newscaster in a dark blue blazer and red tie, the sun reflected
brightly onto his face with an upheld silver reflecting panel,
was reporting the event, calmly interviewing one of the student
leaders about the goals of the demonstration. Wishing I could
somehow merely disappear now I hurriedly slipped through the
numerous jammed parked cars, walking my bike with a quick
extremely tense step praying no cop would suddenly notice me. But
to my horrified chagrin I saw now that several demonstrators were
swiftly following in my trail, right up behind me, and one
possessed a grin on his face as he idiotically pantomimed a
stealthy sneaky walk past the parked cop cars and made grotesque
faces at them. Then, their faces suddenly expanding with an
astonished amazement, the cops noticed our little group weaving
gaily by. In less than an instant they were locked in a furious
run toward us. Jamming the foolishly grinning student aside I
pushed my bike with a mounting panic through the last remaining
spaces between the cars. In a fast run now I mounted the bike and
peddled as fast as I could, the students behind me tumbling now
through the narrow passageways between the cars and leaping over
hoods as they also broke away into a run. The cops, dark blue
figures appearing as bitter and harsh as the streets they
patrolled, were in full chase now and cornered a few of the
fleeing students whom they violently flung toward the pavement,
arresting them. And the rest still pursued the others who ran in
a scattered aimless fashion now down the street.

     Then another siren. Was there no way of escaping this
violence and madness? I swerved to get off the street going down
an empty dirt alley which ran between the backs of several
residential houses. My bike couldn't grip the earth and properly
stand upright in the uneven grooves which ran on either side of a
grass-tufted mound. I had to run my bike and half staggered and
half ran beneath the incongruously peaceful overhanging leaves of
trees which shaded the alley. There were many flowers and
twisting green vines absorbing the hot autumn sun with a dry
thick intimate abandon. Some students were distantly following
now in my wake, entering the alley at a full clip. A police car
stood now at the distant opening and then with the full awful
momentous power of hard steel and rubber gripping earth and
gravel the car came running down the uneven ruts of the alley. I
had no choice now but to run my bike up a cement driveway, hide
it as quickly as I could within a narrow slot between a garage
and a brown wooden fence, and using the bricks of the garage wall
as stepping stones to fly up over the tall fence into whoever's
backyard I would unceremoniously and suddenly be trespassing on.

     I landed within some flowerless thick bushes, into a tumid
dank obscurity, into a wilderness of freely growing plants. An
ancient gnarled tree rose half dead, half alive, above me, its
tiny spiked leaves pointing down toward the earth. One rheumatic
limb pointed leaflessly up toward the hard sun as if with an
awful significance. Then I heard the swift heavy crunching sound
of the police car passing by on the other side of the fence.
Gasping deeply I rested now, lying flat and still on my back on
the rich empty hospitable earth. In great heaving gasps I gulped
in the air. And waited.

     But as I lay within this wild abandon I considered my newest
problem: on whose property was I trespassing? And I wondered how
could I get out of here without any further awful encounters? But
now, exhausted, still panting, I lay hidden away on the cool
shadowy earth, staring up at numerous flying buzzing insects who
droned indifferently within the twisting leaves. The early autumn
sun dappled and hot shined very peacefully above me. If only I
could get out of here without any further violent encounters.

     I suddenly heard an intentionally pointed and artificial
clearing of a man's throat. My heart collapsing, I braced myself
for the wanton lies and explanations I would have to hastily
produce. Property, after all, is property in America, and finding
a strange man, whatever his good intentions, hiding in the bushes
of the backyard of your house is not generally taken lightly.
Especially when the police are chasing after him. Turning my head
toward the coughing sound I could only see the bright glimmer of
the sun mingling in the obscurity of dark leaves, a large fly
buzzing through twisting avenues of twigs. With no one in sight.

     The basso profundo of the throat artificially clearing, with
an extra touch of exaggerated humor, was pointed meaningfully
toward me again. Again I lifted my head up still not able to
determine its source; only a vast sun-dazzle reflected on brown
and green, the intimacies of a crowded backyard, the earthy
shadows of the gnarled half-dead tree rising above me. Rising my
full height up now out of the bushes, prepared to make full
restitution for whatever damage I may have done, plausible
explanations hastily forming, I looked into the open dazzle all
about me.

     About fifteen feet away, on a long green and red plastic
chaise longue, lay spread out the figure of a man. At first I
incongruously thought I may actually be looking at a bum and
couldn't understand why he appeared there. Hair long and matted,
dark bearded and quite long too, appearing physically dark in
faded blue jeans, with a dark brown tan, bare footed, this
mysterious figure of a man smiled merrily at me. He appeared to
be only two or three years older than me, but in every aspect
seemed so much more mature and experienced. I had never seen
anyone quite like this before.

     "Want some lemonade?" he cheerfully asked.

      Dripping with sweat, rising foolishly up out of his bushes,
I only could gratefully whisper a soft yes.


                            II:
                  A Ridiculous Wise Clown

Through a dark screen door we entered the back of my host's
house. Inside it was dark and cool, quite pleasant. For we had
entered into a large kitchen where an antique black monastery
table dominated the space of the room. The walls here were dark
beige uncovered expanses, broken only by a few framed watercolors
of wooded wildlife scenes, a large railroad calendar, two windows
looking out onto the backyard, and numerous copper cooking
utensils which hung on a heavy iron rack set against the wall.
Through the light screened door we had just entered nature
appeared brightly green and glistening. I could hear its active
silence clearly as I stood quietly by the large table. A spicy,
warm odor of recent cooking clung to the air, which brought my
lulled gastric juices to a sudden unwelcome life once again.

     "The cops get pretty crazy out there sometimes. But then so
do the students," my host chuckled. "Were you a participant in
the demonstration? "

     "No." I said, wondering at my host's intimate familiarity
and knowledge. "I just happened to be passing by."

     "An innocent bystander,” he laughed. “The cops don't stop to
make distinctions when they go berserk and start clubbing
everyone in sight. I'm glad to see you got of out of there
alive."

     This note of basic sympathy drew me toward him with the
simple and uncomplicated falling away of my reserve. And as we
calmly talked now we maintained an integral, respectful distance,
sizing each other up. But within this distance I sensed a
mounting feeling of great human energy and life. What this
strange appearing man said rang true and proper. Though at first
uneasy about his appearance - I, like so many of my male
contemporaries in the long gone sixties, had drilled into me that
only girls wore their hair long. Though there was nothing
feminine about the course, masculine sheen of my host’s hair,
which fell straight black down past his ears over his shoulders.
And I was soon impressed by the natural charm of his numerous
illustrative physical gestures and expressions. It was all very
strange and new to me. Yet I also sensed that it possessed a
great validity of its own.

     Within the green glitter of the sunlight which streamed
through the screened-in back door he opened the refrigerator
door.

     "Would you like some apple wine instead?"

     "No thanks," I said, reacting with sudden distaste.

     Yes, I didn't drink at that time. Drunks were merely comic
and pathetic characters to me, and whenever offered a glass of
the stuff, whether it be wine or distilled spirits, I declined. I
just didn't like the taste of alcohol. It tended to burn my
palate and harshly ruin the taste of whatever it was mixed in.
But the lemonade I saw in the refrigerator appeared clean and
natural and my mind lit up with the idea of enjoying a cold
glass. I asked my host for a glass of lemonade.

     "Are you hungry?"

     I wanted to lie, not to take advantage of my host's
generosity, but my stomach had begun to grind and make
incongruously comic noises which I couldn't suppress as I
helplessly stared at the bright cornucopia of gleaming food
within his refrigerator. Without my saying a word my smiling host
good naturedly told to me to simply help myself.

     Trembling with a barely controlled eagerness, my mouth
watering, swallowing hard, I started to build a sandwich. My host
sat down now at the other end of the long black monastery table,
the glistening cold bottle of apple wine resting before him. Out
from under the table his legs stretched out, crossed lazily at
the ankles. Two large naked bulbous toes twitched humorously as
if sympathetically accompanying whatever he said: like little
batons.

     "The cops hate the college students. Just on general
principles. They don't care whether you're for the war or against
the war. It's a kind of class warfare out there and the fact that
so many students are against the war just riles the cops up all
the more. They're all flag wavers, the cops, you know, and
patriots and they believe every good decent red blooded American
boy should do his duty and go off to this crazy war."

     I removed a platter of cellophane covered cold cuts from the
refrigerator, a head of sparkling lettuce, a cold bottle of salad
dressing, and a bright red ripe tomato. He pointed toward a
drawer beneath a cupboard.

     "The knife," he offered.

     Overeager with hunger I tried to suppress my awful greed and
to remain well mannered. But my hands involuntarily trembled as I
removed the light cellophane wrappers from some ham, awkwardly
trying to properly place the resistant cellophane neatly on the
table. He watched this procedure as if totally distant and
abstracted and I began to feel as if I could do as I wished with
his food. That it would be okay with him.

     My over-salivating mouth and tongue made it difficult for me
now to speak. "Thanks," I said, nearly slobbering. He pored a
little more apple wine into his glass and brought it up now to
the edge. With a pedagogic air of self-confidence he looked up
now at the ceiling and continued.

     "When the cops go berserk they don't read you your Miranda
rights but whack you over the head. They don't ask you if your
merely going out to the grocery or to give your old crippled
grandmother a stroll through the park in her wheelchair. They
just take it for granted that you're complicit because you're
there and because you are a college student. They all come from
blue collar backgrounds, the cops do, and remember when they were
kids how they hated their teachers and those middleclass kids who
went on to college."

     I was swallowing saliva down almost as quickly as I was
mounting layers of ham and tomato and sliced lettuce on the thin
white sandwich bread. Finally I flopped the top slice of bread on
top and pressed it all down. My mouth a greedy wide open
salivating cavern, I wedged the thick corner of the sandwich in
between my teeth, pushed and bit down. Cheeks bulging out like
rodent pouches, I looked now in bright eyed awe at my host.

     "You are a college student aren't you?"

     I nodded yes.

     "From the Southwest?"

     I nodded again, still unable to speak.

     "I can tell from the tan,” he said. “In the Southwest
everyone tans differently. A somewhat redder tint, like the
Indians down there. I have a theory that the reason American
Indians have a redder colored skin is from the effects of
centuries of being under the Southwestern desert sun. Perhaps
that's why blacks are black, because of the effects of the
African sun."

     A pulpy cud of moist ham and bread and lettuce and salad
dressing came perilously close to being spat out in a rather
disgusting ball. For I suddenly laughed abruptly at what he had
said. What a truly strange and magnificent and ridiculous notion,
I thought. But did I really know that it wasn't true? I really
didn't one way or the other, I had to admit.

     "What part of the Southwest?" he asked. He appeared to be
genuinely curious.

     Gagging eagerly the half masticated mouthful down into my
impatient, awaiting stomach I obtained enough space in my mouth
now to say, "La Mesita, Arizona."

     As if he could fix me with this geographical location he
looked at me now with a new understanding. And under his close
scrutiny I felt like some biological bi-product of the desert
ecology which had developed only in the earth of La Mesita. I had
an urge to tell him that I didn't belong to the local Chamber of
Commerce, and that I was really much larger in truth (as well as
much smaller) than the place I had circumstantially grown up in.

     "La Mesita," he said, "Sure. I've passed through there. If
you don't stop for the stop light at its crossroads you could
pass through it all in two minutes." And he laughed.

     I felt instantly embarrassed by this provocative assertion
of a simple truth. And I had an urge to challenge him. What's
more, it required more like twenty minutes to drive from one
boundary of the town to the other. For there was also a great
deal of empty desert to drive through.

     "And where are you from?" I asked challengingly, hoping we
could become equals. That he would have to confess to an equally
unremarkable and out of the way birthplace.

     "New York," he casually stated. And now I looked at him with
a new understanding, though I had never been to New York: the
colossal city of skyscrapers, enormous steel spans, bridges,
endless teeming streets which ran on for miles, heads bobbing and
packed along avenues in crowded unremitting motion as portrayed
in all the movies and newsreels I had ever seen. I couldn't truly
place him yet I had a clear impression and vision of where he was
from. The expressions on our faces were now different than what
they had been just a minute earlier as we closely associated each
other with our places of origin. And uneasily I wondered if he
wanted to tell me now that he didn't belong to the New York
Chamber of Commerce?

     Then we both laughed: a sudden flash of mutual clairvoyant
friendly understanding of what had been occurring. And with that
understanding the tension that had developed was suddenly broken
and we looked at each other with an appreciative interest in our
individual past backgrounds. We were both in the town of Piedmont
now with our pasts behind us and our far more important futures
lay far larger ahead.

     "We call this house the 'Underground Railroad,'" he informed
me calmly. "If you had jumped the fence next door the super
patriot Nazi who lives there would probably have shot you."

     I offered a silent prayer of thanksgiving to the various
unseen gods that be who had quietly protected me.

     "You're not the first one we've given umbrage to while the
cops and students play out their little drama out there.
Sometimes the tear gas even seeps into the house. When that
happens things are really crazy out there because this is usually
a pretty quiet part of the neighborhood."

     He brought his glass up once again with wine, a delicate
glass cone which sparkled with a golden color. The bottle raised
now in his hand he gestured questioningly toward me.

     Gluttonous sweat bursting from my forehead as I stuffed the
remaining hunk of sandwich down, I shook my head no. The thought
of wine, the acidic bitter alcoholic taste of wine, yes, seemed
unwholesome to me: I didn't know enough then to realize he was
inviting me to join him up there on the heady pleasant high plain
he was approaching.

     "There are three kinds of people in the world," he suddenly
announced, his manner changing. As if he were about to say
something both profound and comical.

     "Sheet metal. Plastic. And organic. The cops are definitely
sheet metal. The university bureaucrats who encourage them on are
plastic. But who are the organic souls?"

     There was a sudden light slamming of a light door in another
part of the house. My host's face suddenly re-formed into a
brilliant anticipatory smile: even the balls of his extended toes
seemed to flush now as I heard a woman's light footsteps coming
toward our room through the house.

     Guiltily tensing up, I prepared myself for the rebuke my
host had not offered, wiping bread crumbs off my mouth. For the
evidence of my greed lay spread out on the table before me just a
few inches before my bald gluttonous face.

     The air became perfumed with a scent of lilacs and clover,
something heady of the earth, as with a sudden electric presence
a woman with the most beautiful features I had ever been in close
proximity to entered the kitchen. Every object in the room, from
the walls themselves to the tiny book of matches which lay open
on the table, seemed vitally polarized now about her presence.
For she filled the room with a delicate but powerful force, and I
sprang up straight involuntarily, not so much out of polite
habit, but out of a need to realign the unexpectedly excited
currents within my body. I couldn't take my eyes off the perfect
classic features of this woman’s face as with a lightly perfumed
breeze she swept through the kitchen with a large paper bag of
groceries in her arms, beaming brightly at both of us. And I was
struck by the apparent attention she was paying to me, with a
smile which fully proved that flesh could glow and sing and
warmly shine with healthy life.

     "Kramer, who's your friend?" she said setting the large bag
down upon the counter.

     "Another refugee," Kramer, my host, said smiling, and then
shook his head smiling more deeply, as if savoring an irony.

     "He's more polite than you are," she teased with the
delicate breath of the outdoors still clinging to the air about
her.

     Rising tall above the table I foolishly felt like the long
awkward string bean adults had sometimes likened me to throughout
high school; a gangling awkward tall object rising high above the
kitchen table with white knuckles which had nothing to touch. For
the politeness she had complimented me for seemed like an acute
embarrassment to me now.

     "I'm Ellen. And this is Stephen, Stephen Kramer. We all call
him Kramer."

     "I'm Jamie Budlow," I awkwardly, dutifully responded. "They
all just call me Jamie." And they both laughed sympathetically at
my weak witticism. But the room was filled with the cheerful
happy song now of their laughter, and pleased with their pleasure
I smiled with them, happily bathing in the rolling bright chorus
of their honest acceptance.

     Strange about life. Just a short time before I had been an
empty mere human husk, draining sweat against a hard and hostile
environment, a mere object to be beaten down by my fellow
creatures dressed in harsh unfriendly blue uniforms designed just
for that purpose. Some part of me, during that episode, had
escaped my essence for awhile and had wondered through unbound
space searching for a home, unity, a welcome place to be. And now
with my two new-found friends I felt that essential human essence
return to fill its rightful place and grow with the life of my
own being. I stood taller, but not in a stringy and awkward
manner like a long string bean, and my knuckles were content to
touch the bare air. Yes, their ongoing laughter was confirming my
worth, and though it had been based upon a feeble sorry joke, it
was the basic nourishment I grew on. I laughed with them; from
joy, from a heightened sense of being, from an emerging wholeness
of all the bright possibilities of life. And with this laughter
they now became my unconditional friends and no bitter sharp tiny
grains or needles, those endless pricklings and discomforts in
human social life, could stab the substance out of that
friendship.

     Gradually a neutral quiet superseded the rich human warmth
of their ringing laughter. My two new friends were both allied in
my favor, and I wonder today if they could have fully conceived
my gratitude? I was so proud to be the friend of my friends, so
proud to have been accepted and assimilated by two such
magnificent people.

     Ellen and Kramer, Kramer and Ellen, they seemed so
rightfully united. And each seemed to also enhance the other. And
I respected Kramer all the more since he appeared not to be
domestically subdued by Ellen. For he retained a certain
independence which expressed to me a dedication to some higher
purpose of his own. Their union didn't cross a wall of Kramer's
making and watching them both I could see a discrete space, a
distance, between them which Ellen looked across as he talked.
What Kramer's greater purpose was I couldn't know, but
intuitively I was drawn to and respected this resolute
independence. And it was also revealed in his independence of
dress, in his beard, in every motion of his body.

     I needed a woman, wanted a woman, but I would never become a
woman's slave; nor would I ever be cowed into domesticity. It
seemed normal to me that two people united should also retain
their independence, their freedom of mind and being. How simple
it would be, and whenever I encountered two young simple souls
who had recently married, who had set up house and had created a
protective wall against the world and I was forced to speak to
them as if they were one, each speaking back to me for the other,
I would become filled with a kind of nauseated rage and disgust.
I wanted to smash through their complacency, to reach them
through their protective wall, separate them, kick them into
individual life; and naturally enough they would view me as a
threat to them, an enemy. And I would want to smash down the
implied smug superiority of the safe and sensible and secure
single face, wall, front, they had chosen and presented to the
world.

     But Ellen and Kramer struck me as too spirited to become
completely identified as one. And from my own remote distance I
could only guess at the mystery of their union, for I was too
youthful to detect the tell-tale signs of its essence. What a
beautiful woman Kramer had chosen! And as I sat in the kitchen at
their table I could only wonder at the accomplished fact of his
having found such a woman, and having become allied with her out
of the myriad separatenesses of all the world's lonelinesses. An
accomplished fact! How I yearned to accomplish the same fact!
What Kramer had found was what I dreamed of and imagined and
lusted for, even within the pathetic glossy pages of my porn;
that idealized union with a beautiful and spirited woman who
would transport me into the mystery and ecstacies of love!

     Or so I thought. Ellen sat down now at the table, a third
presence, a jewel shining with inner life, and I couldn't help
but be physically stirred by the closeness of her physical
presence. Through her I had to look at Kramer for she sat between
us now at the table, the long black monastery table which seemed
to absorb the outer sunlight. Kramer refilled his glass again.
And in profile her face became a milky white, a delicacy of
perfection with perfect classic features set against a luxuriance
of dark brown wavy hair. There are some women whose beauty can be
cold, even flat and unexciting, women who merely possess a kind
of simple sculptural beauty but without an inner warmth or life
or any excitement in their features; just as there are some women
whose features would actually be homely had they no great inner
vitality, something exciting, sexiness, call it what you will.
But Ellen's beauty was both, throbbing with inner-life, so that
even in a calm relaxed pose the relaxed parts of her body, the
line of her curved slender neck or a beautiful hand lying still,
expressed a great vivid excitement, something uniquely feminine,
a certain delicacy or warmth which came from deep within, evoking
then within me a bitter-sweet longing for the greater
possibilities of life.

     So the three of us sat and talked as the gathering dusk
turned more deeply into a warm dull glow through the screen door
and two windows, vibrating with the slow accumulation of
approaching evening. Time waned away until even the darkness
softly veiled out the clear features of my hosts who sat now,
aghast as ghosts, at table, and our voices accumulated a greater
melodic significance. Or rather Kramer's, for he was on that
exalted high plain steady drink had brought him to, and he spoke
from within that place now with a clear white illumination. He
didn't falter or teeter over the edges of that plain, but
gathered up within himself the transcendent and intense wisdom
the apple wine focused upon, painting images in words like an
explorer wandering among the groves of the gods. Ellen sat very
still and erect and I sat very happy and at ease with this scene.
Kramer's words became sharper now with a baritone throb, with a
timbre set against the throbbing quiet and growing darkness. And
Ellen's voice became even softer, cooing through the soft
gathering darkness, redolent now with the inner life of her
beauty, like a chime or bell, as quietly she interjected her
brief thoughts and comments into Kramer's monologue.

     And what a monologue! For compelled by the white
illumination of apple wine Kramer had taken command of the table.
It was as if Ellen and I were both merely guests now sitting at
Kramer's table. And I was electrified by the ringing, open truth
of what he said. For here for the first time in my life I was
matching thought for thought with another human being who
expressed my most secret concerns: who had touched the core of my
frustrations with the world. Who communicated with me!

     "The life-eaters and life destroyers," Kramer reiterated
over and over, "those mesomorphic souls who quash the joy out of
day just on general principles, nip it at the bud, saying no to
everything just on general principles with the enormous unmovable
stolidness of their stupidity. The no-sayers who play it safe and
automatically balk at any new idea. Glaciers of stupidity,
unmovable stupidity, the life-eaters and life destroyers, those
pinched and greedy souls who set up solid walls not only against
ideas but against any behavior they find threatening simply
because it's different.... "

     How I thrilled at these putdowns! It allowed me to surmount
all those adults and youths who had constantly discovered
sinister motives even in my most innocent acts: though in my soul
of souls I knew there was nothing wrong either in motive or in
fact with the sweet exuberance of my behavior, which sought
expression.

     Nipped at the bud! How often within the harsh walls of the
adult world, within the narrow confines and senseless order of
its puzzling, remote authority, had my innocent exuberance been
nipped at the bud to wilt with an unborn death agony! The life
eaters and life destroyers! How well I knew them, for hadn't my
dreams and life been thwarted on numerous occasions by such
negative and narrow souls? Kramer's harangue sounded in truth
like a freedom song to me, and I listened to it stirred, exulting
in its message as I would to any great inspirational song. It was
both a trumpet blast and a benediction, and like the subversive
message of all great stirring music it peeled away layers of
darkness and inhibition toward the promise of pure, unbounded
freedom and being.

     Kramer was now mimicking a ridiculous grimace, curdling the
lines of his mouth up into a grotesque image of a confused and
negative stupidity: his intensely twinkling eyes bobbed in
circles about his head as he directed the force of his
exaggerated grimace toward Ellen and me as we both laughed.

     "No!" Kramer cried out emphatically.

     "No! They say no to everything! Whatever it is. These
spiritual and mental midgets. These no-sayers, life eaters, lifestranglers, with their unending stinginess of spirit and meanness of soul. And who are the life-givers, the life bringers, the life-breathers? Who are the organic souls?”

     Kramer paused. And staring defiantly toward us chanted: "Be
ye drunk! Be ye drunk with wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as
you please. But be ye drunk!" And Kramer chanted now the famous
words of Baudelaire's great poem.

     His chant, both in French and in English, extolled the
forces of life gathering Ellen and me within it. And in the near
full darkness he drained the last drop out of his wine bottle and
carefully placed it now on top of his head, delicately balancing
it. Perched against the dark, his body still spread out, the
balls of his feet appearing white, the chair tipped back, the
long empty bottle precariously pointing up toward the ceiling
from his head like a gleaming glass spire, his wine-enrichened
chant emerged: "Be ye drunk, always. Nothing else matters; this
is our sole concern. To ease the pain as Time's dread burden
weighs down upon your shoulders and crushes you to earth, you
must be drunk without respite. And if sometimes on the steps of
palaces, on the green grass, in the dreary solitude of your room,
you should wake and find your drunkenness half over or fully
gone, ask of wind or wave, of star or bird or clock, ask of all
that flies, of all that sighs, moves, sings, or speaks, ask them
what time it is: and wind, wave, star, bird, or clock will
answer: 'It is time to be drunk! to throw off the chains and
martyrdom of Time, be ye drunk; be ye drunk eternally! With wine,
with poetry, or with virtue, as you please. But be ye drunk!'"

     And then, as if suddenly returning to our present world,
Kramer grinned, the peaked glass tower pointing straight up into
the darkness at the ceiling. And his face seemed to glow with an
exhausted silence.

     "That's poetry!" he exclaimed with a surge of wine-thickened
admiration.

     Yes. Be ye drunk. On wine, or poetry, or virtue. What you
will. But be ye drunk. I thought of the vast homely residential
neighborhood I had peddled furiously through earlier that day, of
the pale intense sun which had beat down upon a sparse monotony
of houses and lawns, of the great sense of time I had felt
peddling furiously through that neighborhood as if it had been
suspended in emptiness with neither beginning nor end. And of how
all the empty live-a-day monotony of life in that neighborhood
had culminated finally into the horror of that light work-a-day
industrial neighborhood where I had been trapped between broiling
metal and baking brick, gasping in the churning cauldron of the
sooty sun. Not me, I thought. Not me. Never. Never would I allow
myself to be trapped in such a routine of life, within days of no
beginning or end. If men worked in shadows from nine to five and
let the great world pass them by with neither beginning nor end,
and sank into a lifeless tedium beneath a churning sun, then this
was the condition of life the great adult world had chosen for
itself and I would walk away from it. I was free of all these
horrors.

     Never, I thought, not me, never, never would I be so
trapped.

     The hour had been swallowed up by darkness; and like the
sudden memory of a forgotten and neglected errand I realized with
a start how late it had become. I was, after, only eighteen years
old, and still felt a strong dutiful sense to be at home at a
proper time. I could feel my aunt's presence now at home, even
here as I sat at Kramer's table: and that presence potently
waited for me now to return. But I was captured by the magic of
Kramer's words, by the mood of his small kitchen, by the velvet
soft darkness of the gathering evening which entered through the
windows and screen door with a calm chorus of crickets. The great
world pressed down upon us, a soft and warm place, with its
living stars and the presence of its moon and its engendering
magic. I was reluctant to move. In the dark Ellen's profile was
all the more tantalizingly beautiful: for it remained white in
spite of the lack of light. And Kramer, head comically peaked
with its glass spire, like a ridiculous wise clown, sat grinning
with life surveying the vast lay of his kingdom.

     Be ye drunk. Yes, I was drunk. Not on wine or poetry, and
certainly not on virtue, but I was drunk with the living
comradery I felt in this kitchen with my two new friends. Still
thinking of the depressing glimpse I had had earlier in the day
of the abyss, of ceaseless days of human emptiness, of a churning
empty sun; not even thinking now of the student riot, which after

all had somehow been exciting and life bringing.