l i f e
private wear
contributions
christopher@30seconds.org
Hard Rain
Tom is playing. The sun never sets on Tom eh...?
Anyway, I'm thinking tonight about youth and its loss. More importantly I'm thinking about the loss to others. Involuntary loss. So once again I find myself at the bookshelf looking for answers. Why do I always turn to my books? I mean sometimes I take a walk and think it out. Sometimes I have a drink and do the same. Other times it's the music. Then there's always the rocking chair...
But mostly it's the books that I turn to as if they have all the answers. All the solutions there in New York, Century SchoolBook, Times, or Courier. Non-offensive fonts. No pictures. Those are the books to which I turn. I look to the dictionary for better words to elaborate the points made in other books, to help me with my horrible spelling problem, to give me inspiration. Yeah, inspired by the dictionary can you believe it...
But not tonight. Tonight I pause in front of the section devoted to war...again. Something I read about a little island got me to thinking. I take an awful lot for granted. I can write to you. You can write back. I'm in no immediate danger. And I have my youth...
Which brings me back on track. The loss of youth. Some would argue that loss begins the loss of life, or its enjoyment anyway. I read that too. Think it to be crap, but I read it. I've also read poems dedicated to the subject of lamenting youth's loss. The Romantics seem to be best at this. I've several novels on the subject. I've written short stories of my own. But I've come to realize this. You can't approach the subject head on, without pictures, setting, tone, touch, emotion...See you can't drive right to the heart of losing youth and get the point across. The only approach that works is subtle.
One can say, "I'm old and it hurts." But that doesn't do a whole helluva lot. Doesn't pull in the empathy one might be looking for. Well, war has a way of bringing out the subtle in folks when they're in the very midst of losing everything they have. Homes. Family. Youth, yeah. Life itself. Yet in the middle of this we are able to capture moments, we remain human. We lament while we kill. On little islands as well as big ones.
So where is this going...
I'm pulling out an old book and turning to page 134. I can't lead into this right. I feel like I'm stumbling but I want you to read this. To feel it. To understand. This is from the diary of a 17 year old Private. Remember 17? I do like it was yesterday. I was worried about my car, girls, grades. I was strange. I felt all out of place with myself. I went to college that year and felt homesick. I started playing guitar. I quick taking drugs. I learned to enjoy drinking. Panic came that year and it never left. I had to keep a journal for the doctor so I started keeping one for myself too. The year was 1988-89.
Private Wear was 17. He keep a diary as well. Mine talks about girls, parties, theories to be later proved wrong and bad poetry. Here is part of his...
"...a story book come true...extraordinary luck...not dismayed by the sick or wounded...applied for a commission since I felt the war eluding me...one evening after supper, a 4.2-inch shell came through the wall into the room, bursting at once. We were thrown to the ground but marvelously no one was hurt. It was from this time that I began to experience what fear was. This sudden shock (I trembled for an hour afterwards) gave me a completely new outlook on life, life and war being of course synonymous terms...found myself on quiet nights in the trenches shivering with horror at what might happen...changed mentally and morally by leave on 31 December 1917...going up to the line a horrible necessity...no sustaining feeling of the slaughter leading anywhere...nightmares even now...bitterly unwilling to go back...prompt rations and whisky the only concern...depression increased by new drafts...feelings that I have outlived my time...trying to grow young ever since..."
It amazes me, the difference in myself and Wear. But what makes me cry is not how different we were, but how alike. How I have in front of me the documentation of Wear's demise. His elation at being a soldier to his realization others are following him into the mire. He is depressed for them. And what does he mention, youth.
A 4.2-inch shell took his away.
I wonder what got mine...
goodnight 2.11.98
