kent state and me
many moons ago; I lived in a far away town, lived a far away life and had far away experiences.
one of those days; I went to work in my far away job and went into a friends office and started to speak…and at one point… at one time…the subject changed to another time in another place.
the place was May 1970 and Kent State University…he had been dispatched to cover the story for his school paper. I don’t remember if he was there at the time of the shootings but the days afterwards.
another time was May 1987, I was in night school it was the 17th anniversary of the shooting and somehow we started talking about the incident. it was a shop class. I remember that was the occasion that I promised myself I would go there at some point.
My American history tour has taken me to an alternate essay. I’ve cleaned off a city cemetery grave in Memphis and been to the balcony a few feet away from where MLK was shot. I sat at Kerouac’s grave…we visited Woodstock town and site…and now Kent State…been to Berkley and the parks in San Francisco… its not my resume as much as this is me telling you…why did I take this journey…
Tony, my friend in a far away life, used to talk to me about the things he did. He lived a good life, was hitting 40 and was ready for new things. The past was around his neck like a crazy cat…I don’t know if talking to me made any difference; mostly it left a big impression. In those days especially, he was one of my favorite people.
He was also a Vietnam Vet; had shrapnel in his leg to prove it, cliché yes, but Tony was a bit of a cliché and I don’t mean that in the cliché sense. what I mean is, his perspective was fair and thoughtful.
At a time in my life where I would eagerly follow a stranger into a dark alley because of some horrific experience there might wait, Tony took the time to reason my idealism. He knew where I was going and why I was going there…and was amused by it. He told me I was right and he told me I was wrong. we got a long just fine.
I got the impression that he really was disgusted by the whole event; so much in the suggestion that if he hadn’t been converted by then…this was the temple mount.
in my night school class when we talked about it is that I got emotional reactions from two people both of which I would have never pegged them for their outlook. It was when I realized that the knowledge of the experience was randomly dispersed…the blind watchmaker in devoted iconoclasm…
Tony left our far away job for another far away job and I haven’t spoken to him since. this streams back to be about 17 or 18 years. it is unbelievable to say this because I started working there when I was 19 and left after I was 21 or 22.
during that time we had the first gulf war. I was working for one of the largest oil companies in the world.
so also what I’m getting at is that it has been a long time, a realistic lifetime in this respect…as long almost as the lives of the four students killed by American soldiers.
to make a long story shorter; there are several synchronistic motivating factors taking place all at once. all almost in the 17 – 18 years of span. I was looking through some old boxes for some original manuscripts one day and I stumbled on a box that had Tony’s mail address in his new (at the time) far away home. I carried it with me the entire day yesterday.
we got up at the crack of dawn and hit the road in time to hear the victory bell being rang for the VT students from last month. we then proceeded about the site. there is a special memorial in the parking lot and friends and family and supporters hold a candlelight vigil in the very spots where they were killed.
I finally sat down in front of Jeffrey Miller. this is the spot of the famous photograph that symbolized the day, inspired the famous song…
when one is alone and thinking in a moment like this it all may occur to you…what I mean is, all the images through the life of your knowledge that brought you to this destination flood over you… like approaching ground zero… one of those instants your whole life races in front of you…one of those I can’t believe I’m really here or that this is actually happening…metaphysical and surreally existential.
as I sat there a man who knew Jeffrey Miller came by and spoke to the woman keeping the vigil. later at the end of the day we walked past him speaking with two other older guys on the hill where the National Guardsmen were and they were talking about what happened 37 years ago like it was yesterday.
experiences like that happen to you…and everything is from that point on…Before Brando and After Brando if you know what I mean…
there was such a presence in the parking lot I found myself without the urge ability or self consciousness to speak it was only after leaving getting home did it release me…it recognized me and welcomed me…it knew that I had understood it…a part of it was a part of me…the words are readily on my lips…
experiences like that happen to you and it is impossible to recognize it. the statement of those involved always say the same thing, ‘we never saw that coming’. we are tested regularly, on the drive home, slicing the tomato…standing up…simple things, simple day, simply living … today is Tuesday not the day that my life is unchangeably altered.
the day that our friend dies or the day that … it happens. the revolution will not be televised… I look back to these moments in order to understand my path and choices in a clarity to tell if it was good to do it again or bad to not ever do it again.
I walked onto the campus with no illusions, only the understanding of what it represented to me.
in 1987 when I had that other talk in that class I had just recently seen Crosby Stills and Nash; it was like Crosby’s first or second concert after being released from prison. it was beautiful, Ruth Eckert Hall, maybe ten rows back near center…I remember singing out loud and without a care to Teach Your Children…I was feeling it…
at that time only a few years removed from Have A Nice Day bumper stickers and a few years before Don’t Worry Be Happy, no body cared about Kent State, wanted it to go away. Bob Dylan was considered irrelevant our decade of freakish self control began in spades…Huey Lewis and light beer…carbonated water etc…don’t bring your long hair in here…or you had to make it look like Bon Jovi …
I was astonished that I was the only person who sought not to overlook something so sever of a nation struggle. 1970, RFK, MLK had been dead for awhile, the Peace Movement was turning violent and man… just crazy…but in 1987 we had beat the bully back and it was our time for cake…just crazy.
there was some play (talk) about Vietnam and Iraq at the ceremony. people like to link as much together as possible. it’s a sin with good intentions. it was relevant; they tried to generalized peace as much as they could.
since folks link the two wars I’ll link two movements… the anti-Vietnam and the anti-Iraq… marginal and polarizing…and almost transparent.
if there is a senselessness in our modern times as there was senselessness in the past …I would beg to say that our willingness to bitch about a situation and at the same time accept it is our current national sin. I’m not in the mood to explain that in all its facets.
we have so much at our fingertips yet are too asleep and ignorant to help us help ourselves. the rapid and final decline of western civilization will boil down to xbox or something exactly mind numbing. try to define customer satisfaction…
we accept poison in each and every fashion…in our mind, in our body and in our spirit…
the reason we are paying over $3 a gallon…judge the book by its cover… and are agreeable to so many things we haven’t given a second thought to…Goldilocks and the Three Bears becomes a syndrome and we as a country will succeed as long as that next little bump in the road doesn’t send; instead of having a random student from a southern school go berserk; rather a nation on the precipices of a nervous breakdown erupts to claim the foundations of the constitution.
it is no strange irony either that the same day the Queen of England is on American soil to celebrate the landing and subsequent village of English immigrants some 400 years earlier. the vacillating interview of that time span…eh?
so can we take the lessons of May 4th of 1970 and apply them full length?
living without fear is also an element of freedom that we have smudged the boundaries to…we are overprotected over insured over the top paranoids to be able to feel so safe without the threat of our own government let alone what a stranger in a cave has planned.
it not as they say an “if” but of a “when” that next before and after experience comes with a bowl of cherries…
I feel sadly and deeply for the four students killed in that parking lot. as much as I feel sorry for anyone who didn’t get to fulfill their lives. it doesn’t matter what their politics are or any of the other judicial stereotypes to justify a lack of empathy…these kids could have been grandparents by now rather than the honored dead.
we are passive in every aspect except pacifism…
a random moment… driving south on 71 an Amish family working in a field on the radio NPR special about Carbon Footprints…nice cap on the day.
a random juxtaposition… Brando is not in the Microsoft Word spell dictionary.
so go now…
thank you
and be good little lambs
says the fox
Peace…Just Do It.
hare hare
many moons ago; I lived in a far away town, lived a far away life and had far away experiences.
one of those days; I went to work in my far away job and went into a friends office and started to speak…and at one point… at one time…the subject changed to another time in another place.
the place was May 1970 and Kent State University…he had been dispatched to cover the story for his school paper. I don’t remember if he was there at the time of the shootings but the days afterwards.
another time was May 1987, I was in night school it was the 17th anniversary of the shooting and somehow we started talking about the incident. it was a shop class. I remember that was the occasion that I promised myself I would go there at some point.
My American history tour has taken me to an alternate essay. I’ve cleaned off a city cemetery grave in Memphis and been to the balcony a few feet away from where MLK was shot. I sat at Kerouac’s grave…we visited Woodstock town and site…and now Kent State…been to Berkley and the parks in San Francisco… its not my resume as much as this is me telling you…why did I take this journey…
Tony, my friend in a far away life, used to talk to me about the things he did. He lived a good life, was hitting 40 and was ready for new things. The past was around his neck like a crazy cat…I don’t know if talking to me made any difference; mostly it left a big impression. In those days especially, he was one of my favorite people.
He was also a Vietnam Vet; had shrapnel in his leg to prove it, cliché yes, but Tony was a bit of a cliché and I don’t mean that in the cliché sense. what I mean is, his perspective was fair and thoughtful.
At a time in my life where I would eagerly follow a stranger into a dark alley because of some horrific experience there might wait, Tony took the time to reason my idealism. He knew where I was going and why I was going there…and was amused by it. He told me I was right and he told me I was wrong. we got a long just fine.
I got the impression that he really was disgusted by the whole event; so much in the suggestion that if he hadn’t been converted by then…this was the temple mount.
in my night school class when we talked about it is that I got emotional reactions from two people both of which I would have never pegged them for their outlook. It was when I realized that the knowledge of the experience was randomly dispersed…the blind watchmaker in devoted iconoclasm…
Tony left our far away job for another far away job and I haven’t spoken to him since. this streams back to be about 17 or 18 years. it is unbelievable to say this because I started working there when I was 19 and left after I was 21 or 22.
during that time we had the first gulf war. I was working for one of the largest oil companies in the world.
so also what I’m getting at is that it has been a long time, a realistic lifetime in this respect…as long almost as the lives of the four students killed by American soldiers.
to make a long story shorter; there are several synchronistic motivating factors taking place all at once. all almost in the 17 – 18 years of span. I was looking through some old boxes for some original manuscripts one day and I stumbled on a box that had Tony’s mail address in his new (at the time) far away home. I carried it with me the entire day yesterday.
we got up at the crack of dawn and hit the road in time to hear the victory bell being rang for the VT students from last month. we then proceeded about the site. there is a special memorial in the parking lot and friends and family and supporters hold a candlelight vigil in the very spots where they were killed.
I finally sat down in front of Jeffrey Miller. this is the spot of the famous photograph that symbolized the day, inspired the famous song…
when one is alone and thinking in a moment like this it all may occur to you…what I mean is, all the images through the life of your knowledge that brought you to this destination flood over you… like approaching ground zero… one of those instants your whole life races in front of you…one of those I can’t believe I’m really here or that this is actually happening…metaphysical and surreally existential.
as I sat there a man who knew Jeffrey Miller came by and spoke to the woman keeping the vigil. later at the end of the day we walked past him speaking with two other older guys on the hill where the National Guardsmen were and they were talking about what happened 37 years ago like it was yesterday.
experiences like that happen to you…and everything is from that point on…Before Brando and After Brando if you know what I mean…
there was such a presence in the parking lot I found myself without the urge ability or self consciousness to speak it was only after leaving getting home did it release me…it recognized me and welcomed me…it knew that I had understood it…a part of it was a part of me…the words are readily on my lips…
experiences like that happen to you and it is impossible to recognize it. the statement of those involved always say the same thing, ‘we never saw that coming’. we are tested regularly, on the drive home, slicing the tomato…standing up…simple things, simple day, simply living … today is Tuesday not the day that my life is unchangeably altered.
the day that our friend dies or the day that … it happens. the revolution will not be televised… I look back to these moments in order to understand my path and choices in a clarity to tell if it was good to do it again or bad to not ever do it again.
I walked onto the campus with no illusions, only the understanding of what it represented to me.
in 1987 when I had that other talk in that class I had just recently seen Crosby Stills and Nash; it was like Crosby’s first or second concert after being released from prison. it was beautiful, Ruth Eckert Hall, maybe ten rows back near center…I remember singing out loud and without a care to Teach Your Children…I was feeling it…
at that time only a few years removed from Have A Nice Day bumper stickers and a few years before Don’t Worry Be Happy, no body cared about Kent State, wanted it to go away. Bob Dylan was considered irrelevant our decade of freakish self control began in spades…Huey Lewis and light beer…carbonated water etc…don’t bring your long hair in here…or you had to make it look like Bon Jovi …
I was astonished that I was the only person who sought not to overlook something so sever of a nation struggle. 1970, RFK, MLK had been dead for awhile, the Peace Movement was turning violent and man… just crazy…but in 1987 we had beat the bully back and it was our time for cake…just crazy.
there was some play (talk) about Vietnam and Iraq at the ceremony. people like to link as much together as possible. it’s a sin with good intentions. it was relevant; they tried to generalized peace as much as they could.
since folks link the two wars I’ll link two movements… the anti-Vietnam and the anti-Iraq… marginal and polarizing…and almost transparent.
if there is a senselessness in our modern times as there was senselessness in the past …I would beg to say that our willingness to bitch about a situation and at the same time accept it is our current national sin. I’m not in the mood to explain that in all its facets.
we have so much at our fingertips yet are too asleep and ignorant to help us help ourselves. the rapid and final decline of western civilization will boil down to xbox or something exactly mind numbing. try to define customer satisfaction…
we accept poison in each and every fashion…in our mind, in our body and in our spirit…
the reason we are paying over $3 a gallon…judge the book by its cover… and are agreeable to so many things we haven’t given a second thought to…Goldilocks and the Three Bears becomes a syndrome and we as a country will succeed as long as that next little bump in the road doesn’t send; instead of having a random student from a southern school go berserk; rather a nation on the precipices of a nervous breakdown erupts to claim the foundations of the constitution.
it is no strange irony either that the same day the Queen of England is on American soil to celebrate the landing and subsequent village of English immigrants some 400 years earlier. the vacillating interview of that time span…eh?
so can we take the lessons of May 4th of 1970 and apply them full length?
living without fear is also an element of freedom that we have smudged the boundaries to…we are overprotected over insured over the top paranoids to be able to feel so safe without the threat of our own government let alone what a stranger in a cave has planned.
it not as they say an “if” but of a “when” that next before and after experience comes with a bowl of cherries…
I feel sadly and deeply for the four students killed in that parking lot. as much as I feel sorry for anyone who didn’t get to fulfill their lives. it doesn’t matter what their politics are or any of the other judicial stereotypes to justify a lack of empathy…these kids could have been grandparents by now rather than the honored dead.
we are passive in every aspect except pacifism…
a random moment… driving south on 71 an Amish family working in a field on the radio NPR special about Carbon Footprints…nice cap on the day.
a random juxtaposition… Brando is not in the Microsoft Word spell dictionary.
so go now…
thank you
and be good little lambs
says the fox
Peace…Just Do It.
hare hare
posted by Sisyphus at 9:36 AM
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