Breaking Young Divinities

Chapter 18

School was a pain in those days. No matter how hard I worked, I couldn't remember most facts in history or much of anything in music. Partly it was the avoidance of study and the eschewing of a proper work ethic that caused my trouble. My own doing; my own self destruction. There was also a constant gnawing at my mind, a sort of nipping at the heels, by those other aspects of my life that I could not forget. Though I did try so hard to forget! Concentration escapes me....

It was inevitable, I suppose, that a letter would reach me from the Registrar's Office with my name on it. So it came to pass that in the second week of January, without warning and with little surprise on my part, I was placed on academic probation.

I wandered around campus with this letter in hand, sulking miserably. I wondered how I ever got into such a mess. Then I remembered: my own lack of studying, my own poor attendance; my own fault. My own self destruction! Woe is me!

Woe is me! I do not think cogent thoughts.

Instead my mind wanders around aimless,

As if always drowning in some pints draught,

Drunk on dark sober visions of pointless

Life, compounding itself, pain as interest -

Brittle as chalk, undertaker's soapstone,

Waiting to draw the outline on request -

Ruthlessly pounding soft dust from hard bone.

Life grinds on, and with each generation,

Another heart broken and cruelly wringed.

The brutal live longer than the gentle.

Pain outweighs what little good love can bring.

And so fearing what my sad end will be,

I hope it comes unconscious. Woe is me!

Mom was sad after I arrived home and no amount of poetry could have made her happy. Whatever it is that leads us to care for one another also leads us horribly downward in sorrow. In this bitter life, mothers agonize over their children's failings on bad days and rejoice over their kids' successes on good days.

She did not take the news well. She figured it was the end of me; that I was done for, done like dinner. I tried to explain to mom that as long as I passed my courses by the end of the year that I would be okay.

During dinner she looked sad. She looked sad while washing the dishes. She looked sad while sitting on the couch. She looked sad all over the place. It became unbearable to watch this new permanent pout on mom's face. So I went to hide in my room.

My gun magazine was sitting between the mattresses, hidden there like some teenager's Playboy. I pulled it out of its hiding place after locking the door. I did it carefully so that the pages would not get crumpled. I laid it open on my bed like a prized heirloom, opened to the centerfold of a hunter posing with his rifle and a big trophy buck. In the picture the hunter was holding up the buck's head by its antler. It stared eternally at the photographer. It seemed happy.

Isn't that really our desire? Happiness? And if to die means to be happy, at least to a buck, then should that be our goal? Death? Death is such a lonesome destination. The aged and the sick pray for his arrival, like a train too long delayed. So should we all not aspire to be less like the living and more like that departed deer? To stare blankly from the body while playing gaily in the spirit world?