Start with an aria, sung with feeling and wisdom. As if life takes one wrong step over the steep edge, becomes death, and turns to us in horror and despair. As if death, hovering before us, pleads with life itself.

We did not know it in 1966 but this was the our soundtrack. As pop overpowered all, the real score was an ancient, hear-breaking opera.

Let me whistle us into the start of this. Imperfectly recalled, not quite recognizable, except for its lingering sadness, momentary joy. An aria that is warning: to have a heart at all is to risk being felled by utter beauty, amid the worst of what we must endure.

As I am felled by art. An inflection of stone ribs, rubbed into existence by ancient hands, and I am undone by cold marble. The turn of shoulders in an ancient painting and I am destroyed.

Callas. Rauschenberg. Praxiteles.

I am nothing like these. So allow an amateur gesture: I whistle. Stand with me on an American street, and listen: the whole of me is in this tune, a declaration of the terrible beauty of my loss. I cringe from my mistakes; my melody falters but does not fail, as I invoke ghosts who haunt me forever.

Let this whistle fade.

Begin Jimi and "All along the Watchtower. Feel how and why this drowns out the greater song, as his opening guitar, a ticking clock, changes time itself.

I was 11 years old in 1966. It was the year of my parents' divorce, my father's defeat, my mother's shock therapy. Failure and shame and poverty.

The summer of love was the better alternative. Sandalwood smelled good. Breasts looked good. People laughed till they cried, rocked in the grass, chased by bees, swam in the fountain, turned in the sun.

Wait a second, let's knock the side of our head, shed some pixie-dust here: I got shot with a BB gun, sitting in such a hippie-riffic place. A large group of bikers were responsible. They all looked at me, serious, when I turned to see what, who. Didn't pierce the skin but got under it, ever since; the empty looks on twenty-five faces.

But in 1966 I believed, o how I believed. I wanted to be of them. I wanted things from the Army-Navy Surplus. Hair: grow. Grow! Hide it under the collar, at home and at school. Hunch up, wear dickies, stash them in the window well on the way out of the yard.

It was possible to stay out late, to live on the street because my mom was out-of-touch. Though technically in her custody, we were not under care, the four of us.

Imagine starting out in 1966. Young as young can be and also hormonal. Sgt. Peppers. Magical Mystery Tour.

I can't get no satisfaction. Respect. Don't think twice, it's all right.

Imagine runaways and street crime and drugs, all the many and remarkable drugs. At the cinerama was How the West Was Won. On the news was how the west had lost, flickering grey game shows of gotcha-last between our G.I. Joes and dead Vietnamese children.

But all we need is love.  To take a sad song and make it better. Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round. Not the policeman, not the politician. I was a scrawny Scots-Irish-Indian-Black kid whose grandmother had passed as white. I wanted Freedom Land.

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter had my heart. Aoxomoxoa was anthem to me. We would remember and revive a fairy tale past. In our dress, our acceptance, our big smiles, we would just change, just love LOVE, at long last. We did not know how to do this. We faked it, affected it, conjured it.

We made our yet another move. Fewer of us left, though: my sister off to state college, the only one of us that got anything from either parent for school. My older brother voluntarily back to my dad, who had knocked him around the worst. Go figure.

Cue the tragic aria, whistled in a fading sun. Timeless as a Tuscan garden. The pleas from the grave. Young love, betrayed. Barbarous murder amid frills and civility. The war.

Fewer of us, so my mom came home less often. Me fixing dinner from dry macaroni and green jello for my younger brother. 1967 becomes 1968. I contemplated my second runaway plan.

Fill me up buttercup, cause I heard it through the grapevine: he's leavin, on that midnight train to Georgia, always on my my mi-mi-mi-mind. Let me hear the balalaikas ringing out, but I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more. With school, I just sorta gave up. One year advanced classes, the next year what?

60's bullshit, that's what: no winter coat, clothes too small. Pot, marazine, white cross, mini-bennies, reds and o man blotter acid. 12. Fucking 12. Hang on, now, wait -- Kablooie! All gone. No dad. Then no mom.

But drugs, fucking drugs. I could walk the long miles home and take a magic carpet ride, I imagined the Rolling Stones or Joan Baez floating near me like on a flying record. I sang, walking along, back to that empty house my little brother and I shared. The one with no furniture.

I made sure not to look stupid, I didn't just sing without care, but those were nice neighborhoods, right up to state line and my block, almost, and had few people walking around in the Kansas cold. On some streets I could holler away: "Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday, who could hang a name on you!" and "It ain't me, babe, no no no!"

Of course I failed that year, or near to. And over the course of that failure, in the 8th grade, no one ever asked me once about my nothin'. The era before social workers and abuse. Sad eyed laddie of the lowlands. Just being punished for peeking into desolation row.

It was a well-to-do school. The jocks ruled, made a lot of chesty noise about us weird, impoverished, geeky, retarded, screw-up kids, of which there weren't too many. The vice-principal generally thought this was good for morale. Social darwinist, that prick was.

Having spent the 7th grade in rowdy South St. Louis, this rich suburb school sure looked like sappy sweetie-pie shit. But scary. More frightening than the swamp-stomper greasers back east, because those lettermen had muscles AND nice clothes. And cute girls who hated almost everybody else.

At least back in Mehlville a hardass, athlete or not, got attention from the girls, or if you were funny. A guy had a shot. Near the JB bridge, near the Mississippi, to the sound oflowing freight trains: people were rougher, but fair.

I converted to hippy love, anyway, that year by the gilded meadow brook. Gave up my previous and short career as a brawler. In September, I sneered in disgust at two after-school meet-you-dare-show-up sissies, afraid to throw a punch; by October all I was saying was give peace a chance. My hair grew out.

I had nothing but hair to grow. But a whole movement to join: the Revolution, the dawning age, the Movement, man. 1968 stands out as an epic year of posturing, everywhere: on TV, in the news, in the halls of my junior high. I wanted to make it, to make a name, be somebody, and I couldn't, wouldn't, ever, in those monied burbs. Unless I got cool.

Hippie was still new in the fall of 1968, in Kansas City. Only some of us went all the way. I did, scrawled anti-war and drug talk in permanent marker on my ratty field jacket, wore a headband, just didn't care, man. So I got to hang with rich hippie kids, older street kids, some musicians, pot dealers working in drug program. Aand some really frightening adults. Cause I was "cool". That I lacked all supervision made me "cool".

At first I was too poor, too weird, too unwashed. Literally: Trudy Fowler told her mom, who told my mom that Trudy said: "Greg stinks". My mom blamed it on me being "all hippy and all". She didn't mention we had no washer or dryer, and no quarters for machines. Thank God for all that natural hippie shit, so I could have some self-respect. A lucky coincidence.

It got better. By the end of the spring semester taking a principled stand on the war early on meant something, because even the straight varsity guys were growing sideburns and flashing peace signs and generally making themselves the dorkiest preppy-hippie hybrids you can imagine. They begrudged me. Truce.

As if I had deep thoughts: I acquired my politics and polemic from the Oracle, the Seed, the Free press, the Other.

Fade out Sunshine of your Love. Let the whistle of the aria begin again.

I am sent to live my father, and older brother, to yet another place, west of St. Louis. Season of the Witch. A suburb so new it was surrounded by de-nuded lots and there were no stores. The time of running away begins. We then move to northern St. Louis, near the airport. It reeks of highway and chemical plants. I continue to run away, or else simply stay home from school.

My dream was to enter Boulder or the Haight with Rosie DeFazio, on a white horse, wearing a fringe leather jacket, no shirt, with bare feet, and in white hip-hugger elephant bells. I would be so groovy and beautiful.

Admired by all the freaks, adorned with flower garlands, and everywhere free love. Pathetic. We actually believed it might happen. Some 60s blend of stupidity, TV westerns, and Grooviness. Blame Life magazine's profiles of the hippies. Blame Bronco Lane's spirited horse and sense of Fair Play.

Me and this guy, Jeff, we flexed our unused and completely non-functioning brain muscles and set out in January, and selected the worst possible winter route through the frozen plains and frigid Rockies: we decided to find I-80, in Nebraska, and then head further north, to come down thru Montana to Northern California.

In 1968 Nebraska was the size of Russia. No one understood us, two underdressed boys in the freeze of winter, standing along the rural route, gesturing with our hands. Through foggy windows placid farmer's wives, starchy white men, in trucks and International Harvester wagons, most not seeing us at all. So absurd, so invisible, so ignored, we weren't reported.

Spent the first night out, under a willow, outside Beatrice, too stupid to avoid the wind, no blankets. Dinty Moore stew in a can our only food, banged open on a rock. The small sterno ran out before the can got warm. Cut fingers, still hungry. Six pm, time for sleep, the longest night of my life. He and I huddled, not quite touching. Jackets, no coats, my one thin sheet. Way below freezing. In the middle of the night Jeff says to share the sheet, and pity overcame my adolescent aversion to comforting boy touch. We were then gripping each other, spoons, him behind, shivering. I got an erection. I cried, too ashamed to let him hear it. I lost some hearing, permanently, in the ear that faced the black ice of the sky.

The next day we walked miles through new snow to the three building intersection. One of them a diner, we counted change and asked for a shared cup of tea. We got two full breakfasts each, gratis. Thank you, beloved Beatrice. I cry now saying your name. We snagged a ride, the first in two days, took us just west of Lincoln, the I-80 on-ramp.

Ten minutes later we were warming up in the State Trooper's car. Infinitely kind, he listened and scratched notes as we ad-libbed some farce about a Mother, and Uncle, a Bus Ticket lost, Colorado, Family waiting. "Hm", he said. Long pause. Him wriing. I said, "What are you going to do with us?" He said, "You're runaways. I'll be sending you home."

My father came to get us, sharing the driving with a nice young guy from his work. My father was forbearing, disaffected. The air of the kindly, yet disappointed. At a gas station near St. Joe, though, his friend inside buying gum, I asked some question and got no answer. I understood we were acting, that reality was waiting at home.

At Jeff's house in Creve Couer, his little sister welcomed him in. We stood on the porch, his mother cheerful, thanking my Dad. As we left, Jeff was watching TV.

We dropped off my dad's friend. Alone in the car at last, in the parking space outside his apartment, he turned to me, sitting in the back, and with his left hand he hit me, as hard as he could, again and again. I tried to keep my hands down. Mostly succeeded. The angle wasn't right, he was limited by the brace on his leg from gaining an advantage.

I endured it: at last, the Real Al.

When he tired, he panted out the list of things I couldn't do, wouldn't do, would never do again. Inside, my room was bare, like a cheap hotel. I found my guitar, my posters, my bell-bottoms, my records, smashed to pieces, torn to strips, ripped, crushed, but neatly in a box. I was to take them to the dumpster. I cried because it was gone. I raged and kicked because he had stored it for me to see, the remains of my life. Ok. Fuck you. Now we both see what happens.

That night I sat on the sofa, my tray and TV dinner before me, and ate in silence. I pushed it away. He clicked his brace to stand, swayed to his feet, dumped his tin foil into the kitchen trash, came back, stood across the room. He began his usual litany, reminding me that I wasn't to use so much Prell when I shampooed, reminded me that his daily notes to me -- criticisms, reminders, all of them starting "Mr. Greg:" -- were to be left where they were, not thrown away. I'd been looking to the side of the TV, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of watching with him. He concluded by telling me to finish my green beans. I said "No."

He stood there. He started toward me, hand raised, step-drag, step-drag, and I said "Go ahead, hit me," and for the first time in my life I held his gaze. He stood, ugliness on his face, but stopped. He was afraid of me. I knew he would hurt me if we fought: his crippled imbalance notwithstanding, his regular workouts with his speed bag made his arms powerful. But for the first time I was ready to hit him? and a terrible adrenaline came over me: prepared to hurt him, hurt him BAD, not stop til we were both dead. He saw this, when I slowly moved the tray to the side, with one foot. Ready. Looking at him.

He was afraid, for a moment amused, so I dared a little smile, just with my eyes, my eyebrows. A pause. I was afraid I would cry. His look changed to hatred; but he didn't want to give me that satisfaction, so he made a theatrical sigh, lowered his hand, and said, "Go to bed."

At school, first day back, the teeth-set look of hatred finally eased from my father's face as we stood after first bell in the stairwell, alone, watching the balding, stoop-shouldered principal walk up to us. I watched the two of them. The Principal made a show of reluctantly accepting me back, on condition, expectations described, stern warnings. My father's face, the false expression of toleration and concern. I aged ten years in that moment, understanding he would never forgive me for bringing him to that stairwell, to that insipid man, for shameful proof of his failure. The bad publicity.

I lost him, my Father inside. The man before me I lost without regret, his rages and beatings, his private hideous expressions, his public blandness, all belonged to someone else now. But I felt ashy and hollow, and have felt that loss ever since. Heading to class I plotted my next departure, and in three months I was gone again, alone.

Whistling in the dark. The aria asserts itself.

I cried easily as a child. It happened against my will. As a man my tears dried up, slowly, but utterly. I had to persevere. I chose to work hard, to dislocate my pain, like a trick shoulder or knee, and learn to work, to walk, with it. I stayed true. I raised my children.

Now, very recently, again I cry, easily, all the time, at every memory. No deliberate decision, no therapeutic idea to get me Past Something. I cry like a girl. I weep for the young, who never see the Great Theft that occurs, who never realize how irretrievable Goodness is. How loss is not a concept to get resolution for, it's stuff that's missing. Just gone.

No psychological candy, no illusion of Sorting Out, no amount of Getting in Touch  replaces a day, an opportunity, a person, that we forget, squander, lose. I cry at anything that evokes loss: the stupidest movie, the silliest cartoon death, the most eloquent literature.

Most of all, for the lost, brave boy I was. Weaving with such grace, through cruelty, abandonment and poverty. In the midst of it, I held an inane optimism, a narcisism, a belief in my talent. All thanks to Nana, my grandmother, a reader. Well, most of it, most of the important lessons. All of the Heart.

Yet how fucking tragic, how pointless it was. Now that I have, at last, a pause, a shelter, some stability, now that I can breath better, most days, all I see is what I lost. The dissolution, the inadequacy of justice, the drift of life.

The failure. The Goddamn Theft of it all. How few of us avoid the tragedies, get the opportunities AND the money, the choices AND the will to make the right ones, the challenges AND the loving, unto-death support of relentless parents.

And so, because I finally know what I don't have, what I will never have, I have come to understand my book choices, why I read long into the night, why I want human history to be comprehensible, and my fascination with redemption and hope, evil and degradation, heroes and sacrifice.

My need to find and embody real lovingkindness is as flesh needs water.

o mother
o father
return to me
return me to you
be again
for me
your beloved
your forgotten child

It will never be.

I whistle my fraudulent aria, and hear the greatness of eternity, the magnificent voice of All and Every Suffering, in my own quick breath, hooting in the empty and well-appointed streets.

//