XXIV

O

n base, in the town of K_______, I thought I was safe but I was not.

All manner of activities were made available to the soldiery garrisoned therein and posters might be found on bulletin boards for April Wine or Black Sabbath tribute bands. Pay-per-View Boxing matches and rinkside Hockey games were all on offer. The messes are in business for the beer and 'banger crowd, at least for we in the enlisted ranks. The Officer's Mess was obliged to patronize more refined advertisements so they would see pamphlets directing them to boating cruises, wine tasting events, and Scottish Country Dancing contests. This was no reflection on the actual activities enjoyed by Officers in their own hours.

It is a quaint little town that leans affectionately against a Great Lake. Two streets complete its business and shopping center and where they terminate together, in the heart of the community, there is a marina. All the residual structures spread beyond are small 19^th century houses shaded by lush greenery. It is the kind of settlement where, when standing atop a low hill, you see only the forest canopy stretching off for a great many miles. Church steeples pierce the verdant cloud intermittently and charmingly. At one edge of this wood that famous grey stone university rises. It is the kind of town that, when landscaped, must include a songbird in the middle ground.

That University and the comfortable climate ensures that K_______ continues as a popular base for young male soldiers. Get them while they are experimenting. Get them while they are still being rebellious. They still seek lovers and boyfriends but in a few years they will want only husbands. It is not the success rate of these Lotharios but the opportunity to partake in the hunting. In the summer months, with a warm breeze floating off the surface of the lake, the game is abundant and unwary. They wore bright colours, these girls, and their skirts wafted in the light wind so alluringly. It was the kind of town, and these were the kind of maidens, that would wear pale cotton dresses.

There are few things as envy inspiring as University students. Equally possessed of confidence and ignorance, their eyes are always dancing in delight at new discoveries. They are healthy and they know it. Oh, to be once more standing on the threshold of a new life, for every regret to be replaced by an opportunity and to have more questions than answers.

Soldiers have few questions and nor are they particularly well endowed with answers.

As Time moves its pieces so methodically, strategically toward us, we push answers forward to meet the waves of questioning pawns. Our moves may not be good but we must move. We must have answers. To not respond, here at the end game, is to set our king teetering.

It is not naivety that solicits admiration for our youth nor is it their desire to learn. It is their willingness to recognize that they do not know that is heroic. Hence, my dissatisfaction is for angry Gothic teens who, at such an immature age, assert absolute insight and seek for nothing. When in elder ages we retrospect our stories, we with acuity see that it is when we were asking questions that we were in our greatest glory. In youth, seek answers to questions. Late, question the answers.

One of the reasons that I was able to so cleanly cut myself off from art is that I have never had any interest in modern art nor contemporary music nor current literature. This is not a conscious decision or, if it is, I am not conscious of making it. Standing in the bookstores and looking over the covers of the latest literary offerings, I am not inspired to throw them down. Rather, I am not inspired to pick anything up. I would travel the width of the world to see a painting in a museum yet I will not turn my head to glance through a gallery window. On the surface, and most of the way down to the basin, it seems to be a narrow minded, elitist, and altogether ridiculous attitude to maintain. Ethically and aesthetically it is an indefensible position. Indeed, the armies of the Contemporary (and they are legion) have marched on past my battered self with trumpets ringing triumphant fanfares. I am overrun. I am their prisoner should they pause to consider me.

It is an answer that I do question. The answer on the side of the road just shrugs his shoulders absently.

Not a Philistine, Samnite, nor Samaritan, I seem to be without a tribe.

And the answer on the side of the road shrugs his shoulders helplessly.

Irregularly on some Sunday afternoons, while stationed in the town of K_______, I would venture down to that University and simply surrender myself to the surrounding architecture of improving. Those silent walls neither accepted my submission. The lawns were empty when I went to meditate. I did not muse there upon some fresh direction for my life or sift through layers of regrets but just allowed the green and grey to soothe my heart. It is on those summer days that I can only clasp my hands behind my head and lie back to allow the Sun to have its way with me.

On one such afternoon, a vacation from my days, my path meandered to the music department. Those silent halls, unbarred to me, echoed like the Ponte Vecchio with all of the activity that was not there. The bustling excitement of a hundred years of eager students had ground grooves of sound into the walls, to be played back by those with willingness to hear it, through the act of running lazy fingertips along the lines of blues student lockers.

Upcoming Events.

It was a name in fine print, on a corner of a pale yellow poster.

Phaedra was coming to perform here tomorrow eve.

My Beatrice's younger sister was coming. She, a soprano, was coming to perform Lieder and other art songs with a small company. It was irregular to list the individual members of the incoming group on such a poster.

This had nothing to do with me. I was forbidden to attend.

I was not forbidden to attend. It was a free country. Nothing was forbidden. I had given those rules to myself. There was nothing binding. Beatrice… Anne... they had made no demands. There was nothing wrong with my attendance. I am just another member of the audience.

She wants people to attend.

How strange that it would list her name. How queer that I should be so alerted to it by this random stroll. It could have been so easily missed. Are stars aligned? Are fates entwined? Fortune favours the bold. I go only to listen.

I go.

I will go.

There is nothing wrong with that. It is a free world.

Phaedra had taken up my homeless painting when Beatrice had spurned it. The hall rang now with a clamour of klaxons but they were only in my mind.

And the answer on the side of the road shakes his head.

XXV