PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Watching a broadcast of Doctor Zhivago, I allowed my memory to transport me back to those few days in November of 1976 during which I read Boris Pasternak's novel just prior to leaving campus for the long Holiday break over three Holidays---Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day.

    Due to a happy coincidence, only one of my three daily classes required a final exam; and due to the proximity of the break, the first exam day of that term's finals week was Saturday, November 20th.   The usual class time was 8am to 9:10, and the exam was held during that period on that first day of finals week.  After I finished my final, my entire weekend was free.  My parents had planned to pick me up on the evening of Tuesday, November 23rd.

   Going to the Dining Hall for lunch (my roommate had informed me, on September 12th, 1976, that we were roommates and not friends, and would not take any meals together), I stopped by the Bookstore which, unusually, was open that Saturday.  Browsing, I found a copy of Pasternak's novel, which had attracted my eye because the cover featured images of some of the actors in the film.  The list price was reasonable, so I purchased it; enjoyed a quick lunch; and returned to my dormitory room with my new book.  With intense curiosity, and a vague memory of the film (which I had seen, in a theater with my mother, more than six years before), I began to read.

     I must admit, I was torn between two powerful feelings about my return home.  I feared to return to a subservient position under my parents' overbearing authority.  I feared that my friendship with J-Lore may have ended by attrition, and that my handle, Starwatcher (which, years later, evolved to Starward), had been forgotten.  I feared that the joy and satisfactions of the previous summer were over with a finality.  But I wanted to very much---so intensely and passionately very much---to see J-Lore again, to bask in his presence the way a minor planet basks in the radiance and warmth of a major star.  

     With these conflicting feelings swirling within me, I began to read the novel.  Admittedly, I did not bring much maturity to the reading.  The Russian Revolution---either formenting, taking place, or controlling the land---became, for me, a metaphor for the sudden, radical, and spiritually violent change that my matriculation thrust upon me, beginning on Thursday, September 9th of 1976.  Everything I had experienced---my roommate's immediate dislike of me; the contempt demonstrated by my dining table friends toward the C.B and those who used it; the attack upon ordinary Christian faith mounted upon several of us by the instructor in our religion class (a requirement for graduation that I moved out of the way that very first term)---found corresponding metaphors in Pasternak's description of the effects of the Bolshevik Revolution.  And in Zhivago's overwhelming love for, and devotion to, Lara, I found a metaphor that adequately reflected how I felt about J-Lore.

     I finished reading the novel on Tuesday, the 23rd, just a couple of hours before my parents arrived to bring me back to our small hometown.  I did not know what a pleasant surprise awaited me during the period immediately ahead of me:  from that evening through the night of January 1st, 1977.  It was so intensely delightful that it has become, for me at this late stage of my life, a metaphor for the home-going to which my Christian Faith looks forward devoutly.  After a rather elaborate steak dinner, during which my parents resumed their verbal attacks upon all that I held dear, I learned, upon arriving home, that the Summer of 1976 had not yet ended.  Returning to C,B, channel 22, I was heartily welcomed back---no one there had forgotten me, and had even dealt with some kid who had tried to appropriate my handle during my absence; he was no longer active on the channel by the time I returned.  I told J-Lore's sister, on channel 22, that I would pick him up from his new fast food job; and when I did, he was both delightedly surprised and very happy (most obviously, very happy) to see me.  At the end of the evening, when we parked the car for a little while before temporarily parting, I felt that the connections had been re-accomplished, that the Summer of 1976 had not yet passed into the most pleasant of memories.  This feeling was confirmed, for me, as the interior of my parked car was filled with the glow of our c.b.'s dial and operating lights, and the familiar and very arousing, very comforting fragrance of J-Lore's midnight blue socks after he had slipped his shoes off and tossed them into the back seat.

Starward