PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

As I wrote in the first part of this small sequence, I spent the evening of November 19th, enjoying the candy in my care package that had just arrived, and listening to my stereo through headphones while my roommate studied busily for our PoliSci 101 exam that next morning, Saturday, the 20th.

   I listened to three songs that I had first heard while on campus:  Abba's Fernando; Flash Cadillac's Did You Boogie . . .; and the unfortunately truncated 45 rpm version of Peter Frampton's song---which I consider his signature song---Baby, I Love Your Way.  Then to these I added several songs that I had listened to with Cerulean:  The Four Seasons' December, 1963 (which was the first song Cerulean and I ever heard together, in April, 1976; and which I also associate with my first experience of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, on the evening of Christmas, 1963), Queen's song, You're My Best Friend (for obvious reasons), and what was then the B side of that 45rpm, 39---which, despite the stated subject being travel in space and the dilation of time (wow!) still reminds me of the words spoken by Frederic Chopin, in his final days, to Solange Sand, the daughter of his former mistress, the novelist George Sand.  (During the nine years of the liason with George Sand, Chopin had been the only father figure Solange had known; and her ill advised marriage to the sadistic sculptor Auguste Clesinger had, when she attempted to end it and return home to Nohant, driven a wedge of disagreement between her mother and Chopin.  Solange was with Chopin on his deathbed, and is said to have held his hand as he died; and, ironically, Clesinger sculpted the great monument that still stands over Chopin's remains to this day.)  Those words that Brian May composed in 39---"Write your letters in the sand . . ." and "Your mother's eyes, from your eyes, cry to me . . ." are eerily reminiscent of Chopin's words to Solange (in the first instance, when she complained that her letters to him had gone unanwered, after the separation, because he disposed of all fan mail that did not bear the name Sand on it, and Solange at that time still used her legal name, Dudevant, the name of her mother's first husband, although he was not really Solange's father either; in the second instance, he has said to have told her, on his deathbed, that in her eyes, her mother's eyes spoke to him). 

  I was not to hear the full version of Frampton's song until Christmas Day of that year, on which my parents had gifted the album to me (they were at something at a loss for what to give, so I suggested that album, a pair of white painters' pants---which were very much popular on campus---a big bulky sweater that was fastened by a belt, also popular on campus, and flipflops).  So, on that Christmas Day, I heard the words in Frampton's song that, since then, will forever bespeak Cerulean to me:  "I can see the sunset in your eyes . . ."  How many sunsets I had enjoyed with Cerulean, especially on those Friday and Saturday nights when we traveled westward on I70 to the drive in theater, prior to our night's pizza and salad bar (yes, actually in a sophisticated sit-down restaurant) and then our long drives on the rural backroads of our township while we talked on that c.b. into the wee hours of the next day, sometimes almost until dawn).

    This is a summary of the music I listened to on that last Friday night of the term, the night before my only final exam, and another night closer to my return to Cerulean.  Of course, I missed my pet Spaniel, Monica, who loved me unconditionally all of her life (January, 1972 through May, 1986), and who helped my college tuition with the funds from the sale of three purebread litters (Monica was descended from champion stock certified by the American Kennel Club).  But although I missed her fiercely, I missed Cerulean even more.  Cerulean had helped me become Starwatcher, on July 10th, 1976; in Cerulean's perspective, I was never "Fairy Jerry"; and the pipsqueal voice of "Fairy Jerry" was delightfully and advantageously distorted, by a factory defect in our c.b., to a resonant baritone voice; such that those of our friends on the c.b. who happened to meet me in person usually asked me, at first, "You . . . Starwatcher?  Really?" at which point Cerulean vouched for me.  And, of course, Starwatcher evolved to Starward, which is the appellation that will be inscribed on my grave marker, above my mundane name and the dates of my arrival and departure.

    And I listened to Queen's song, Best Friend, the song that expressed, for me, the epitome of friendship with Cerulean (with some adjustment of details).  I listened to it more than once that night; maybe even more than ten times, because it evoked a time, for me, that the separation and this form of existence at college could not wrest away from me.  My roommate had not wanted my presence at meals, or seated together in our one class, the only class, that we had been assigned to together.  We shared only a room; and that was like a shared territory between two hostile nations.  We would never share more than that room (120 on the outside face of the door), and would, after that year ended in June, 1977, be only, at best, nodding acquaintances passing by on one of the many pathways through our bucolic campus to the academic buildings.  In the unusually warm spring of 1977, a warmth that also came quite early, when I began to wear my flipflops daily and nightly (and, of course, walking, I probably carried them more than I wore them; being barefoot looked great with those baggy painters' pants), I took pains to wash my feet in a plastic basin each night, for fear that he would complain about griming the linoelum floor through the evening prior to my customary shower the next morning.  He always seemed, to me, to be interested in the process by which the water would become very, very dark as the grass-stained and streetgrimed were loosened, by that water, from my bared toes and soles.  I was not permitted to wear flops, much less be barefoot, in my home, so I had to get enough of that in while on campus.

   So, for now, I will bid farewell to my adolescent self, at college, on the night of November 19th.  I will take this sequence up again, not today but tomorrow, when I write about my return home on November 23rd, and what joy awaited me there, despite the critical remarks of Lloyd and Betty.

Starward