Sky to Glorious Sky

The Rock of the Norm Series : IX

I was 13 that year in my youth as I left primary school and went to the secondary. It was the glorious adolescence of my life. It brought to my understanding later why Freddie in Friday the Thirteenth was in such a sawing mood in his later life.

 

It started out well enough. It looked to me that everybody was equal, we all have the right opportunities … God is fair … and hey … we are even given to a bit of play between opposites in life … just to have some drama … fun … and purpose. I referred to the experience later as cloud 9. Unfortunately the mushrooms were gathering.

 

Suddenly about the following year … I had to deal with grown up issues. School band practices on Saturdays … I was a bugler … tunes … songs … the rattle of drumsticks on the stretched leather of drums. I was picking it up all right but there were others who were not … marching practices around the field … because of the mistakes of a flutist in the group. I was getting punished for the mistakes of others.

 

Its hard to say when but in the next couple of years I got separated from the experience of cloud 9. I stopped believing that we are all the same but I kept it to myself and presented a civil nature outside. Inside I felt a wrestle with the conscience. I spoke out my reservations … ' I'm getting vain on issues and nobody is helping me to supervise some self regulation.' A man with a silky voice on cloud 9 replied that I'll understand when I get older.

 

From the movies, one time, came a curious remark that had me suddenly awake on issues. ' Don't trust anyone over 32.'  Thereafter in a grapple over what appeared to be virtue and the forces of corruption in society, my mushroom activity gave up. This had always been in the background … some mumble about how things are possible, don't give up hope, its life's promise, have faith … an endless stream of search and reassurances from the past natures of the eros.

 

When it quit on me I came to the realization that it might have been my fault. God it appeared had forsaken me, ex-communicated … had I shown a lack of faith? I was in college by then … outside the usual assurances of mother and my sisters. I was a little lost at what represented the experience of norm … it was always there by my side, explaining my experiences, pointing out the meaning. The loss of it caused my mind to go into despair … it occurred to me then that it was getting serious.

 

Then something happened that I continue to pursue till today. Cloud 9 split open to reveal many things … the stars … a divided world … male and female … old and young … history and the present times … good and evil. It opened my mind to knowledge and to derive on my own, brick by brick, the understanding of norm and begin an application of that in my life. So far its holding.