mystical optimism

I am living in the backroom at the farm with Grandma now, in the room with all the books from over the years and all the drawers filled with the sort of gold only grandparents keep around. Newspaper clippings, invitations, letters home, pictures, medals, the entire 1968 World Book Series. There are pictures everywhere from grandma's parents to Pop's time overseas during World War II when i he was an engineer on General Patton's train, to the boy's and their college years through the boy's and their weddings and then the boys and their boys and then a whole stock pile of photos the boy's sent Granmda and Pop over the years bragging about their boy, and Christen too of course.
I don’t know what its like for you, but for me, digging through these drawers is the most magical thing in the world I've left to do. When you start to bleed the whole me and you duality together, the concept of family takes a leap in cognition as you begin to wonder what the difference between you and you father, or grandfather for that matter, really is. I mean, you came from inside his head, that’s crazy. And once you’ve gotten comfortable with the idea that our self is not nessearily defined by our phyisical bodies alone, where does the self find boundaries’ when you are staring into your grandfather’s face as his body shrivels with cancer and old age right in front of you? Back into the earth. Everything goes back into the earth. How are you supposed to feel about the fact this is the second time you've looked into that shriveled face that is almost your own, and that was when your father died of cancer way too young. Pop’s son, and here’s Pop going to meet his son whose already been across, and here’s me, Pop’s son’s son trying to hand him over to Dad as best I can. Experience is the only real teacher right? I suppose I should put that sort of experience to good use, like doing it again with all the things I've been realizing hindsight 20/20 for 3 and a half years. Here it comes again, hope I get it right this time.
Get it right. Get death right. What the fuck does that mean? I'm sure it means something. I'm sure it means a lot. I’m just not so sure I know what it means for sure, but I’m pretty confident I know what it means at least a little bit. Maybe even more than w little, but who knows? I want to stay humble about the extent of my oh so valued death-experience-meter and all, but I think I squeezed a little something out of it since the last time. I think I can learn to appreciate this everything must be born just as it must die phenomenon, but I’m not sure it’s in the same context as you. Not that it’s in a better context, it’s just that it’s my context. It’s my lesson plan I put together when I kept waking up and you really were gone. It’s all the things I say when someone else is talking about their Dad or something, all the things I say inside my head to stay cheery and remind myself to be brave and look for meaning. Oooh meaning, how fantastic. Now I’ve got something even better to tell myself the next time I hear about your family vacation.

That was all a ramble really. A lead up to the gold bar I found in the back room yesterday. It's a letter my Dad wrote to Grandma and Pop in 1968 when he was in college, making him 21 or 22 at the time I believe. The reason it's gold to me is because once you lose the abilty to ask your Dad questions about "life," and more notabaly his life, you suddenly come up with all these great questions you wish you could ask. It's a bitter twist the way it works out like that, all the things you remember to ask just after you can. The really powerful questions though are the ones that come up as you get older and find yourself genuinely desiring to have your Dad there to tell you what to do again. Even just a little nudge of advice you are so ready to take sincereley to heart. The same telling me what to do I rebelled aganst as a youth that comes back around when suddenly I've graduated school and new frontier's of life have come and gone on the horizon, and I'm here in teh middle of the peaks and valley's, navigating alone. Alone but not on my own I understand. Dad is here, especially when I stay close to Grandma and the farm, Dad is thriving in this place, and he does still speak to me. I guess you could be cliche and say it's from "beyond the grave" and maybe that's an appreciative and helpful way to look at it. Hmm, I think I will. I mean who doesn' get excited about these sorts of goosebumps? Especially when i;m not sure if it's Dad speaking to me from beyond the grave or anoteh rpart of myself speaking to this part of myself. If only we could draw the boundaries of our cage, but we can't, so I think I'll opt for mystical optimism and not be doing myself a single ounce of harm.
So anyway, here it is, the definitive evidence I've been looking for that Dad, underneath all that external southern babtist conservative genius garb, he's really a hippie at heart too. I knew it! ut then again of course I did, he is me, or I am him, or we are I but I really don;t want to get too technical about it. How funny when lives envelope each other like a Maryushka doll. Me inside of Dad inside of Pop. Bubbles within bubbles. Beautiful, miraculous bubbles. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for my many blessings, Amen.


2/3/68
Dear Mom and Pop,
Its Saturday morning and I haven’t anything in particular to do, so I thought I’d write and let you know everything is going fine up here. Mom, all the boxes of goodies finally got here this past week, one from you, one from Mrs. Fulton, and one from Granny. Also, Lloyds “tux” got here. Most of the cookies were stale, but the fudge lasted about two days.
I guess you know by now that Dawn has been accepted at Gibbs, and we’re both pretty happy about it. I just “let go” and sent her a dozen roses and a congratulatory telegram. My books didn’t cost as much this semester as I had expected, so I had a little extra money to “blow” anyway.
My courses this semester are radically different from last. With four economic courses, I got pretty bored; so this semester I dropped two Econs. And picked up a Philosophy and a Political Science. Both of these courses are taught by professors who are absolutely tops in their fields- Paul Weise, philosopher, whose course is titled “Nature, God, and Man”; and Professor Westerfield, teaching a course “American Foreign Policy since 1940”, is also outstanding. Pop, by the time I get home this summer, I’ll be much better able to support my side of our “political discussions”, so be ready. The entire course is centered around The Cold War, our relations with Red China, Korea, and Vietnam. However, Westerfield himself is an avid Hawk, so he will probably influence my own feelings in that direction. But, as of now, I still feel the war is immoral and an act of American aggression and imperialism, and it would upset me tremendously to have to go over and take part in it in a couple of years.
As you possibly can tell, Bob and I have been doing a lot of serious talking these past few weeks, and he has convinced me that my goal at Yale is not to “Learn how to make a living”, but to “Learn how to live.”
In the meantime, as soon as that w-2 form from Gulf States comes, send it on up, for I’ll need my income tax refund before I take off to Missouri this spring.

Love,
Allan