THIS HEART OF STONE

You know you’ve been around and kicked around when your memories playback with a nearly complete Rolling Stones soundtrack. It’s a hard edged, tough music that blocks the silence and fills in the blanks. I can’t hear the Stones, Doors, or Jimi without feeling it; the long strong pull of Nam. Man, when I’ve got “Paint it Black” blasting in my ears I can remember how it felt: the rush of adrenaline, the emotional distance….

Sometimes when I’m out and about, I look around at other people and wonder what soundtrack would describe their life. Can you recognize the one who just never went? He’s probably that smug, self-assured asshole. Playing in a world where people like him made all the rules. You know the type that just didn’t go. I start to hate the mother####er without even knowing him. That’s when I have to say “#### it, it don’t mean ####.” Nam was for sure a bitch, but at least I don’t have to put up with a Barbara Streisand soundtrack playing in my head.

I admit that I’m difficult to be around. I find it difficult to relate, trust, or to even be around other people. I can try to and sometimes succeed in working or just being around people. It can be done but at a price, but who wants to pay. Me, I’m pretty much busted, emotionally broke, and there are few people in my life. Sometimes I want to keep it that way, other times it makes me angry or sad. I know that most of the time people look at each other with a polite smile and mutually agree “#### you.” He looks at me and sees a lowlife proletariat scum. I look at a guy and see and see a slave to the master-crass.

Now and then though you see someone, and they have a presence. When you look into his eyes you can see the “Heart of Stone, and you know you can never break the stone.” It seems that there are still a few of us, and lately more every day and we’re all locked in the same place.

It’s that we are scattered and isolated, stuck in our pasts, and lost in the present. We don’t connect often, that’s probably our intention too. Our collective soul is dark and our karma seems ####ed. However when we stand together, we can remember together. Together we find it possible and safer to go back and re-examine those days. There is a lot to think about; a lot of #### to sort out.


-Steve Boyer, Combat Medic, Vietnam Veteran