This seems like a story I've had on my mind for some time, but could never find the right time, or tenor, but Marsha gave me a push, as usual, and so I'll begin the story of my friendship with Steve Marquis, the most introverted person I even knew and what happened to that friendship. How it was helped, and how it was harmed by the MoQ.
Part of the difficulty of telling this particular story, is that I don't know how it ends. That does make for a certain dynamic interest, I admit, but also a great deal of existential angst. It's possible to envision the end of the story evolving in many ways, as influenced by the telling of the story. How weird is that? So hang in there if the going gets tough. I'll try and leave spaces for breathing room. But dang it, if I'm gonna tell it, I'm gonna HAVE to tell it right. We've gone too far down this road to pussy out now. You don't even wanna know how much love I have blown off in the name of wisdom in my life. More than I can even bear to look at, much less recount for your amusement. Ending relationships. Drinking the poison. Just for the sake of some "righteousness". But then asking if that's the "right" thing to do, just makes the matter more complicated. Sigh. What makes it hard to begin, is when you care too much on what you say. Like Ken Kesey talked about in his Magnum Opus, *Demon Box*, the overwhelming guilt that's felt when you look around yourself as an old man and ponder, how much was signified. And how short you fell. We all fall; so short. All the time. One reason I treasure that Thoreau quote about "youth and their staircases to the moon; old men and their woodsheds." I'm rambling. Ever notice that sometimes you just don't know which brick to describe? I met Steve, the most introverted person I ever knew, in 1976, our nation's bicentennial year and a summertime break between my freshman and sophmore year at Monterey Bay Academy - a Seventh Day Adventist Boarding School that kept me out of Grass Valley area most of the year, and only home on homeleaves and summers and such. I remember his horses. In a golden field, standing at the fence, eager for apple handouts. A late summer's afternoon, when I was fifteen or so, and I'd come up with my mom to help an old codger who lived out on the Ridge handle them. Move 'em from pasture to pasture. Put halters on them. Do something besides what Old Joe did with them, which was feed them apples and pears and garden scrap treats. I wonder sometimes at all the idiots out there in the summer, sweating over weedeaters, when bioengineered cellulose / horsepower converters are ready to be unfenced and fully utiliized. Damn barb wire has ruined the world. Old Joe had one son - Steve. He'd been born sorta late in life to Joe, who was 40 when he finally got around to procreating. Unlike my dad who'd gotten started as soon as possible. Steve, it so happened, was heading for the same boarding school I was attending. Steve was actually known to the local church pretty well, but I wasn't. I was a newcomer to the area for one thing. And a non-church goer for another. I'd probably have gone to the local high school, except it was really screwed up with over-population and going to a year-round schedule, and thus a poor choice, as well as the fact that I actually knew kids, faculty kids, who'd gone to the SDA school in Santa Cruz, and who now were going to MBA, and thus I'd have some social contacts in high school, rather than starting all over again like I'd been doing most of my life, uprooted by a contractor father in pursuit of the more recent boom, and fleeing the just-passed bust. Plus they had an airstrip, and my dad an airplane.' Plus they had stables and I could keep my horse. That's how I ended up at MBA, while living in Nevada County. Steve's story was slightly different. Steve started out at Rio Lindo Academy. Where my girls are going now, but ended up transferring due to an incident in the dorms, which I'll have to defer till tomorrow, since my lunch break is almost over. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
