Wednesday, December 21
December 21. Approaching midnight. A lunar eclipse already in full swing, another winter solstice was just about to awaken. Sleepless, David Lee Hartland paused in the middle of an empty street for a moment, and turned his moist eyes skyward, just in time to see the first thin curved slice of light re-emerge from the darkened moon’s lower side. As the soft glow increased in size and intensity, the young man once again continued his slow walk beside frozen city sidewalks which mixed a fresh-blanket white with recently plowed mid-winter dirty snow and smoldering stubs of cigarettes no longer useful to craving lungs and lips. A tumbleweed newspaper crossed his path, briefly wrapping itself around his calves, pleading to be liberated from the unmerciful control of the brisk winter wind. The wind won, and the newsprint released its begging arms from David’s weary legs.
“I give up,” he muttered under his smoky-frost breath. “Life is supposed to be simpler than this,” he continued to lament to the cold silent air. This wasn’t the first such late night walk-and-talk for David. He found them occurring more and more often, as he waded through the tangled web he had woven in this remote corner of the world. Orono, Maine was no one’s idea of rock’n’roll heaven, nor would it even resemble the slightest trace of an enlightened land once the University campus cockroaches returned from their scattered destinations after the Christmas holidays.
Even though the Fall Semester was barely over, in David’s mind and heart, the end of this Winter Break was too quickly approaching. So too, he figured, was the highly-feared break in his relationship with Joanna-Christine. “Joanna-Christine, girl of my dreams,” he often chanted during the day, to no one in particular. “Joanna-Christine,” he had whispered over and over for the last few weeks. His moods jigsawed between the inspiring composition of more songs for his band, and the perspiring completion of an endless parade of 20-page long-term research projects all due “yesterday.”
In the Yesterday of his recent past, his troubles had seemed so very far away. Now a transfer student, in his third year of college, he was still a poor yet scholarship-laden young lad from a small rural White Mountains town. When he finally settled down on this new campus, he began to discover the potential of a small cadre of musicians, who might just happen to supplement his own talents to round out his “new sound.”
He also found love, or something closely akin to it. One of the group’s vocalist-musicians, a blonde, petite semi-beauty named Joanna-Christine Peirson, apparently fostered reciprocal sensations toward this back-hills musician. The two like-birds spent the autumnal semester composing a variety of musical sounds, from romantic cooings to blended harmonies and beyond. Except for the occasional interruption required by his attendance in class, his days and nights were filled with the glories of promise and passion.
However, as autumnal stars crossed and atlantean oceans tossed, a tumultuous tempest awaited David Lee immediately following this Junior Year pre-winter season of thankfulness and blessings. Joanna-Christine, it seems, had a family who hadn’t initially approved of her crossing the country in search of a liberal arts degree.
And their displays of disapproval increased month by month, as the family business grew larger, and they feared that her part in the family plans might grow smaller and smaller. The pressure for her to “return to the fold” was a constant gnawing and nagging. They advocated, they admonished, they advised: she was destined for greater things, like medicine, or jurisprudence, or, well, the foreboding family business. And that potential destiny certainly didn’t allow her the time or luxury to “wail those damn devil tunes with those freakin’ renegade hippie friends” of hers.
What it finally took to slam shut the lid of Pandora’s music box was Daddy’s company jet, and Daddy’s rented limo, and Daddy’s personal presence to whisk her away from the pagan eastern shores darkness, and a quick prodigal return to the west coast empire of surf, sun and sensibility. No parting notes to her school-mates, no encouraging promises to her professors, no forlorn farewell to the arms of her partner in paradise. Just a series of zeroes scribed amidst the commas in Daddy’s checkbook, a hand-delivered donation to the college president, and, voila, as of this particular holiday season, the young Pacific Coast Princess no-ho-ho-ho longer attended the University of Maine campus in Orono. Nope. The show was over, the curtain closed, the passion passed, and all the musical and emotional harmonies shifted silently, back to their respective corners.
So tonight, this bitter end-of-autumn evening, there was no song, no chant, no chance. Just one cold wispy breath following another, floating upward toward the formerly eclipsed youthful full moon now ironically refreshed by the passing shadows of Mother Earth. Yet the extended darkness of his own soul-piercing winter solstice was just now emerging.
“I just give up,” he spoke more boldly as he increased the pace of his tired step through this miserable Maine midnight. “I give it all up, — and where it goes, perhaps only the devil knows.”
As he approached the corner of Houlton and Springvale Streets, his heavy head glanced briefly left and right for any sign of some drunken driver who might be waiting to skate through an intersection which included David Lee’s weary frame in the crosshairs. He saw no such driver. He saw nothing or no one.
But, yes, he did see a light. A single dim flickering candle flame pierced his gloomy doom, emerging from behind one of the crystalline, frost-covered stained glass windows of St. Francis’s Episcopal Church. Right there, at that very street corner, and at that very moment, just as David Lee Hartland was in the process of giving it all up to the collector of lost souls, his attention was drawn to the small delicate ray of illumination within a church sanctuary. Sanctuary. Midnight. Lost souls. Joanna-Christine. No. Let’s go, lost soul. No, you first. Okay. I give up. I give in. Let’s go in search of some Sweet Mystery.
At the very same space and time that this particular phrase of commitment went through David’s tumbled thoughts, so too did the full-chorale melody of one of his band’s songs. “Aged Face” it was titled. And he suddenly experienced the whole town, possibly the entire world, symphonizing this song of praise and glory, perhaps just for him. “Who will deliver me to thee??” There was a church-choir excitement within the words. The interwoven voices further increased his aware attraction to the late-night Sanctuary waiting just across this snowy street. Could the source of this dream music actually be the members of my group, Cross Country Combination?
He didn’t see them, but he definitely heard them. Perhaps he was just flashing back to a previous rehearsal of this song that they had completed right before the Winter Break. Flashback or foreshadow? Or philharmonic freak-out?
Were they all re-gathered so soon, in that very church, at this very moment, in some kind of surprise reunion? A mid-winter night’s scream?? Or were they all alternatively in separate places, actually quite geographically distant from each other, attempting to escape the college campus for a few weeks of rest and relaxation? Could the collective spirit of CCC be singing individually, but the collective sound be gathering right here before his very weary but intoxicated ears? He had to admit, it was all quite grand, even if, to say the least, impossible and unlikely.
The mysterious music in his ears. The attractive light of a stained glass window in his eyes. The tightness of the muscles surrounding his pulsing heart. The previous admonition to Self: “I give up.” These combined sensory events led David to his next, yet first, step.
The first step in this new direction, hesitant. The second, only slightly easier. Then the forty or so paces across the street and up to the granite rock steps, initially awkward and erratic, eventually deliberate and automatic. His surrealistic thought patterns followed likewise, Step – pause – step – pause – step – pause.
Resolve set. Step right up. Witness the dancing spirits, with their gowns and wings becoming snagged on over-sized halos. Gates to the Gardens. Keys to the Kingdoms. Stairs to the Celestial Wonders. Embrace the Sweet Mysteries, Escape the Solitary Miseries. So many Holy Spirits, so many Holy names and so many Holy games. The Paths to Perfection? Why isn’t it all much simpler? A search for Simplicity? A search for Safety? A search for Sanctuary??
Although “Comparative Religions” was his official major in school, the study of contemporary Christian religion itself was not one of David’s strong suits. Too sordid a memory for him, this restricted style of religion had taken away many of David’s precious childhood attachments: a mother, a home, a vision. Gone was the spark of a creative spiritual freedom, thanks to the confinements of his father’s grace-less religion. Gone was the security of 2.3 kids, a dog and cat, and white picket fences. Gone was the favored frivolity of childhood, because of his father’s precious, yet pain-filled, Pentecostal religion. Gone was the love, the love that sent his mother racing to the safety of the newer-age West. What is it about the land of Californication anyway? Is it going to steal everyone and everything I love, eventually?
But here he was, tonight, cynic and skeptic David, knocking on the gates of St. Francis’s own mansion. Don’t be a sissy! Knock lightly. Wait. Overcome fear, ever so slightly. Late night frightly. So knock again, a bit heavier now. Let’s get inside. Move along. There’s a line at the gate, and it’s getting quite late. More souls awaiting to enter.
On the third knock, he heard the steps he had been dreading, waiting for, running from. Yet he stood his ground, brain and body both, on those great granite marble stones. Standing, waiting, and the door opened slowly, evenly, and silently. The mystical and musical choral group’s glorious harmonies which had previously filled his head and heart had now completed their mantra. Not-so-distant midnight bells now finally tolled the passing of one time frame, and the initiation of another.
And then a single voice followed that segue:
“Welcome, David,” the door itself opened, and whispered, yet with no apparent human assistance.
*****