Crash

Today would have been Farleigh Becton Dickinson the third's 55th birthday. A former classmate reminded me of this. He said "I just remember those sorts of things." He visited Terry's grave on the Vineyard one time. Strange, but the kind of unusual recollection that I am wont to have. I was telling my daughter about Terry, as in Tertius or Third, and how we used to climb to the top of the silo at the old Kent School dairy farm and lie there, way up high in the full tower, smelling the sweet smell and probably sweating in the heat it generated. Back then we were good friends. We would climb into the caves below Numeral Rock. I remember building a fire in one, once, I am sure it was strictly forbidden, but I was oblivious to many of the rules back then, as I remain semi-oblivious to them today. Terry flaunted the rules himself. His death was attributed to an overdose of opium and or LSD, in the winter of 1969. He was a freshman at Columbia University, played guitar with Chris Donald and some of the group that became known as Sha-Na-Na. Terry was among the brightest of many bright kids that I grew up with and went to school and college. October 29th is also famous for the stock market crash of 1988. What can we learn from these unrelated disasters? That they always catch us by surprise, that whatever "is" can change in a fraction of a second. Life can only be predictable only in the largest sense of the word. In the microcosm, the existence of the self, there is infinite room for random outcomes, walks along the path or into the wild. Although many argue the case for preordination, I do not. I see chaos, separated only by a desperate grip and great good fortune.