Dear Fellow Travelers ~

Welcome to this, my final installment of what has been an up and down experience with the presenting of My Journey At Greene School (which, by the way is really a school of a different color, but was changed, as were the names of its occupants, to protect the innocent -- and my fair butt!

Onward, then...

I've gone to a much greater length than intended in writing about Greene School. But the institutional aspects cannot be severed from the psychological (or behavioral, if you will) aspect of the students.

But, in the main, the focus of this paper is to be on the individual, to whom I shall try -- with few digressions -- to devote its remainder.

Some students were "loners." They tended to say little and do little to acknowledge recognition of their presence. In effect, they seemed to be temperamentally camouflaged in their environment.

Such a person was David Lurtin. If he were the type to zealously guard his anonymity as were so many others of the loners, I should scarcely have noticed him. A few differences seemed to set him apart.

The first time I really took note of him he was sitting on the concrete table in front of the dorm. I was working the day shift. The other counselor (there were two of us on "days") had taken the rest of the students swimming.

He was writing in a small leather-bound book, which he closed when he saw me approach.

"Don't you like to swim?" I asked.

"Huh-uh... I've got other things to do."

"Your diary?"

He nodded, looking embarrassed. Perhaps he hoped that I hadn't noticed it.

"I keep a journal," I confided. "It's kind of a diary. But, I don't keep it up like I'd like to."

His confidence had been won.

"You keep a diary too? A lot of the guys here think it's kind of fruity."

"Not at all."

"There's not enough time, that's my problem." he said. "I can't get everything in it."

What he said baffled me, and its import wasn't understood until much later.

When I was in the company of others David Lurtin would ignore me. But when I was alone -- especially in the early morning hours of the "graveyard" shift -- we would have long conversations. One morning, about 2:00 A.M., I heard footsteps coming down the hall toward the supply room where I sat reading. I knew it was David.

"Can I come in?" he asked.

"Sure."

He came in, then stopped, as though befuddled. He returned to the doorway and touched either side with the toe of his shoe. When he turned back around he was blushing.

"Have a seat," I said.

He touched all four legs with his toe, then sat down.

We talked for over an hour of many things, mostly about Samuel Pepy's "Diary" which I had recommended to him and which he had borrowed from the library. But, I found my mind occupied throughout with his earlier, strange, "ritualistic" behavior. It seemed almost as though he were erecting a magic door, I found myself hypothesizing, to separate the "hostile" world outside from himself. The chair behavior I could not fathom. But, later observation seemed to support the generally vague feeling, hunch, or intuition, if you will, that I was correct. I checked his personal file, but nothing alluded to this "magical enclosure" behavior that so intrigued me. Could it have gone unnoticed by the therapists? Or was it of recent origin? Something warned me that I should not broach the subject with David. So, a portion of me stood apart, scrutinizing, conjecturing, searching for a "core" rationale for his behavior. What was it he had said about his diary? "I can't get everything in." That seemed to hold a clue. For the next several months I paid careful attention to his comings and goings, especially in regards to his diary keeping. I discovered that, owing to his good behavior, he was allowed to spend the last two hours of the evening -- before 10 O'clock bedtime -- in the administration office, which was well lit and relatively quiet. Here, he would make his entry for the day. When he returned, minutes before ten, he would be emotionally spent, physically exhausted, yet somehow unassuaged.

I remember well one converstaion with him (the last, as it were, for his parents were to take him home a week or so later -- to his benefit or detriment I am unable to say). In that conversation, perhaps, lay the key to understanding his enigmatic behavior. The other students had been taken to a movie. It was a pleasantly warm summer evening. We were sitting in chairs in front of the dormitory. There were distant voices. I was barely conscious of intermittent, staccato laughter from the girl's dormitory, and the crackling sound of a bird in the branches over our heads. But, all the sounds seemed to perform as counterpoint to the summer stillness between. David was staring across the lawn at the lit window that seemed to draw him toward it.

"I don't know, Jay, sometimes I feel that it can't be done."

"It?" I asked.

"My entry. I can't get everything in." He riffled the pages of his diary aimlessly, staring at the window. "You know what I mean?" he asked, after a long pause.

"No, I..." I didn't finish.

"I mean it's like -- you know, I'm writing, then I remember I forgot to mention something that had happened."

"You mean something important?"

He looked at me, full in the face. "EVERYTHING'S" important, he said, emphatically. "And, then I go back and enter what I had forgotten. But, after I write that I realize that I have to write down my thoughts of how I remembered that I had forgot to write down the other thing."

"And then you have that further 'realization' to enter." I was abashed. It was positively Joycean. My sympathies poured out to him. He was a tragic figure. Like Hercules, his fate was to push a gigantic bouler up a mountain that had no top, full knowing that to stop would be to be crushed under the weight.

David knew that he could never "get everything in." On the other hand, he knew that he could never stop trying. Unable to dam up the overwhelming flood of impressions that poured over him, he made repeated gestures of insulation with what I choose to label his "magic door" and perhaps the "magic chamber" he had erected around his chair. Indeed, he appeared to be locked in an ever constricting "magic circle" of his own making. I wonder. I can't help wondering if he ever got out!


Much, I'm afraid, is left unsaid. There were others, so many others, I wanted to include in this paper.

How, for example, can I have omitted Frank Glick, who wore the lash marks of oppression, like writhing snakes, upon his back, and a knife wound running diagonally across his abdomen -- this youngster who clutched to himself his courage and self-impression of his manhood with religious zeal; who was the voice of the students in his hatred of Greene School -- and who burst into tears, begging not to be forced to leave when, at last, he turned twenty-one.

A hundred stories might be told of the comical, sad, bizarre, exasperating, revolting -- but always moving --interactions between the boys and the girls of Greene School. But the further and deeper I go, the steeper is my ascent, and the heavier the boulder pushing down upon me.

Unlike Hercules and David, I admit to an "all-too-human" frailty. So... with a final ceremonious push, I leap to the side and watch the trajectory of my failure reminding me of the path I had made.



Well, fellow travelers, it is finished, fini, caput, done. I hope you enjoyed the ride.

Am I being too free with your already abundant courtesy to ask you to please bring "down" the full excerpt from "The Dead Of Winter" and read it? Those of you who haven't done so already. I need your reviews -- good, bad, or indifferent.

Also, there are some prose-poems I'm pretty proud of I'd like you to take a gander at.

And, don't forget the two short stories. They're kind of experimental, and I think good.

Visit www.authorsden.com/jaysquires and leave any comments you feel moved to make on my message board.

Thanks for being here for me! And look

Always Upwards,

Jay Squires