Thoughts on beauty and the abyss

Seeing in an ongoing process...like learning....like history...I remember when Mr.Nickerson lent me his copy of essays by Frederick Jackson Turner...the most prominent concept Turner was promoting was the closing of the frontier and the effect this would have on the American conscious. It was a provocative thought to a rebellious eighteen year old.  He had given me the book while I was being disciplined which was a rare occasion in and of itself because I always ignored it when he called me down to his office over the pa and the one class he went to look for me which was Mr. Barlow's class I just quit.  Contrary to Stormin' Peterson and Larry Myers, I wouldn't serve time.  Later Andy Ras Vegas would write an ode to Gary Gillmore who was killed for a crime he did not do inspried by Norman Mailer's "Executioner's Song."  Back then in their rebellion eighteen year old read deep books and had deep thoughts. The other day while I was drinking a forty up on the ledge in the woods where I couldn't be seen, I watched the eighteen year olds play with their cellphones and ipods although I must admit the young girls did look good.  A little later on when Norm snagged me in the smoking area, he dragged me into his office.  I'm caught him off guard, however, when I bought up Turner's concept of the closed frontier.  A lengthy conversation ensued where we touched upon the more subtler point of Turner's thesis that day managing to avoid detention. Norm hadn't excpected me to have read the whole book.  But I had while skipping Barlow's class.

I would go on to Clark where a lot of my professors would debunk Turner's thesis.  After all, so many schools of historical thought would come after Turner like the progressives, social contract theorists, new revisionists and so on...the learning kept going on...just like this seeing here in this abyss...watching the leaves change...listening to me and tom on my ipod...