Hudson Valley Astrologer

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an un-uprooted small corner of evil.”

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

When we think back to our “glory days” we might get nostalgic about a championship sports team or a friend group, perhaps a first love. Typically we peer out into the world, from the perspective of youth, through naive lenses, blurred by a relative sense of comfort and security. I say “typically” because the evils of the world are more often than not visited upon “others,” in far off lands, or in the distant reaches of time in our collective memory.

I learned quickly and in dramatic fashion how evil people in the world can be. The relative safety and comfort of my middle class teenage cocoon was pricked like a bubble when a friend was brutally murdered.

The community came together in a really big way, but just as quickly members went into their own private gulags of pain and misery, maybe to escape the truth and horror about what happened, or maybe to protect themselves against an unspeakable fear — fear that this too could happen to them or a loved one.

Forty-years passed and no one mentioned Paul’s name or talked about what had happened, for four decades. I had tried to bury the memories too but was haunted by nightmares and woken up in the middle of the night on more than one occasion covered in sweat. On one of those occasion I decided then and there that something had to be done. The silence had to end!

I organized a walk from the football field to Paul’s gravesite 5-miles away. Friends and family showed up all saying the same thing. “Finally, we get to talk about the unspeakable, our grief and profound sorrow about the life of a promising young man struck down in the prime of his youth, who we loved and admired as a gifted student athlete.” Or some such variation along those lines.

After the walk, the nightmares ceased. Teammates get together now and aren’t shy about sharing deeply help feelings of guilt, blame, or anger, at the injustice and cruelty the befell our brother and teammate. Everyone learned that everyone had an “If only I” statement followed by a narrative that illogically claims responsibility or power to change fate. It is the experience which had as much to do with my decision to study astrology as any other experience in my life.

Paul’s death was the hardest lesson of my life! But realizing how beautiful and loving people can be in the face of tragedy was equally as moving, and possibly more so. Nevertheless, although I cannot never get the gruesome details out of my mind, such horrific experiences seem to beg the question as to why it takes the most depraved acts of humanity to bring out the best in ourselves?

HVA

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