Reading and scanning my notebooks
from the autumn of 1963
I get an infra-structure
of my mind
that leads everywhere and back

My study reaches a critical mass,
I pass a tipping point,
and I'm right there
as the news
about the Kennedy assassination
blurts out,
and we wait, in tears,
for the two tele satellites
Telstar and Relay,
which could transmit television,
to get into a transmitting angle

while somewhere else in my scribbling
I note that my dog Kim,
a Norwegian Elk Hound,
has laid on my bed,
pre-warming it
when I get in late at night

and another note relays
how my mother retreats into the kitchen,
weeping,
after we'd had a X-mas argument

Suddenly it's all here;
in an instant I'm everywhere
in my life,
in the center of a surge
of years;
a whirlwind of days;
in the eye of a storm
with my name;

the restrictions have been lifted
off the official NOW,
as the present has extended
to involve and encompass
my entirety

I was 14, I'm almost 72;
there's an abyss 'tween me
and that boy,
but no one is as close to him
as I;
the connection is restored;
I walk with him, I value him;
he was the one becoming me;

he was strong, creative, energetic;

I even admire his way of expressing himself
at age 14,
writing so much, so detailed,
in a highly developed language,
so cleverly formulated,
in retrospect really surprising me,
not having opened these books
in 57 years

and I find, here and there,
that he addresses me directly,
picturing me decades later,
more than half a century later,
as he stops to explain some teenage lingo
of the times,
should I forget,
before he continues the flow of notes

also making off the cuff remarks
about his earlier life,
from when he was 5, 6 years
and 11 or 12,
transmitting scenes from those early times,
then in full view,
that by now are blurred or forgotten,
serving, when he jotted those notes,
as a way station for early information
from myself to myself
via his pen and his notebook

He was an amazing boy,
and I'm proud to have known him,
57 years ago;
happy to be in touch
again, in 2020,
through his writings
of 1963
and the years to follow

It's a trip on my mind, sure enough,
but a positive one

I realize I felt better
in the wake of family hardships 1963,
than I thought,
which makes me happy now,
and I see clearly
that the adults around me;
even ones I hated,
took care of me
and respected me,
more than I remembered,
but it's all there, in writing,
in my writing, late at night
every day;
and that liberates me;
lifts a weight off me,
that, in some ways,
I've always carried

It feels like a miracle
that a redeeming light now shines
over those years

I'm so happy
to meet myself face to face
across these long 57 years

You're a good, smart boy, Ingvar;

you did good!