Remembering Robert Kennedy Forty Years Later

[Blaise (imported)]

The murder of Robert Kennedy touched me just as it touched perhaps everyone. I felt both attracted to him and repulsed by him. His hesitation in running until Senator McCarthy opened a door bothered me.

The morning Senator Kennedy announced his candidacy for president, I woke early in La Jolla with images of him on a television screen with his children crawling over him. The sound was muted. Somehow those children gave me hope. At that moment, I had been uncertain whether I was leaving the country or not. I had no idea what I would do in the future. I was deeply depressed, but I did not know that.

That morning, March 16, was the same day as the Mai Ly Massacre . The night before, probably about the time the massacre happened, my friend and I sat in the dark on a beach in La Jolla. During the evening of the sixteenth my friend invited me to her bed. That was the first time I made love. I suddenly wanted to be with her--to stay with her at least in some way. I thought for a moment something good might happen in America. For a moment, the moments seemed to counteract the poison of that interval in our history.

Instead of going to Vancouver, I went to San Francisco. The murder of Dr. King was when I realized that I had to return to Georgia, at least for a bit. I love these lines from a poem by Alun Lewis.

Out of the depths of the sea

Love cries and cries in me.

And summer blossoms break above my head

With all the unbearable beauty of the dead.

I did not know the poem on March 16, 1968, but Lewis’s poems frame the memories of first love and despair.

Once I wanted to write a quartet of novels The Death of Seasons. The individual titles of some of the novels came from Alun Lewis poems. The title of one novel alternated between Summer Blossoms, Blossoms Break, and The Unbearable Beauty of the Dead, the last title, of course, became unusable after Kundera used something similar for his great novel. I cannot find my copy of the entire poem.

In an earlier part of the poem, Lewis writes, “where none can hear the love songs of Ophelia or the cries of Lear . . . Love cries and cries in me.” I felt that in some way Kennedy did hear. I did feel a bond with Robert Kennedy and, when he died, I gave up for a long time. But I was already immersed in sadness long before he announced. http://www.guildmusic.com/catalog/gui7141z.htm (http://www.guildmusic.com/catalog/gui7141z.htm)

[Blaise (imported)]

I assume that people tire of old people posting their memories from the sixties! I tire of them even as I make the posts.

[Batman (imported)]

I assume that people tire of old people posting their memories from the sixties! I tire of them even as I make the posts.

I was 3 1/2 when it all happened that summer. I do remember my security blanket...



Batman

[Arab Nights (imported)]

Post away Blaise. If this is to be any kind of group, people need to open their soul a bit. One thing I like here is I do feel like I kind of know several people. Like always, I don't like everything about each person and I am sure the same goes for what they think of me. But it still beats a site where you cut and paste a URL and that is it.

[Blaise (imported)]

I was 3 1/2 when it all happened that summer. I do remember my security blanket...



Batman

I have a phtograph of mine! My docter called it a transitional object.

[MacTheWolf (imported)]

Post on Blaise

My best memories were of the 60's though if you asked anyone of my friends in the chatroom, they'd say I was recalling the 1860's

I recall vividly The murders of JFK in my senior year in high school. I recall Bobbie Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr and vividly recall the My Lai Massacre.

All of the 60's may not bring back great memories but it's nice to know there's another person here that lived through them who was about the same age I was then.

In the late 60's I had my first apartment and it was a party for 3.5 years. As I recall, it was 1969 when I was sexually molested by a bosomy raven haired beauty named Lila. I still remember her but that was almost 40 years ago. I think I was so much older then.

I'm younger than that now

[Blaise (imported)]

Post on Blaise

My best memories were of the 60's though if you asked anyone of my friends in the chatroom, they'd say I was recalling the 1860's

I recall vividly The murders of JFK in my senior year in high school. I recall Bobbie Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr and vividly recall the My Lai Massacre.

All of the 60's may not bring back great memories but it's nice to know there's another person here that lived through them who was about the same age I was then.

In the late 60's I had my first apartment and it was a party for 3.5 years. As I recall, it was 1969 when I was sexually molested by a bosomy raven haired beauty named Lila. I still remember her but that was almost 40 years ago. I think I was so much older then.

I'm younger than that now

There is a fine book titled Making Peace with the Sixties by David Burner. Probably, I mentioned it before somewhere on this forum. I think that I have made my peace. Still, the year 1968 was a pivot for me. There is before 1968 and after 1968. The film The Dreamers is a good depiction of the time. So is The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

My current avatar is from the Japanese Garden in Golden Gate Park. My father photographed me in front of this Buddha that year. I don't have that photograph, but I do have this one I took in 1987.

Dr. King was a hero to many of us, even when we knew about his personal moral failures, while Robert Kennedy symbolized hope even for those like me who had doubts about him. Much good happened later, but we still are a long way from the promises of that time.

[A-1 (imported)]

Perhaps the most profound memory of the JFK assassination was the overwhelming feeling since that day in 1963 that we have never been told the truth regarding the circumstances. Whether we have or not pales in comparison to the fact that the government bungle-ups have perpetuated the feelings.

Then, Bobby Kenedy, Martin Luther King, and others. IT seems that for a decade or two any significant change or rabble roused was either shot or killed or both. The circumstances of the Bobby Kennedy assassination still smack of shades of The Manchurian Candidate.

Not only the great people, but the not so great ones to the thinking majority seemed at risk and many died or were severly injured.

LET me see, George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party, George Wallace, former Governor of Alabama and one-time Presidential candidate, Roy Wilkins, head of the Urban League were all killed or shot with intent. There are others who do not immediately come to mind and probably ones we do not know.

The counter-culture knee-jerk reactions resulting from social unrest in many instances bred riots and other things like the kidnapping of Patty Hearst.

Those were the bad, bad old days and I cannot help but feel that the same thing is happening in the last 9 or 12 years beginning with the Clinton administration and continuing on into the Bush administration and the whole 9-11 thing and now the petroleum price gouging, the Iraq war and the environmental revelations of Global Warming.

Then, the issue of Princess Di's death and that whole mess seems not to be on the up and up. Thus, America's distrust spills across the pond.

We seem never to know the truth regarding any significant issue. To me, this distrust in institutions of government went international and this fact helped to topple the Soviet Union.

This is part of the reason that I see O'Bama as the best hope for America. I amd ready for fresh faces and new ideas. Seemingly, the Republicans just don't get it. We have moved from the FDR saying, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" to "We have nothing to fear but the Washington D.C. veteran politicians".

Sad, isn't it?

:shakemitk

[Blaise (imported)]

Whether we have or not pales in comparison to the fact that the government bungle-ups have perpetuated the feelings. :

shakemitk Remember how the FBI haunted this young man, simply because he said something obvious: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” Mario Savio http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeche ... lsitin.htm

[Blaise (imported)]

remember The Fbi.

cointelpro