Читать книгу A Paler Shade of Red: Memoirs of a Radical - W. E. Gutman - Страница 10

PROLOGUE

Say what you will but not all rivers run to the sea. Only those whose beds are deep and wide, whose waters swell with winter snows and summer rains will ever stream unhindered into Mother Sea’s embrace. Nor do the fountainheads from which they spring share common beginnings. Some come to life in silent majesty where ice-encrusted granite reaches for the sky. Others dribble out of a mossy cleft or scatter from a rocky crevice like strands of quicksilver. Brook, rivulet and creek merge at random. Tributaries join the headlong race and carve mighty waterways. They will all return to the source one day, transmuted by nature’s alchemy, ready for yet another cycle of endless self-renewal.

Some would-be rivers are stunted at birth. Their channels lack depth or vigor. Others bubble and billow for a while then vanish, never to be seen again. Exhausted, disheartened, others yet die of thirst along the way on some arid plain. A few meander without cause. They don’t seem to know where they’re headed, or why. They just obey their own life force, rushing heedlessly toward an estuary and surrendering at last to the rapture of the deep.

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You are about to embark on a journey brimming with reminiscences. Reflected in its paces is the deepest dimension of self. Revelation is the fruit of foreknowledge. It entails a sense of déjà vu. It also evokes an anticipatory awareness of life’s looming exactions. Yet, all is serendipity, the result of some casual chain reaction, an intertwining of haphazard events. The trick is to seize the moment. Time recedes, never to be replenished. Life is an adventure. To revel in its actuality, to love it as we wince from the low blows it delivers along the way, is to exalt it.

For all its expectations, this narrative is little more than a sketch. Spanning seven decades, many of its basic pen strokes rely on memory -- dimmer as I rummage through the distant past, clearer as powers of recall increase with the vividness of more recent events. Likewise, long periods of self-inquiry have yielded a few mismatched but pertinent fragments. Some events, too faint to recollect with any certainty, may be inadvertently out of sequence; I strove toward spontaneity, not the rigors of linear history. Others, as relates to some aspects of my work, especially in Central America, were deliberately reversed or transposed to cover compromising tracks or protect valued sources. Lastly, too painful to relive, even vicariously, too personal for public consumption or too fragmentary, some details were synopsized or ultimately excised from an over-exuberant first draft. Whenever possible, I’ve endeavored to reconstruct events, recapture feelings and echo dialogues long since blunted by time. Legitimized by indelible recollections, notes, faded photographs, family anecdotes, yellowed documents and recorded history, this narrative also relies on insights and perspectives apprehended long after the fact. They are laid bare without pedantry or false modesty. I vouch for their candor. I offer no apology should they lack wisdom, civility or virtue.