Chapter 20: A Smoking Web of Relationships

Bright Future. I took this senior portrait the year before I left for London, wearing my Plain Coat. I was finishing up a highly productive year, editing the newspaper and doing my student teaching at North Canton Hoover High School. My future was bright, my faith was clear, I was going to serve as an emissary of Christ in the sinful city of London. A year later, I had returned and things were far less simple. Photo by Bauman Studio

BOOK V: DEPRESSION

For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face. But they were for himself now. He did not care about mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back any more. The gates were closed, the sun was gone down, and there was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.

~ F. Scott Fi…