Book Excerpt
The Light Between Dark Places
Henry Walton
Between the darkness of non-existence and the darkness of death lies a period of light called life. It is between these dark places that all we know, all we see, and all we learn is manifested. I cannot see before my birth, and I cannot view beyond the veil. I can hope, I can dream, I can imagine, I can have faith, I can believe. But, I cannot know. These are the dark places. Within every life, there are mini-lives. By that I mean the dramas, the fears, the loves, the joys, the heartbreaks, the tears, the laughter, and the surprises make up little lifetimes within our lifetimes. Some call them stages, periods, or happenings, but to me they are little lives that teach us how to live the bigger life. They have dark places, but in between them is a light. It is in the light that we learn the lesson of the dark. The musings in this book are about making the most of the light. Making the light brighter, especially for those who have lost their candle for whatever reason. In some of the writings you will hear anger, in some hope, in others a plea, and maybe fear, but always these are writings and photographs from various times in my life and moments that others have shared from their lives, when I was searching for the LIGHT BETWEEN DARK PLACES. This is a self-indulgent book. I wrote it out of my personal need, but if you can find a flicker of light to help you out of your dark place, then so much the better. That means I have succeeded in communicating one human’s needs to another. If we can share the light, we can all navigate safely in The Light between Dark Places.
We will discuss some difficult issues in this book. School shootings, terrorism, immigration, sexual relationships, war, race relations, religion, and other taboo subjects. My views are not usually the traditional view. Indeed, my view will be extreme in the eyes of many readers. This book does not claim to know all the answers. At times it is frustrating because it points out an issue and then leaves it to the reader to take the information and decide how to act upon it. This is a book of many years of observation and evaluation. I was born just before the U.S. entered WWII. When I was very young, I recall thinking that going into the Army was a right of passage, like going to High School. When you were old enough, you did it. Nearly every young adult male was in uniform it was just a matter of which branch of the service it would be. I was six years old when World War II ended. I remember being very excited, because everyone else was. My sister and her future husband took me to downtown Los Angeles where there were huge crowds of people, celebrating, singing, dancing in the streets, and throwing confetti out of windows. It was an amazing sight to a five-year old. Later, my father explained to me that the war was over and all the soldiers would be coming home. Because there had always been a war in my life, I suddenly felt insecure. What was going to happen to all the soldiers? Where would they go? What would they do? I thought of them as being a different species that only existed to fight the war. It never occurred to me that they could change clothes and be regular people. I soon got the picture, as friends of the family and relatives started to come home.
I grew up in South Central Los Angeles; I was an ambulance driver during the Watts Rebellion of 1965. I was the Director of Political and Community Affairs for the Services Employees International Union, Local 660 during the rioting after the Rodney King verdict. I saw and heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak at the Sports Arena, I was driving the Ambulance on the day of the LAPD Swat team had it’s initial conflict with the Black Panthers at 41st and Central on December 9, 1968. The house on 54th Street, were the members of the Symbionese Liberation Army died on May 17, 1974 in a fierce firefight with the LAPD, was on a street where I had a paper route years earlier. The writings and the pictures in this book are just my memories and ponderings over the period of my life when these things were taking place. My life slipped from darkness to light on a daily basis. Sometimes it was determined by the evening news. It was during this time that death and destruction was beamed into my living room from first Korea, then Viet Nam and Cambodia. I started to understand what war is and I started to form an aversion to the very concept. As the war escalated and it’s popularity waned people started to take to the streets. Here we saw the darkness of despair and the light of hope. I guess my theory of “Light between Dark Places” was starting to take shape even then.
Much of “Light between Dark Places” is written in rhyme. I do not claim to be a poet. I have never studied poetry, and I don’t know anything about the fundamentals of structure or meter or any of those things. I write in rhyme or in metric flow, as I feel it. I don’t know if it is correct or not. I do it because I can say more, with fewer words when I force myself to organize my thoughts so that I can put it in rhyme. I photograph the same way. If I can find that flow, the picture comes out in a more meaningful way. I apologize to the purist, the teachers, and the students of the art of poetry, I have the deepest respect for what you do. I only ask your indulgence as I play the chopsticks of rhyme on your Wurlitzer of poetry. In doing so, I am only seeking “The Light between Dark Places”.