Dana Thomas Clancy

A Madness Ago Dana Thomas Clancy

Dance McBride is halfway through his final semester at Holy Cross. He glances to the future while staring at the past, nursing deep regrets that have been visited upon him. He carries on with plans to enter Naval OCS at Newport with secret hope there is some mysterious magic that that might cause painful years to vanish to make the future possible. How could he know of the avalanche now studying his movements and preparing an explosion in which Dance himself would vanish. Dance's recollections are presented with humor and affection for all persons included in the telling. "I had a dream last night...oh, it was such a dream...that one day... the world will stop, watch, and listen...that one halcyon day a mad lapsed Catholic Jewboy with absurd lineage will take his proper place in an exquisite predestined scheme hatched by Gawd Awmighty, I said...and all the lonely, the lost, and the unloved shall rise up as all are healed and transfigured through the currency of love... And No! God is not love! I had such a dream last night...that love is God! Worship shorn of vanity---love is the only forever...." This is my personal experience of bipolar mania 50 years ago, and I never told a soul a word about it. I bring to it an essentially "photographic" memory with a blend of features to enhance readability, and I sincerely apologize in advance for any details which might seem offensive. I retained such details because they are true.