It Was Greener Than This

After my first divorce at 18, I went back home to Indiana (good title for a song) and worked in restaurants and volunteered again at a drug crisis house that had been set up by some psych grad students at IU. Still mean to write about it someday. I was not at all qualified to do anything but I could be sympathetic and it was mostly listening to druggies and their problems and helping with their bad drug trips. When I came back a group had started a halfway house for junkies from Indianapolis who had been in state prison, but were let out to participate in a methadone treatment plan. They all lived together in a supervised house in Bloomington. I got to be friends with most of them and a few volunteered as counselors at the Drug Crisis House. There was a girl that was interested in me that was part of this group, but I can't remember her name. We all went up to some kind of program in Indianapolis in two cars and ate dinner together and were put up at a house up there. The next day we came back, but on the way we stopped at one of the junkie's friends who had moved out to the middle of nowhere as a retreat thing. The girl and I wandered off and sat on a hill that looked on something like this and for a brief half hour I died and went to heaven right there. We talked a little about what love meant. I was sure I wanted to give myself away to someone- that was love for me then. I can still see the green hills rolling on for a lifetime.

The painter is Paul Turner Sargent- died in the 40s
http://www.antiquescientifica.com/Paul%20Turner%20Sargent1.htm