Kevin Basil

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I would like to apologize at the outset of this post that I continue to be at the ebb of my biorhythm or something. I keep hitting really low points and deciding that my melancholy makes for really interesting writing. Well, perhaps ejaculating my bilious thoughts is a catharsis of sorts. But I’m sure you, dear reader, tire of reading it. So, I’m sorry. Here I go again.

I have been contemplating how the dynamics of communities change. In the United States, we just celebrated Independence Day on July 4. This was once an oppurtunity for our parish to gather and celebrate. I have fond memories of those celebrations, and I miss the people that populate these memories. In recent years, there has been no parish celebration on July 4.

This is the result of the influx into our parish of a well-defined bloc of people who have their own, long-established July 4 celebration, mixed with the destabilization of the original membership and the loss of all but a handful of the original members — myself, one other man, and the priest and his family. Nothing diabolical there: The membership was unstable before; the addition of the new bloc of members — existing as a defined group of friends before and outside of their affiliation with the parish — was simply a catalyst in the destabilization of an inherently unstable situation.

The exclusive nature of this new bloc means that the participation of others in their parties is quite arbitrary, subject entirely to the particular event’s host. This leads to some parties where the entire parish membership is invited, and others, like this past July 4, where some are invited and others are not.

Since these people are now my closest friends, I try not to begrudge them their clique. But, since I’ve always been on the excluded end of just about every clique I’ve ever known, most times I just try not to think about it. But sometimes, like on a July 4 when I leave work at six and spend the rest of the night trying not to think of the fun my friends are having without me, it gets damned hard.

Then I think about the celebrations we used to have as a parish and the people I used to know, and the grief overwhelms me.

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