Relativity

He stepped into the emotionless moonlight and breathed in deeply, the cold biting at him bit by bit. He stared up into the sky, deep into the dark abyss of space, and continued to fall into infinity without leaving the ground. He was so small against the backdrop, so insignificant, that his presence or absence made no difference. The universe did not care if he was or was not. In the scheme of things his time as this set of molecules was immeasurably small. In the fullness of time he did not even spark.

He felt his smallness, his meaninglessness in space and time, and smirked. As he was insignificant to the universe, it was insignificant to him. But in this relative timeline, he mattered. He mattered to himself, to his family, and to his friends. He mattered in this space and in this time. For that he was grateful, and he planned to make the most of it.

 

 

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Edge of darkness, edge of light

I stand on the edge of darkness

as morning comes to take the night

and watch as new wonders arise from the dreams

of all who dared be greater

amongst these frail days.

 

From this place I see what needs seeing,

the struggles and fates untwined

the open spaces between heart and mind

where imagination lives and dies,

this place of my making

for having chosen unwisely.

 

I see the wonder in a child's eye

and understanding in an old man's heart.

I feel the yearning ever bright

in the soul of a forgotten slight,

and more than that I see what is hidden

deep within those with the darkest fright.

I see their fears alive

thrown at others with all their might.

 

This new morn brings toil and trouble,

it brings magic and untold stories,

narratives dark and bright,

but more than that it brings hope

that on this new day we find our way,

that suffering, loneliness and fear

be held always at bay.

 

But all too soon the day will end,

as night reclaims what light illuminated,

and we sit in ardor unrequited

to think and ponder of our failed plight.

Are we better for having lived

another day

the tide moving in the same old way?

 

The moon rises, the sun sets,

the season recedes,

and in this moment I lament

that you do not know me

and I do not know myself,

for I am not who you think I am,

nor am I who I might.

I am what you make me

all despite.

 

In this I am dying

none to remember

that once I was here in all my splendor,

unseen, unheard, and unimagined,

but only as a trouble encumbered

should my history surrender.

My gifts lost to witness blinded,

awash in inequity,

drowned in sorrow and pain.

In the shade of the silence of friends

lest they too be spited.

 

But tomorrow is another day,

a dawn of new endeavor

upon which I set my hopes

of living life beyond these shadows,

in warmth and peace enchanted.

A new day with fear for being

what I have become, decanted.

 

The light swallows the darkness,

I slip into the shadows,

a finger ripples the water

and then there are none the wiser.

 

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The Human Gift

Compassion is not a natural human gift, that being automatically given as a matter of course. We find ourselves drawn to acts of kindness  given to those we agree deserve it. This is at odds with the most valued of acts of compassion, those  acts of kindness extended to those we would rather hurt or put down for their nature does not agree with our own. Kindness is rare, as we are a judgmental lot. It is its rareness that makes it come to our attention, for despite ourselves, we all wish it extended to us unconditionally, and we know we are miserly.

In our work with ill infants and children, we are predisposed to give kindness more freely, and yet it is not unfettered here either. We must remind ourselves that compassion is a gift best given without condition, that as we must write a story to put this person, this family, in context we should work to make that story a positive one that allows us to give kindness without expectation. Compassion, kindness, is truly our most unique of human gifts and is greatest among them. Nothing but good can come of it, in the end, if not for the one who receives it, for us who give it.

In winter

He thought that if he cried, it wouldn't hurt. It didn't work out that way, in large part because he found himself unable to cry. Anger, frustration, had taken up that part of him that emoted, and he had long been beyond crying. So he just sat there on the bench, grumpy, agitated, and cold. He had been grumpy, agitated and cold for weeks now.

 

The stone face of the mountainous train station behind him forced the Siberian wind downwards, increasing in penetrating meanness as it hounded him. Or so he thought. He beat his arms and rubbed them for warmth, the cold nizzling its way through his bulky gloves, wool ushanka pulled down over his ears, sturdy coat and scarf, turtle necked sweater, vest, two fully buttoned shirts, and long underwear to reach his fatless reddened skin. Any more layers and he would be unable to move, like a matryoshka. He was sure he would lose something to frostbite, but in reality he hadn't been outside for more than a few minutes and was well bundled against the northerly wind. Dmitri was just having a bad day. He waited for Casimir, who didn't understand the concept of other people's time, or how the cold affected it. This was odd, being they lived in Minsk, arguably cold frequently enough one should be thoroughly familiar with it, and where no one had the patience.

 

The massive ornate wooden door of the station creaked open narrowly and a slurry of reluctant people flowed out carrying the equally unwilling Casimir within it. He saw Dmitri, waddled down the icy steps toward the bench, gestured with his head for Dmitri to join him at the bottom of the stairs. Dmitri sat a moment then unstuck himself from the icy bench and joined Casimir. Two furry giants among the herd of people making their lurching way.

 

"You gotta cigarette?" Casimir asked chatteringly, wooled hands buried deep in his coat pockets.

 

"What? Are you kidding me? Even if I did would I bother to to freeze giving it to you?"

 

"Eh...", Casimir grunted.

 

They walked then in silence, too focused on not falling and not letting the cold in to have much to say. It was getting dark, and the gas lamps had not been lit for over a month. It took several more minutes than it usually did, but they found a crowd outside a department store where someone rumored there was toilet paper, and they waited in the queue. It didn't matter what they actually would fine, whatever it was you needed it or could sell it.

 

"So... you going tonight?" inquired Dmitri, gazing up with as little movement as possible at the taller man.

 

Casimir made a face that offered something unpleasant, "I don't know... I have this thing about getting arrested. It upsets my stomach."

 

"Yeah, there's that, you with the stomach of a baby...", replied Dmitri. They shuffled forward in the queue. "I don't know which is worse, getting arrested or working. At least you get to go home after working, but then", he hunched his shoulders, "maybe that's not such a good thing either."

 

Casimir looked askance, "I'm tired of being cold. In summer I get tired of being hot, in winter of being cold. At least in prison factory the climate is constant, eh? There's that."

 

Dmitri chuckled, "I am tired of always being hungry". They shuffled forward again, the throng moved murmuring, huddling like penguins. "I am tired of always being angry...".

 

They came to the front of the line, and learned it was bread that was being sold. Two small nearly frozen loaves a piece, then they made their way towards the street their small apartments were built over. Along the way they stopped at a small shop and left a loaf each for the old lady who lived upstairs, then continued on home. Dmitri went with Casimir, together they crowded into Casimir's kitchen, and made a fire in the stove that quickly overwhelmed them in their heavy clothes. They started shedding layers as the room warmed, piling them mindlessly to the floor. The cats gathered and took refuge in the layers.The fulfilling smells of bread, soup and vodka being heated on the stove filled the room.

 

"So, Dmitri, I know you are upset..."

 

"Yes, but I don't want to talk about it. The anger keeps me warm at night, I don't want to give any of it up."

 

"It was his fault, you know it was, and there is nothing to be done. It's in the past, he's dead, and he needed dying, that one."

 

"This is my consolation, Casimir? That this, this zasranec, he's dead, but Myrna, she has to live her life knowing what he did to her?"

 

Casimir shrugged, carefully lifting the glass carafe of vodka off the stove with a handkerchief and pouring half into Dmitri's cup, the rest into his own. "It is what it is, Dmitri. You would rather she too was dead? There is nothing to be done."

 

Dmitri said nothing, sipped his vodka and took the warmed bread Casimir offered, spreading the thin preserves over it, dipping it in the vodka and popping it whole into his mouth. He looked into the bottom of his cup, swirled it, sipped then drank the entire thing in one gulp, grimacing. He handed it towards Casimir as he lifted another warmed carafe and refilled it.

 

"I am going tonight. I will come", Casimir said, setting another carafe on the stove to warm.

 

Dmitri nodded in agreement, "Good, good. No one gets arrested tonight." He held his cup up towards his brother, raised it to Casimir's, clinking them together gently.

 

"And nobody dies", Casimir offered.

 

"And nobody dies...".

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The Human Condition

He stood on the side of the road, silent, and wind swept, deep in The Valley of Lost Souls. He knew how he had come to be there, he knew why, but it didn't matter. There was a time when being alone was what fed his loneliness, a wolf that succored at his soul. There was a different ghost there now with no name, but a pallored visage that lacked definition and resembled emptiness. Where once a man existed there was now a void that lost all sense of being. He was an empty vessel, no dreams or aspirations, no will, no thought, no desire. He simply was. He simply was broken.

 

He looked skyward, looking into the starry night, into the depths of the universe unfettered by anything for billions of light years. He seemed less significant in this scheme of things, and his emptiness deepened, his concerns irrelevant. In his own skin he had lost meaning, and in this wide sense of being he was far less than he already was. He did not know who he was for being shown he was was an enigma.

 

This was not the way it was supposed to be, but it was the way it was. He felt he was not unhappy, only empty. He did not know which way to go, but he knew standing here accomplished nothing. One cell in his brain knew this was not his nature, and that in truth, things were not as dismal as the rest of him felt they were. His broken heart wanted nothing but for the deep ache to wane, it felt no compulsion to move in any direction until he could breath. He found solace in not caring, not worrying, being nothing, being alone. He believed in himself, and in that there was hope.

 

So, for now he stood there and gazed in loving wonder at his universe. He knew he was, that he mattered for himself, and that this would be the spark that would find him and renew him. He would heal, he just needed to stand here for a while, alone, unthinking, unfeeling, unbothered...

 

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To sleep sweetly, sleep...

I lay upon the lush grass that grew right up to the tree, and looked up through its leaves and branches as the light shimmied and danced between. A sparkle, a star of light, a flash here then there, all the while the warm colors of the leaves imbued in glowing greens, reds and yellows. The breeze lead a dance of light and color along with the music of the gentle percussion of one soft dying leaf upon another, entwined with the lilting melody of a lone songbird. I sighed deeply and let go of my troubles, those shallow and blown easily away, those deep so they only cooled but stayed. I closed my eyes and the color was gone, but the light show dazzled in whites and reds, and with the songs of the tree and the wind, I fell into natures loving embrace in peace and quiet, and sleep came ever so sweetly.

 

 

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Stand

A line formed to one side and the world stood beside it

judging those who chose one side or the other

for nothing more than that choice.

Most found themselves by birth where they stood

and yet it was found that they too deserved to be judged.

They were bullied, beaten, raped, tortured and destroyed.

The victors were stronger or more driven by hate,

rarely in any way superior that mattered.

In that moment where one was not in focus

stand silent and inhuman before inhumanity.

And this was what mankind was about

deciding the greater and the lesser

and keeping the lesser in its place

for no more reason than it made the lesser feel greater.

How will we judge ourselves

when there is no one left?

 

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Trust Fallen

Trust is a shimmering veil of hope

entwined with desire and faith

that betrayal need not be in keeping

with imaginary and real onslaughts

against a feral and cunning nature which it is

to be human.

 

Forged deeply into the character

it exists in thin lines easily broken,

hard to weave into a fabric that sustains,

so much so that it is often ephemeral if not non-existent.

It comes, it goes, here for a long while,

or never having existed at all.

It is oft known to have been only when it is felt

that it is lost.

 

Trust is such a thing that entire lives are spent

learning if it is carved into one's narrative

alongside those things so deeply valued it is life itself.

Betrayal is a dark and stormy place in which

trust goes to die,

and with it a willingness to continue this mortality

fearful of falling into that unseen abyss

and that searing pain that comes of trust lost.

 

In its dying it withers all hope of return

breaking the seals that held together our better nature

and making us forever shy and forlorn,

wild beasts that see hurt and shame in all corners

and find no solace in words spoken,

actions taken,

promises given.

 

Trust knows the death of itself lies in betrayal

that this long and arduous notion

cannot but seem virtuous and fair,

but when feigned rings hollow and deceitful

a machination of Machiavellian proportions,

its own being lost for being used as a folly.

A drama unfolds seen by one,

yet judged by those blind to the path

and in this comes an unabiding sadness and turmoil,

so twisted on itself it goes free only by breaking,

shattering asunder,

leaving searing and ugly scars that never fully heal.

That thing left behind can never trust again.

 

Trust is a virtue.

Trust is a gift.

It is by its nature a thing given and not taken,

lost never to be found,

and at its center it is our very human nature.

Such a thing as this should be sacred

for it is indeed a rare and cherished emotion,

and it is what makes us

good or evil things.

 

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An Ordinary Extraordinary Life

She thought about it a lot before she died. The details of her wonderful, ordinary life were not the issue. It was that she was now in her late eighties, frail but able after her recent illness, of impaired ability to move, hear, see or speak, and that while ripe of mind she had little to say of interest to anyone. As she thought about the people in her lifetime, whom she loved dearly, well, most of whom she loved dearly, she knew that to many she was a frail shadow of an old woman. None of them seemed to realize that she was once one of them, had been for a very long time.

 

Georgette had known a touch of all the things life has to offer. The wonders of childhood with usually loving, always providing parents, now long gone. The angst of her teen years, with her first love, her first broken heart, and her first really big mistake (her second was pretty remarkable too, truth be told). She had known loss, suffering. She had seen most of the world, not all, and had watched the advances and failures of civilization such as they were. She watched the waxing and waning of peoples, of history. Witness to great beauty, to great tragedy. She had, in fact, been young for most of her life, having only recently found herself old. She had lived a usual life, though if you had asked those who knew her back then, it was actually nothing short of extraordinary. To her, ordinary.

 

She looked over at the built-in bookcase in her tidy, well kept cottage, at the photos of her in her younger years. She was a beauty by any standard, emerald of eye, dark of hair, fit of figure. She had been an athlete, and a pilot for several decades flying C-17s in the Air Force. In "retirement" she flew in Africa and later in the Middle East after the Great Religious War, for various humanitarian organizations. It was all there, in fragments, on the shelves of her life. She heard the children in the yard next to hers, and she smiled, remembering of her childhood, and the childhoods of others she had shared. There were too few actual memories left, but she remembered how it felt, and smells, sounds, glimpses out of the corner of her eye, could bring back a thought from years ago, untethered from context. Most of her memories came to her in her dreams, fleeting, ephemeral mixtures of people, time and place.

 

Several of the photos included her wife, the last twenty or so years ago, a few years before Sharon had died suddenly after complications of an accident, an accident that killed their two adopted children, a boy and a girl. Sharon had died younger, and there were no memories of her as an old woman to overshadow who she had been. No one remembered Sharon in the image of an old, frail, inconvenient woman. Decades ago Georgette and Sharon had been among the first to be allowed to legally marry. What a wonderful time that was! This memory was forever intact in every detail, though some fifty years past. This deepened Georgette's melancholy, deepened by the understanding that Sharon was remembered by too few anyway, and when Georgette died, no one, really, would ever think of Sharon again. Sharon had never know her birth family, and had always said her life began when she met Georgette.

 

Georgette's history was filled with stories, moments that ran from the mundane to the exceptional, and it was filled with ordinary and extraordinary people, each with their own stories. One seemed to move through one's own space and time, she thought, with illuminating moments when one was aware, if but for a moment, that others too had life stories unfolding around them, separate, independent, and in an overwhelming number, completely un-reliant upon hers. We are each meaningless to the vastness of humanity. There was the sense that even the lives she had touched would have gotten along fine without her. Nature always finds a way. This was loneliness, feeling one did not matter in the scheme of things.

 

Love was like that, unrequited. She had loved many, oh and how palpable and frightening, painful and joyous was that love. She felt she never knew if anyone really ever loved her like that, perhaps not even Sharon. I mean, she thought, who loves like that? In her heart she knew Sharon had loved her, but she was sure never quite as much as she loved Sharon. There were the words, things done, but were these tangible, real, or social scripts in motion?

 

Several days had gone by before anyone noticed she wasn't there anymore. They found her in her bed, alone in her cottage by the sea, comfy under her Tanzanian quilt. She had fallen asleep while reading and seemed peaceful, ordinary. Her windows at the foot of her bed were open upon the postcard vista that had been her village all these years, always wanting it to be the last thing she saw before falling asleep.

 

"We found the old lady," he said into his radio. "Yeah, she's dead." No one gave a moment's thought that this too was their fate, if they were lucky, to die old in bed while one slept. She was buried a few days later, unattended, a small grave with a small headstone in the village by the sea, next to her love, Sharon, and their children.

 

It was a few years later that Stephen crossed her obituary online, quite by accident. Someone had incompletely coddled it together, with a photo of an old gray haired woman in thick glasses, hunched down in her chair, who had died fairly well off, willing her small treasure to charity. His father had died recently, and he realized more cogently with his father's death, that this was it. This one life lived. Every life mattered for every life was a story of untold richness. He felt compelled to learn her story and to share it, to see the young vibrant woman who sat in that chair, and died alone in her cottage by the sea. It took far less time than he had thought, to find people who had known her and remembered her easily, who had photos of her, tales to share with much exuberance and love, from all around the world. People who were shocked to learn not of her having died, but that they were only now learning of her death. People saddened to their souls that she died alone, forgotten, an old woman.

 

The snow had only just began to fall, the winter's first. Some three hundred people gathered with Stephen at Georgette's modest grave, he who had only recently come to know Georgette, but now knew her more than any one person there did, for he had compiled all of her story that he could. He did this because her life mattered. They all came laughing, smiling, renewing friendships, remembering her and how she mattered to them. All had come, some eagerly, some sadly, some shamefully, to be with Stephen and Georgette this November morning. And all of them remembered Sharon.

 

Not one remembered Georgette as an old frail woman.

 

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Fucking Harry

Screeching winch, stressing metal, revving truck motor, the smell of diesel, and that nasty electric smell from the worn winch motor. At the end of the control lever at the back of the tow truck was a burly biker dude and his equally scary partner, guiding the Range Rover up the ramp onto the back of the truck like a whale being landed on a factory boat. This, apparently, is what happens when you fuck with your uncle "Harry", a Russian criminal mastermind wannabe, who then decided to pay someone a lot of money to steal your car just to piss you off.

 

It took a few moments, but Tow Truck Guy Number One eventually noticed the diminutive Armin. He was standing in the middle of the parking lot about 30 feet away in front of the truck on the driver's side. Armin was nonchalant, a Diet Coke in one hand, the left in the pocket of his black jeans, looking unremarkable though handsome, with wavy dark hair, his Wayfarer's, a weathered black leather jacket and boots, a slim shady in the street. He stood casually posed to one side staring straight at One, drinking occasionally from his soda. One shook his head in disdain with a Fuck-You-Asshole grin at Armin's stare. Armin recognized One, and had no doubt the guy recognized him, and knew it was his car.

 

By now his Rover was up on the ramp, and Tow Truck Guy Number Two pressed a lever to lower it, having taken One's place at the controls, as One stepped up into the truck's cab giving Armin a solid Go-Ahead-Punk-Make-My-Day stare the whole time. The ramp lowered back into onto the truck bed and with a soft clunk locked down into place.

 

Armin looked at his watch, then back at the truck. A sip of his soda, and he began to walk forward, his pace at first slow, then with determination. With seamless grace his left hand pulled his 9 mm from its holster under his jacket and fired one round at One, nailing him in the forehead, and then a second into Two who made the mistake of looking out from behind the truck with a WTF look on his face, dropping him before he could dodge back. Armin slowed his pace, again casual, stopping at the levers. He slipped his Glock back into its holster, took another sip from his Diet Coke, rolled Two out of the way under the truck with a boot to his ass. He picked a lever, fortunately the right one, and the ramp raised back up then slid backwards to the ground. Another lever loosened the tow cable and his Rover drifted back to the pavement. He gave it a push as it rolled a bit, and undid the hook, dropping it to the ground. He drained the last of the Diet Coke, walked over, opened the Rover's door, threw the can on the far side floor, and followed it in. He sat for a moment looking the scene over, then started the car and drove off in no particular hurry.

 

"Fucking Harry", he thought, shaking his head.

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a collision of rings

It was said that his secret was that life moved through him, while he moved through life. Long ago he stopped taking most things seriously enough to become annoyed with them, but there were those things, in his older years, which he recognized as annoyance worthy. The common thread was a strong distaste for self centered arrogance, in thought, action and word. Needless to say, he was, though few would agree, a curmudgeon, for it seemed to him the world had become overrun by fools.

 

His cigar mused its way to a stub as he worked it between swigs of Summer Shandy, watching what he thought were bugs flitting across the tongue of sea that ran into a small cove behind his house. He wandered slowly around in his mind as he contemplated the converging ringlets that seemed to appear without reason, changing the otherwise featureless surface as the tide ebbed. Like so many things in his experience, and it was wider than most yet not enough for his liking, they existed in the scope of the entire universe in this one place, this one moment, and he was here to witness it. In the scheme of things it warranted no notice at all, but it existed, and he, the sole being in the entire cosmos, was there to see it. He tried not to give it more meaning than it was worth. Surely something similar was being witnessed by someone else on some other rock circling around some point of light elsewhere in time and space, and these too were in and of themselves, pointless. But these ringlets, these bugs, they were not simple things at all. The effect was simple, yes, but think for a moment how many trillions of years of evolution were required for this crossroads to occur now, in his eye, his experience.

 

This rock, his interesting minuscule rock, was filled with insignificant things that thought themselves significant, all too often at the expense of other no less significant things. A world contrived only through narrow minded availability heuristics and fear that lead to superstitions that required unspeakable illogical reverence less the whole house fall. One bug needed power over another to preserve their sense of idea, their ringlet. This lead to a lot of bugs feeling offended as ringlets collided, when truly they were simply annoyed, but this sense of offense claimed a greater significance than was deserved, leading to anger, suffering, bloodshed, the end of the one thing that actually mattered. Meaningless ringlets converging from meaningless bugs, unnoticed in the cosmos, that ruined the wonder that was a life being lived so briefly even in its full time. So many spend so much time struggling to create and preserve ringlets, others enduring those inevitable collisions, when the featureless surface was itself enough, pristine and selfless. This one life missed, lost, because life moved around it, rather than through it, the forest being overlooked for the proverbial trees.

 

It began to rain. He wondered if they weren't bugs at all, but wayward raindrops that skewered the sea and took him on this, another journey, that he had imbued meaningless with meaning. He took another puff, and realized he needed another cigar...

 

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The Silence of God

In the silence an hour passed unnoticed. Time was nothing. Another hour of another day, but these days were different. It was for most of them the last days of their lives.

 

Henri had arrived only yesterday, and was processed so haphazardly that he still had half a cigar in his pocket, missed by the camp guards who were uncharacteristically harried. The past few trains skipped the delousing altogether, let alone the taking of their clothes, though they were dispossessed of their belongings. His blessing was that he was an old man who had never married, and who had no family. Henri had no one to mourn, and not so curiously, there was no one to mourn Henri.

 

Sebastian, however, was young, and had no idea where his wife and children were, nor what had happened to his parents and sister. Last he had seen his mother and father they were being forced to watch as the soldiers raped his sister, having beaten him senseless and barely conscious. He could feel his mother's sobs as his sister screamed. Even then a soldier had stood on his neck... Sebastian did not talk, but everyone knew his story. He was the book seller from Wroclaw, though some thought he was a Slovak. He was a grade school teacher too. Now it wasn't even clear he was mentally present. He was broken, unreachable. But he worked like the rest.

 

But Piotr, he had God. It was said Piotr was a rich man before the war, from Krosno. He and his wife, their daughter, were swept up as they travelled for Belgium to meet with fellow parishioners from his church after the Russians had burned the town. They were pulled out as Jews, though it was clear to everyone there they were not. "Our God was an all powerful, all loving God", he told everyone. He cried out to the soldiers, "I am no Jew!" but he and his family were taken anyway. The others in his group were shot where they stood. He prayed constantly, and gave freely of God's grace. He knew his wife and daughter were in the camp, for they had travelled together, and he thanked God daily for their being here near him. He was an annoyance, but harmless, reading and quoting salvation from his bible, which the guards threw back at him in processing, laughing, telling him to find his God in the camp, perhaps on a piece of bread, and beg Him to save them. Piotr praised God he had been given back his bible.

 

It was busy these past few days, the awful, foul smoke dense in the camp from the factory. But there were no more trains, and the rumor was that the senior camp officers had left this morning. The prisoners had been digging huge pits behind the camp under the guns of the guards. Being busy lead to the mercy of death for some of those who had been here too long. The soup was less with each passing day this past week, and now seemed mostly thin broth, if it had any flavor at all. It was not enough to sustain the sick, the old, and the weary. It was not enough to sustain the well or the young either.

 

Piotr had gathered after the meal with his fellow believers, some pagans who had no where else to turn for solace, some Jews, some Polish Christians, like him, labeled as Jews, and were praying, thanking God for their having survived another day. Except for Johannes, for whose soul they prayed. He collapsed this morning and the guards left him where he lay in the mud. Henri had lit his cigar, and had smoked it nearly to its end, which was good as it took his last match. He listened to the droning on of the prayers and hymns and was lulled. He barely noticed as Sebastian stepped over suddenly, took his cigar and buried it in Piotr's eye.

 

"Perhaps by morning God will regrow you an eye for you are surely righteous and I am damned!" Sebastian did not stop as the others ran to the howling Piotr. He opened the door and kept walking. He walked to the fence, and he began to climb. The wind slammed the door shut, almost covering the sound of a single shot.

 

In the morning Piotr was still blind in one eye. Sebastian hung where God had left him on the fence. And the pits they had dug, God filled them with bodies and ashes of those burned in the ovens. That night no one gathered to pray.

 

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Also sprach Zarathustra

The man had waited a long time. His question was a simple one, and he asked it simply.

 

"How do we save our world?"

 

She sat there before them on the dais, her bright green eyes unblinking, staring starkly into his soul, and said nothing. He waited, shifting uncomfortably, pulling at his robes as she did not break from her sojourn into him for some time. Her visage became one of deep, unabiding sadness.

 

"You free humanity from religion."

 

The collective silence at her whisper followed the gasp of all, and it was profound.

 

She spoke with a reticence of the ages, for she had said these words time and again, for millennia upon millennia. "The shackles of religion, the fount of all evil, are forged with teaching of the young that they are unworthy, before they discover they are wondrous. In beautiful words they are taught shame for being human before learning the truth of their humanity, and that they must never lift their heads nor their minds except in piousness. They are taught that they deserve nothing including this life, and that only in worshipping an imagined all powerful being can they become deserving, can they find meaning, and that if they do not they will die suffering a thousand horrors."

 

She spoke in a soft voice that demanded attention, her eyes drilling down into his being, he having never left her piercing focus. "Then they are taught conflicting insights into their god to keep them unbalanced and forever uncertain, told that they have not yet become worthy enough to understand their gods vagaries when the parts do not make a whole. When their god fails it is declared a mystery, when he succeeds it is a sign of his unique love for the believer. They are taught that any who do not believe unquestioningly in their god are dangerous and must be destroyed by the followers of their all powerful, their all loving god. Their leaders are enriched with claims that in giving their all to those self appointed who speak for their god they will be given clearer vision into the mysteries, and move ahead towards worthiness. They will see the threat of others' gods not as challenging their own base notions, but as an evil creature that must be destroyed for no more reason than that it is not of their gods. When others among them are more inconveniently pious they will be stoned as zealots by the less dogmatic, for their god is one of convenience, his words variably interpreted to meet the need. They will see their dreams and desires as dangers that must be drowned in shame, while their prophets seem so unaffected. Things of beauty and things of knowledge will be cast as the fruit of a poisonous tree that must be burned down, and in these destructions of their character they lose their humanity. They allow themselves to be shackled by their gods, by the words of their holy elders, and these drive them to shackle others, for deeply buried within them they understand all too well that if they cast off their enslavement they are lost, their suffering and the suffering they brought upon others was for nothing, they would see that their gods live in a house of cards like all other gods long cast off. Since this can never be accepted, since they can never be forgiven for what they have wrought in the name of their one true god, they must believe that their god is THE righteous god, for to allow otherwise will show them for the fools they are. Shame again shackles them to their gods, driven by the words of their more worthy prophets. The struggle with the omnipresent cognitive dissonance is called faithlessness and those that explore it are identified as less than unworthy, unfit to live amongst them. They are taught not to question nor to seek discovery, but to believe unquestioningly only in their holy words, and that this, in and of itself, is the only grace. They must believe that theirs is the one true god, and to think otherwise is a desecration, an offense to their god."

 

She turned her enrapturing gaze to the others and he felt suddenly released, drained. Her voice remained unchanged, sad, weary, captivating, pulling in the light and the darkness. "Religion is evil incarnate, and it is a con as a holy good lead by the greatest of cons for the enslavement of people by all means. This alone destroys your world for it seeps in everywhere, into everything. It consumes leaving nothing. In time all religions fade as their gods eventually are seen for the powerless fantasies they are, but if the people can still be made to be afraid, another will rise in its place, as it has thousands of times before, the new gods' existence unrecognized as the further proof the other gods were just as false. Religion is the shackle of fear. If you seek to save your people, your world, free them from religion, from gods, so they need no longer be afraid, no longer be ashamed, no longer seek to destroy their sister and their brother under the guise of peace and love, which is the greatest of religion's betrayals. Teach them to see, to hear, to discover, to share, to wonder and to enlighten. Teach them to be joyous in their humanity, the humanity of the loving whole with no god to render them one against the other."

 

The human trembled a bit, and fell speechless back into his seat. She turned her gaze to him but he could not look at her, for he was praying with every element of his being to his own imagined god, deeply, profoundly afraid of what he could not control, that surely his god, the one almighty and righteous god Zeus, would.

 

"First, stop being afraid. Become enlightened in your glorious humanity. Then dismiss your gods with the same argument you use to dismiss all other possible gods and fantasies. To survive you must stand up, speak up, and free your sisters and your brothers, for to allow this source of all evil to continue is to to be bloodied by the deaths of the billions of beings to follow, for in your silence you commit untold atrocities for all the eons. Silence, religion, is the refuge of fools."

 

The people sat there, praying, unable to let go of their fear. In the eons that followed, billions upon billions died in the name of one god or another as they remained silent, unable to simply stop being afraid.

 

 

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The Meaning of Life

He was born with five toes on each foot, and five fingers on each hand, of which he had two. And in is head there was a brain, nascently frameworked by the genes his parents had given him, later engendered by life to have a character, personality.

 

These life experiences shaped him. Like a block of stone, what he brought was cut, hammered, drilled, chiseled and polished. Parts of him came into being, some were broken off (some of those parts he liked and would have rather kept), other parts emerged from beneath the rough stone to stay. Some cracks were polished over, others stayed. He became who he is in a gradual process, and who he is changed from time to time. He learned to like, to love and to dislike, to hate. He learned and discovered, he would forget, rediscover, and forget again. He would try, he would succeed, he would fail. To make it through his day he made assumptions, created stories that placed people and events into a context he could understand. Sometimes these stories he told himself were correct, but all of them guided him, which is why for most of his life, though he did not know it, he was lost. He learned to wonder, to fear, to discover and to hide. He learned pride, and he learned shame (a terrible thing). He created his secrets, he made his story amongst them, he cataloged his dreams, none nearly as accomplished as he might wish. He suffered, he caused suffering, he brought peace and he brought comfort. He won, and he lost, and he enjoyed his life such as it was. He loved, unrequited, and requited, and he had his heart broken, to heal again. He learned to never be vulnerable, and for this, no one really would ever know who he was. His crowning achievement was his children, who also had the good fortune to have been born with all their fingers and toes, and to have received a better compliment of genes than he had, thanks to their mother.

 

But his story was not this. His story was what he saw, what he felt and how uncomfortable he became when he went off script. But it was also the part he played in other's lives. He entered, he changed things, and he left, and these encounters changed him too. That part of his story was never available to him unless that person stayed, or came back, and that bothered him. His life wasn't wasn't written by him, but by those who came into his life, and the events that happened to him. Sure he made choices, but these too were limited by what was available to him (he could not chose what he did not know, and the wiring in his brain may from time to time betray him). Its in the fabric of trial and adventures that seemed at the time entirely not what he had planned. It was a pattern that was his story, a broad cloth of varying colors and textures, that recorded his life, but it was not the whole story. Like the movie, which tells less than the book, much of the meaning was lost. At times it was as if others existed only as they came into his space, and ceased to exist when they left, that his life only mattered when others were around. No matter how close, they were always separate: they were not him, they were not in his head. He wasn't even sure they existed at all, let alone when he saw or heard them. He spent his entire life trying to please others, and this hurt him, scarred him, deeply (second only to shame for the things that destroyed him while he lived). It made him leave most of himself behind. At times he felt like a pawn, or a pachinko ball in someone else's story, their lives defining his. Frequently he would acutely attain a consciousness that he existed and that moment of reality startled him. He would marvel at it. Other times it was as if he was looking back through the pages of a book, reading what had happened to a character that just happened to be him. He wasn't sure if it was a bad thing that he could not page ahead to see what would happen to him next. Nonetheless, it was a story, it was his story, and it was well that he lived it, because, well, it was his moment. His one and only moment. He was an actor in his own play, yet he did not write the scenes. He was what he thought he needed to be, he was not who he was. And that is how he wasted his one life.

 

In the end his body failed him, he died, and what he was returned to the part of the cosmos called earth. In time no one remembered him. But for the time he was, he mattered, he just never knew. It would take days, years, millions of years, eons, but eventually all that was him would exist again as specks of matter in millions of other things throughout time, pretty much just on this one earth. He was him only for those briefest of moments that those particles that were him came together in one place and stayed for a while. Now that those pieces fell apart he wasn't him. He simply wasn't anything at all.

 

And that, simply, is the meaning of life.

 

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Yes

Say yes.

No comes easy, requiring nothing but a breath.

Yes means work, thought, commitment, time, energy, compromise, sacrifice, change.

Yes also means compassion, empathy, making a difference, peace, progress,

easing another's burden, lifting another up.

It matters not one iota how easy or how difficult the question,

it is always this way.

Say yes.

Its the human thing to do.

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Time and Tide

It seemed that as the water receded, so too did my angst.

 

I needed an excuse to paddle, to get out in my kayak in the center of the bay and just float. As the tide began to move out I knew that I would have to be quick about it. Gathering my gear, getting into the shorty one size too small, PFD over a shoulder, grabbing the yak, paddle in the other hand and humping it down to the inlet would find me chasing the last of the ebbing current. Why is it in these moments the gremlins are out, knocking things about, slowing me down, damaging my calm? Always keeping my rescue gear in the boat saves me time and frustration of not leaving it mindlessly behind, but everything else seems a deliberate effort because I am in a hurry. Once on the waters edge, I set the 17 footer down into the salty marsh, climb in with the grace of a landed hippopotamus, squinch into the cockpit, do the shimmy into the seat, and set my feet against the pegs. Its calm, no spray skirt today, besides, at my age I have no business rolling. A little sculling pulls the boat away from the shore, and I am underway.

 

It is incredible how efficient long pulling strokes in a sea kayak carve the stress and agita out of me. I enter my practiced form, borne of long years of paddling, a half twist at the hip, dipping forward clean and deep, driving back gently and smoothly, lifting with a twist and moving now to the other side. Again and again, the smooth patterned motion takes over my conscious, and I forget, why I am here, what I was worried about, what else I should be doing. I just am.

 

The sun is setting as I come out of the small fingerlet, the moon rising in the east over the end of the world outside the bay. The breeze is gentle, the tide carries me effortlessly. The rec boats with their bikinied babes and manly men at the helm, beer in hand, doing 20 knots in the no-wake zone don't bother me, as I drift lazily over the steep series of waves that spill off their hulls. In half an hour I am drifting in the center of the bay. Its silent here, warm. I can see nothing forever towards the rising moon. I switch on my nav light over my right shoulder, open the Chem-Lume on my chest, and I rest. I can see the bridge to Ocean City to my south, the piers of Somers Point behind me, and if I believe, I can see the lights of the casinos in Atlantic City. The moonlight fills the shadows, and the contrasting shore takes on a new form, the soft rollers lulling me a bye. A cigar, I think, and enjoy it watching moonrise and sun set. After a short lifetime I toss the last dreg of my Hemingway into the sea, and paddle through the smaller waterways off the inlet, watching the sea birds, seeing fish jump near the weeds. In, around, back out to the bay.

 

Its getting dark now, and the tide has ebbed. Work tomorrow, and I am convinced the cats miss me, so I turn the boat leeward towards home. I have renewed, if only for the moment, but its all I needed. I am the long, smooth, clean rhythm. The shore comes upon me, scull in, and once again lock myself back onto the muddy shore. The weight of being me slowly sets down on me again. But I have strength now, of knowing tomorrow, we paddle again.

 

 

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I am weary...

“I am weary, Craysis…”

The war horses were magnificent, stoic and awe inspiring for their calm in the sea of tension swirling below.  Astride, the generals surveyed the ordered gathering of leashed hellions, alight in morning sun off polished metal and waxed leather, the majesty of the crimson plumage of the Guardian Legion out of place here. Behind the two warriors a wall of Guardians waited motionless upon equally massive steeds, the heralds fluttering above in the autumn breeze.

Pretorius was the elder, a veteran of wars too numerous to count, remembered by the place and the dead. Time has no meaning in these days, measured by battle won, battle lost, and the endless tally of those who had died. These legends had weathered Pretorius to the weary man he had found himself to be on this cold foggy morning.

Craysis had been with Pretorius for over a hundred battles, ceaselessly at his side. He was known with great respect as Pretorius the Younger as in manner and thought the two had become indistinguishable. He turned to his friend saying nothing, thinking only that this weariness had found itself deep in his bones as well.

The warriors were ageless. Both men stood over 18 hands tall in their bare feet, muscle and sinew, strong enough it is said, that they have been known to carry their injured horses from the field. Resplendent in his battle dress, Pretorius looked away from the mounting terror, closed his eyes and faced into the sun.

“Things never change, Craysis, when the same thoughtless sword is used to solve every problem.”

Pretorius opened his eyes and let the sun burn the darkness in his soul. After a moment, he looked back unblinking to the field.

“To the south we have these religious, who swarm in upon us because their imagined god demands it. To the barren east, the weak raid us for food as they are hungry. The west bleeds from the barbarian whose greed drives them to murder and rape our people, steal our resources for no other reason than they want to. It rains in the northwest with the tears of the driven, whose mad king has feuded them into deep poverty and despair, driven by swords behind them into spears before them for no other reason than senseless pride.  There is peace only in the northeast borne of decades of respect, sharing of knowledge and fair trade. And even there tensions rise as these forces press upon our two empires.”

Craysis nodded, insight dripping with the blood on his own hands, replying, “The answer is always the sword. There is no reckoning when the anger and hate cloud judgment, making even the most learned base spittle and venom…”

The ensuing quiet was interrupted by an approaching messenger, dusty and sweaty from a brisk ride up the hill.

“My Lord,” he breathlessly addressed Pretorius, “The Legion is ready!” He turned his excited horse just short of the two men, whose horses moved not a hair before the smaller steed and its snorting aggressiveness born of the tempest around it.

Pretorius nodded, turned to Craysis with the wretchedness that filled both men, and replied so softly that the messenger behind them knew the words only because they had been said too many times before.

“Kill them… kill them all.”

An Awkward Situation

The house smelled of wood, of smoke, and of fresh tobacco. It laid down a layer of calm, freshened by the air cascading through the window opened but a crack against the wind and rain. The sounds of the squall pouring off the roof and the balconey outside, against the windows and on the street below was reverberant. He poked the fire, low lit, and sat back in his chair, relieved that the Grand Marnier had not lost its pleasantness for him. A long pull on his cigar, he exhaled, the smoke trailed along with the cool air towards the fire.

Henri had lived here but several weeks, and had filled the house with things, but things don't replace people, no matter how many things one collected. Nor did it replace his cat, he thought, staring into the flicker. He missed his cat, and took no comfort knowing his cat, of course, did not miss him. The loneliness was magnified by the realization some time ago that he had grown weary of his own company.

The bell of the phone on the table between the fireplace chairs startled him. He let it ring a few times before he lifted the receiver, to spite it.

 

"Hello?"

 

"Yes, hello, Inspector Levant. I am Lieutenant Francois Bellavue of the Gendarmerie. It seems there's been a murder."

 

The Lieutenant paused as if he awaited some expression from Henri. Henri was not in the mood.

 

"So you say..."

 

"Well, actually, the dead man with the note attached to his chest with a rather long knife says so, Monsieur. I am but painting the picture as it lays before me."

 

"I see. And what is of it to me?"

 

"The dead man is Inspector Henri Levant, Monsieur. This makes something of an awkward situation."

 

Henri was intrigued. "Ah. Yes, I suppose it is."

 

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A Tale of Two Men

He’d waited for over an hour before the old red Ford pulled into the driveway. He looked at his watch, shook his head and watched for a moment as it made its way noisily up the gravel drive, stopping just short of the house. He put his hands on the armrests, paused a moment, then pushed himself up out of the deep soft chair, a labor born of weariness, not infirmity. He could hear Jorge stepping up onto the porch as he approached the door, and opened it.

“Hello, Jorge. Here, let me give you a hand with those.”

Jorge nodded and grimaced as he lifted the box a bit higher for Wayne to take from him, and then picked up the small gray Samsonite at his feet. He came into the house, removing his straw fedora, and glancing about.

“Wayne, its not changed much. But you, you got old.”

Wayne smiled and grunted, waving Jorge to a seat on the couch next to the chair from which his story began. Wayne had met Jorge some 34 years before, when he visited this same house and sat in another version of that couch in which he now sat. Things were different then, a bit more tense. And there was a gun involved. But that’s another story.

Jorge pulled out a fresh Romeo et Juliet cigar, and passed another to Wayne, who had already pulled the cutter from his cigar table. Wayne cut his cigar, passed the cutter to Jorge, who worked his cigar in his hands as Wayne lit his, sat back, and took a long draw.

“You saw me here last week, you stupid shit.”

Jorge smiled, cutting his cigar, then giving it a cold draw, sat back and turned the lighter in his hands. It bore the markings of a naval ship, a frigate, USS Halyburton (FFG 40), its herald behind it as the engraved ship seemed to come forth from the aged unpolished brass.

“Yup.”

Jorge smiled at Wayne, lit his cigar, and the two men sat in silence.