| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Uncle Buck" |
| Date: |
12 Mar 2005 12:48:35 PM |
| Object: |
A Man Divided |
"A Man Divided"
(C)2005 Bill Shroyer
(This work brought to you by conjunction of My Life with
Fundamentalist Christian Zealotry during the formative years)
Something stirred within the watery silence - a rhythm. As the sound
of a distant train approaching doesn't quite touch your awareness
until well after you've begun hearing it, the beating of her heart
crept slowly into my emerging mind. Persistently it undulated within
its own cradle, coaxing me in harmony with her breath out from the
world of oblivion and into the world of things that exist. The
intermittent accompaniment of her muffled voice completed the very
first song I'd ever heard. Soon thereafter was I born.
I am...
The first thing they taught me was love, it was everywhere then - the
easiest thing to learn. The next thing, learned through early
experience, is that when most people speak the word "love", they lie -
the most difficult thing to feel. Both lessons churned away the
ensuing years, forging my character in strange and often terrifying
ways as I became.
...a man...
Sometimes things come along in life that change you, that warp you
into something other than what you ever would have become on your own.
They blinded me by the power of their obsessions. Self-centered
narrow-mindedness tore me from my own emerging self, throwing me there
on the floor where I lay twitching among my own shattered wreckage for
the next thirty years.
...divided...
Long nights, cold sweats, staring into the mirror trying to figure out
whose wild eyes were staring back. The pendulum of a day would bring
anything from wanting to watch the world burn to crying over the death
of an insect. Beauty and suffering, suffering and beauty - the
concepts remained distinct in places, horrifically intermingled in
others. Years of laborious psychological torture, asking - always
asking - "Why?" Years did I waste crafting an immense "Architecture
of Truth" to describe the world to myself and myself to the world.
"I am...
...divided."
The hands which stroked my grandmother's hair as she lay dying, trying
with her final song to address everyone she'd known - living or dead -
with every verse she ever wished she'd said... They are the same
hands which not many years earlier dismembered insects and even the
occasional mouse limb from limb as my muted mind watched from within,
entranced not only by their pain, but by the ability to cause it. The
mind which sees the ills of the world and yearns for a way to
ameliorate them, it is the same mind which to this day will sometimes
take a morbid delight in the witness of suffering.
I am...
...a man...
...divided.
--
L8r,
Uncle Buck
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: A Man Divided |
12 Mar 2005 03:43:55 PM |
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So, Avender ...
What's going on with you?
Sunny
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| User: "Uncle Buck" |
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| Title: Re: A Man Divided |
12 Mar 2005 11:21:32 PM |
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On 12 Mar 2005 13:43:55 -0800, "stillsunny1@yahoo.com"
<stillsunny1@yahoo.com> wrote:
So, Avender ...
What's going on with you?
Hey Sunny,
Long time, no read. :-) What's going on with Avender?
Hmmnn... Lots of things, at least on the inside. Not much on the
outside. Progress, maturation - deliberately going through all the
stages of social growth that should have happened in childhood.
It's amazing when you start to realize how many things you've
forgotten, not just childhood memories but even from so recently as
yesterday. Used to think it was early-onset alzheimer's (my own
diagnosis, of course - the hypochondriac in me who thinks every sore
rib is a sign of a heart attack and every headache an anyurism).
Was giving a.a. a rest to try and have some more contact with
the "outside world", but the "outside world" didn't want anything to
do with me. So I'm back for awhile. Probably not as heavily involved,
though, as I'm trying to create a role-playing game - the old paper,
book and dice variety, an extremely enjoyable thing to do but very
time-consuming to get it done right.
How about you? :-? I can't recall the last time we talked, I
figured maybe I did or said something. But if you want you can e-mail
me privately, I don't know if you have my present addy. It's shroyerw
bellsouth, with an at where it should be and a dot-net at the end.
But we can talk here too if you'd rather, it's up to you.
Either way, I'm sure I'll be seeing you around. :-)
--
L8r,
Uncle Buck
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: A Man Divided |
13 Mar 2005 12:04:35 AM |
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Hey Sunny,
Hey, ***** :-)
Long time, no read. :-)
Long time no write!
What's going on with Avender?
Hmmnn... Lots of things, at least on the inside. Not much on the
outside. Progress, maturation - deliberately going through all the
stages of social growth that should have happened in childhood.
It's amazing when you start to realize how many things you've
forgotten, not just childhood memories but even from so recently as
yesterday.
I actually have a poem started about that, realizing how softly things
leave us, so that we don't even know we're missing them until someone
else's memory sort of reinserts them, two dimensionally.
Used to think it was early-onset alzheimer's (my own
diagnosis, of course - the hypochondriac in me who thinks every sore
rib is a sign of a heart attack and every headache an anyurism).
Was giving a.a. a rest to try and have some more contact with
the "outside world", but the "outside world" didn't want anything to
do with me. So I'm back for awhile. Probably not as heavily
involved,
though, as I'm trying to create a role-playing game - the old paper,
book and dice variety, an extremely enjoyable thing to do but very
time-consuming to get it done right.
Sounds interesting, and time consuming. I'd love to hear about it.
How about you? :-? I can't recall the last time we talked, I
figured maybe I did or said something.
Butthead, email works both ways :-)
Plus, my computer crashed a year ago or so (around Christmas, as I
recall)
and I lost a lot of information. And don't have much time for Usenet,
usually
just kind of peeking in to keep up with the people I like.
But if you want you can e-mail
me privately, I don't know if you have my present addy. It's
shroyerw
bellsouth, with an at where it should be and a dot-net at the end.
But we can talk here too if you'd rather, it's up to you.
Will email in the morning.
<yawn!>
Sleep tight :-)
Sunny
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