Regarding a line in A Wanderer’s handbook
Carla wrote something to the effect of polarizing was like gathering materials to build an abode, I’m not finding the exact wording as that tome is 900 pages, but some sort of edifice, in “heaven” or timespace or somewhere. And once I watched a man describe an NDE that took place in a cabin built or at least changed by various actions in countless lives.
This isn’t that story, but does not a hot cup of cocoa or perhaps another originally South American drink such as mate de coca sound amicable? It’s cold out, so come into a cabin I have built to hear a tale both tall and short- a paradox that will be resolved presently. You better come into my cabin, your free will, but Krampus is still about! A being “I” spoke of in a recent thread intended to help increase understanding of some basic concepts at play. So open your eyes and seek shelter, as our minds dance together.
Sometimes fact is better than fiction, sometimes fiction better than fact, but a coyote once mindspoke to me that often a blend of the two can teach best, and that some say that everything possible exists and so to not worry too much as everything can be truth, in some way. Then it grabbed my cat in its jaws, turned into a skinwalker werebeast, made a yipping laugh and ran down the road faster than the refresh rate of my eyes could see. It wasn’t my favorite cat though, it clawed one of my eyes out once. But that gave me some degree of wisdom and now I go to outlaw biker conventions and cosplay Wotan or Odin. Given the political leanings of many, this gets me a lot of free beer.
There once was a man. His biological father was tall, broad-shouldered and ruggedly handsome. His father bedded many women and often bragged about this at Thanksgiving, with his beard encrusted with bits of meat and his tank top that said “bikini inspector” soaked in Guinness beer. This made his father’s wife feel bad, but she dared not say anything when he was in one of his moods.
Now this man was kinder than his father growing up. He loved non-human animals, especially ferrets and platypuses. He had many childhood friends and though he did not feel belonging with his less than stellar, even though their atoms too were made of stardust, he did feel some belonging at least. DNA forensics did not yet exist, and so there were many serial killers in the area. He and his friends played in the woods and often bonded over poking dead bodies with sticks. They also played sportsball and almost put out their eyes with Red Ryder BB guns.
As he hit puberty desires for other sorts of play and connection struck. But he grew up short, thin-shouldered yet pudgy in all the wrong spots. He developed a frightful affliction of acne, which left him pock marked in later life. And a dead bear he was poking was not quite dead, and so he lost his nose and a leg as well. Needless to say say his desire for this new sort of connection was like searching for an honest person in a pile of politicians. And he lacked the wisdom to look for a blind woman.
He found work at a gas station. Which ended after an incident with a cigarette he was smoking.
His father, who he greatly admired despite the neglect, called him a failure, not a real man, a likely communist eunuch, a dingleberry, and every other vituperation and invective and even racial slur in Anansi’s Anansi - Wikipedia favorite dictionary, Webster’s. The racist stuff was weird because he and his father were European American, but much about his father was odd because he was known to drink entire bottles of Robitussin even when he did not have a cold and used gin for mouthwash but the common wisdom was that one spat out mouthwash. With such a filthy mouth, his father required much mouthwash.
Oh and the son’s growing personality complex regarding the acquisition of romantic fodder was much exacerbated especially when his father screamed, veins bulging, nose red enough to light a sleigh’s way, that his son was a British cigarette and one of those was no son of his- the son’s mother was beaten for imagined infidelity even though the father’s motto was hardly semper fidelis whether engaging in amphibious assault or not.
The young man lost his friends. Mostly not because of his appearance. The light in his heart had dimmed, only the slightest flicker remained. While the fire in his belly grew into an inferno. He felt entirely alone. He felt pure rage towards the world. Anger was the only thing that kept the fear, depression, isolation away. When he was angry, he felt powerful. He liked to hit kittens with his cane just to hear their vocalizations of agony. His job at this point was an exterminator, killing was fun, whatever it was.
It is the nature of fire to consume and so that is what the angry, crippled, deformed man did. His weakened physical form made taking coitus by force impractical. So he developed quite the collection, on Betamax and vhs, of the most violent and degrading pornography and even paid the Colombian he procured the powderized gasoline for the fire in his belly for some snuff films. He consumed everything sugary, fatty, and salty. Washed it down with everclear.
Soon the man developed cancer of every organ. Every organ.
He was sent to the hospital. He cursed at the doctors and spat on the nurses. Who thought the behavior was due to the brain cancer. It was not.
He reacted badly to a medication and flatlined. Some stuff happened, there was a tunnel. Strangely, his pain was gone and he could think much clearer and more expansively than ever before.
Eventually he found himself in a verdant meadow. Everything felt as if it was alive. Every tree radiated meditative peace. The clouds formed into anything he thought of and it was neither hot nor cold. And he could fly. Odd.
“Please come to the cabin in the center of the valley by the shimmering rainbow stream…” he “heard” something like a voice say in his head. The warmest, most inviting, voice ever though not identifiably male or female.
Inside the cabin a fire was roaring, but this fire was white and created rather than consumed. The logs of wood were most fascinating. Many cracks and swirls of grain in more colors than the man knew existed. The more closely you looked, and eyes were entirely unnecessary to see here, the more detail. Infinite detail.
“Hello son”, his father’s voice said verbally.
The man looked and for some reason his father was standing in the cabin. He was drawn to his father, who said, verbally again, “I love you, son” as they embraced. An impossible peace calmed the flames of anger and the black hole in the man’s chest became a star.
“You are definitely not my father!” the man cried after something like an eternity.
The entity claiming to be his father now transmitted ideas, complex and wonderous, telepathically.
“I assure you I am. I am also every grain of sand, every duck, every tree, every bit of oxygen, every kitten, every tyrant, every freedom fighter, I am the victor and the vanquished, I am the living and the dead, I am music, laughter, pleasure and pain, I am your dreams, I am time, I am the very stars themselves, I am present, past, and future.
I have appeared as the portion you call father and things less loving to present something you can understand and give you the gift of a father’s love.
If you evolved from something like a jellyfish and communicated by changing color, this would be different. Welcome home.”
“Okay… what’s up with the cabin?”
“You built it over a great, great period of time. Every minute crack in the living wood is a lifetime, every detail a decision, or event, a love or hate lost or gained…”
“Who are you, really?”
“I am. You are. We are.”
“What!? And why is my body so cra p?”
“You planned and picked it. Also in most human incarnations you were female.”
“Well, what do you look like, really?”
“A light that would blind you if you drew too near.”
The man thought of really dark sunglasses and then he was wearing them.
“It doesn’t work like that, you have much to choose and learn. Sorry, you’ve got to go back for a bit.”
The doctors had injected him with adrenaline, put him on a prednisone drip, and shocked his heart.
The hospital was crowded because a supposed curative, prophylactic was being pushed that was causing all sorts of problems. He was moved to hospice.
There he met a beautiful woman who was in the same room. Both enjoyed the morphine drip and became chatty. She was dying of kidney failure.
She died a few weeks before him.
A few days later, he received flowers with a card. It said, “Thank you for making the last month of our daughter’s life bearable. She was always shy, I’m glad she made a friend in the end.”
When the man died, he though melded with another shifting fractal of light.
“You here from Earth too? Condolences, that one’s really tough right now… want to play 4D chess?”
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