Dr. Lector
12-07-2002, 01:16 PM
Ulysses
K.T. Eisele
“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrorai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita”- Dante’s Inferno
Chapter One:
The world is dark; it is an obscure shadow with no true beholder. It is dead. It has been beleaguered by an opaque coverlet, an ailing and poignant mantel, stretched over, engulfing the world. Under its acerbic grasp, pressing all light from it into the overpowering shadows. Yet here, bound between both eternities, I strain in vain to look beyond them.
I strain to look beyond both colossal peaks only to hear the void reverberation of my wailing cry. Merciless time and all of humans’ decree seems halted and yet I am still breathing. My heart still feels, still throbs and lacerates. But then why? Why then do the birds, these harbingers of good fortune, still chirp melodic tunes that diminish from the sounds of indistinct shooting, or the bawling cries of innocent civilians watching their whole life, all their past predicaments be shot away or thrown aside, amid the burning rubble? Why would the birds sing in such a wretched wasteland of hate and anguish, envy and jealousy? Whatever utopia of human virtue and bliss, whatever political goal or desire to control this once fertile green valley, has now invariably converted into a necropolis of the eternal savagery of human greed, an exhibit for me to witness my error. It was wrong to recruit, they did not want me. I say, “Down with the Uncle Sam stooge!”
I have been condemned to tread forth to my doom and hope that at the end of my destined route, a route governed by faith, dictated by choice and chance, my wife and child will greet me with open arms. To comfort the bitter tears that run down my bulbous, pink cheeks stained with the blood of other men. I have been condemned to walk forth into the melancholic heart of war, of eternity’s wrath, yet hopeful that the magnanimous soul of nature can pity this delirious wanderer. I have to hope that along this shrouded and dark path my feet are resolutely trudging, my goal can provide some sweet moral blossom so as not to serve as a darkling tale of human frailty and sorrow. This life I bear is but a sacred burden, a burden that I bear solemnly on my fragile shoulders. I have to stand and walk beneath it steadfastly for I shall fail not for woe, and fail not for sin, but onward and upward, until the goal I win.
* * * * * * *
The many desperate screams of helplessness still sound in the deserted battlefield. All that was once a pulchritudinous green meadow has converged with the dark touch of Apollyon’s wand and converted into a dreaded wasteland, a repulsion of every human virtue. As I gaze along the wretched soil, I see the many rivers of hell rolling down the blood saturated land, the Acheron, the Cocytus, the Phelegethon, and the Lethe. All of these, joined by the blood drenched river of human corruption, roll down and I find myself as a helpless ant midst the chaos of humanity. I am but a solitary island, destined to free myself of my spiritual redemption but trapped within the fell clutch of Apollyon’s sinister and misleading grasp. O but what an obstacle the rivers of sin and anguish are! What greater desire and objection looms beyond them than that of spiritual and familiar remorse. This is my atonement, my punishment, my martyrdom, directly from the indiscernible God. This is my penitence for sin and greed.
The sky up above, sketched and lined with tenebrous clouds cracks and releases, and it begins to rain. All of the infinitesimal raindrops come down from their home and drop onto this salvation of human dignity. They crash on the puddles of blood, on the blue and ivory faces of men, on the dark, brown soil. They drop on what was once life, circulating in all its glory and in serenity unable to be comprehended now that it has all been flushed away with the emotions of greed and anger and anguish and political dishonesty. These raindrops try to cleanse the earth of this appalling happening yet their power cannot match that of Apollyon. Uncle Sam has to witness the destructiveness of his finger.
Walking along the many corpses, the many pawns in a great big game of chess, something suddenly draws my attention to it. Lay down on the ground, his back blemished in a puddle of mud, there is a young man, his eyes open and gazing at the gray and forlorn skyline. He looks into the sky, he looks at the raindrops falling, yet he does not see all this. He is but a young boy, seduced into joining the war, to fight for a cause that he could not comprehend. All he was forced to know, all that he was allowed to know was one thing, “The Nazi’s are the enemy, Kill for your country!” This boy barely even knew the geography of Europe and yet was sent, along with millions of others into the trenches Germany, or in the beaches of France. Sent to fight thousands of miles from home, where their mom or dad, their friends and girlfriend love him. They sent him to fight with a heart half-torn. Now I look around me, I broaden my view and I see that all of these bodies, children, none older than 22. This was a “children’s crusade” another grim moment in history marked in the blood of innocent and futile children. This place is much worse than hell, it was Tartarus.
Someone once told me, his name of which I cannot recall, “Let’s plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident: may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will – it’s only action that can make a man.” All of these boys around me have taken action, they have killed and served their country, they have unleashed the fury of humanity and yet they are still nothing more than children. They are not men for what defines a man? These children all came here deluded that they will return home as men, ferocious beasts that will live on their farm life pleasantly and that the memories of war would not come back and haunt them. They will. When someone kills another man, whether they be the enemy, or whether they be an ally, that moment is etched in your mind, along with your first kiss, your first home-run or your graduation. They have all degraded themselves into scum, fighting for a cause they are unable and unwilling to understand. Just the seductive power of the gun and Uncle Sam’s finger was enough for them to unleash their vehemence and convert into violent beasts.
I bend over, my foot gradually sinking in the wet soil, and grope the cold steel of his dog tag just before I yank it from the chain around his pale blue neck. His name is Jake Singer. That’s all I need to know to conclude that he was human. I do not need to know his mom or dad, I do not need to know where he is from, I do not need to know anything else but his name for that is what identifies us. We are all known by the name we have been given, not by our properties and yet the man that killed this boy only knew one thing, “he’s the enemy, kill him!” Everybody, dead or alive in this wasteland only knew one thing about he person he killed, if he killed, that that person was the enemy. They were all deluded by some greater and overwhelming power. He was Jake Singer.
I am Robert Branson. He may be dead, he be no longer capable to look into the passionate eyes of his lover or the beautiful shoreline of Hawaii, but he still is and always will be Jake Singer. His white marble tombstone will be etched with that name and his mother and father will always know him by that name. Whether he was a father, I do not know, probably not but I will not jump to conclusions. He will always be Jake Singer, it is his identity, it is his barcode. Not the caption of enemy in the Nazi eye. We must all look beyond the captions and really try to focus on the person. It does not matter if the fact that we are actually going to kill a person like ourselves and cause a chain reaction of grief and exasperation that will make us break down and tremor like a coward, we must look. For then what are eyes and perception for? We must look at the man, and the innocence, at his youth and ask ourselves, “Is he really dangerous?” Somehow, we are always drawn to the gun in his hand, that abomination, and that triggers some entity in our mind. “Yes, yes he is.” We must omit this trigger, flush it away with our tears and live in a world of tranquility and commercial wealth. We must not be seduced by the atrocious finger of Uncle Sam.
We live in a world based on moralities, one that we strive to fit in to. We are all puzzle pieces trying to fit in the greatest and most complex puzzle of all, Life. There is no greater reason to do all this than rather the fear of not meaning anything, to be a no one in the world. All of us want to believe that the world will be much different if we had not been born when really, locked up in our subconscious, we know that the world would rotate just as fast, that the grass would grow just as slow. None of us want to accept the fact that alone, by ourselves, we are nothing more than pawns for no man is an island entire of itself. Only when we are together, working as a community based on the redemption of the rights in which we have founded this world and tried to live by can we make a difference and change the destined course of faith and life. Otherwise it is hopeless; otherwise it is just like trying to erode a rock with a feather at hand. We can not justifiably ignore the fact that we cannot stand alone but rather united, and as one. All of these boys lying down here in the mud, or in the blood drenched pools of rain, they worked together as a community, they stood up together as one to thwart the tyrant and yet what is their prize. Death.
K.T. Eisele
“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrorai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita”- Dante’s Inferno
Chapter One:
The world is dark; it is an obscure shadow with no true beholder. It is dead. It has been beleaguered by an opaque coverlet, an ailing and poignant mantel, stretched over, engulfing the world. Under its acerbic grasp, pressing all light from it into the overpowering shadows. Yet here, bound between both eternities, I strain in vain to look beyond them.
I strain to look beyond both colossal peaks only to hear the void reverberation of my wailing cry. Merciless time and all of humans’ decree seems halted and yet I am still breathing. My heart still feels, still throbs and lacerates. But then why? Why then do the birds, these harbingers of good fortune, still chirp melodic tunes that diminish from the sounds of indistinct shooting, or the bawling cries of innocent civilians watching their whole life, all their past predicaments be shot away or thrown aside, amid the burning rubble? Why would the birds sing in such a wretched wasteland of hate and anguish, envy and jealousy? Whatever utopia of human virtue and bliss, whatever political goal or desire to control this once fertile green valley, has now invariably converted into a necropolis of the eternal savagery of human greed, an exhibit for me to witness my error. It was wrong to recruit, they did not want me. I say, “Down with the Uncle Sam stooge!”
I have been condemned to tread forth to my doom and hope that at the end of my destined route, a route governed by faith, dictated by choice and chance, my wife and child will greet me with open arms. To comfort the bitter tears that run down my bulbous, pink cheeks stained with the blood of other men. I have been condemned to walk forth into the melancholic heart of war, of eternity’s wrath, yet hopeful that the magnanimous soul of nature can pity this delirious wanderer. I have to hope that along this shrouded and dark path my feet are resolutely trudging, my goal can provide some sweet moral blossom so as not to serve as a darkling tale of human frailty and sorrow. This life I bear is but a sacred burden, a burden that I bear solemnly on my fragile shoulders. I have to stand and walk beneath it steadfastly for I shall fail not for woe, and fail not for sin, but onward and upward, until the goal I win.
* * * * * * *
The many desperate screams of helplessness still sound in the deserted battlefield. All that was once a pulchritudinous green meadow has converged with the dark touch of Apollyon’s wand and converted into a dreaded wasteland, a repulsion of every human virtue. As I gaze along the wretched soil, I see the many rivers of hell rolling down the blood saturated land, the Acheron, the Cocytus, the Phelegethon, and the Lethe. All of these, joined by the blood drenched river of human corruption, roll down and I find myself as a helpless ant midst the chaos of humanity. I am but a solitary island, destined to free myself of my spiritual redemption but trapped within the fell clutch of Apollyon’s sinister and misleading grasp. O but what an obstacle the rivers of sin and anguish are! What greater desire and objection looms beyond them than that of spiritual and familiar remorse. This is my atonement, my punishment, my martyrdom, directly from the indiscernible God. This is my penitence for sin and greed.
The sky up above, sketched and lined with tenebrous clouds cracks and releases, and it begins to rain. All of the infinitesimal raindrops come down from their home and drop onto this salvation of human dignity. They crash on the puddles of blood, on the blue and ivory faces of men, on the dark, brown soil. They drop on what was once life, circulating in all its glory and in serenity unable to be comprehended now that it has all been flushed away with the emotions of greed and anger and anguish and political dishonesty. These raindrops try to cleanse the earth of this appalling happening yet their power cannot match that of Apollyon. Uncle Sam has to witness the destructiveness of his finger.
Walking along the many corpses, the many pawns in a great big game of chess, something suddenly draws my attention to it. Lay down on the ground, his back blemished in a puddle of mud, there is a young man, his eyes open and gazing at the gray and forlorn skyline. He looks into the sky, he looks at the raindrops falling, yet he does not see all this. He is but a young boy, seduced into joining the war, to fight for a cause that he could not comprehend. All he was forced to know, all that he was allowed to know was one thing, “The Nazi’s are the enemy, Kill for your country!” This boy barely even knew the geography of Europe and yet was sent, along with millions of others into the trenches Germany, or in the beaches of France. Sent to fight thousands of miles from home, where their mom or dad, their friends and girlfriend love him. They sent him to fight with a heart half-torn. Now I look around me, I broaden my view and I see that all of these bodies, children, none older than 22. This was a “children’s crusade” another grim moment in history marked in the blood of innocent and futile children. This place is much worse than hell, it was Tartarus.
Someone once told me, his name of which I cannot recall, “Let’s plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident: may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will – it’s only action that can make a man.” All of these boys around me have taken action, they have killed and served their country, they have unleashed the fury of humanity and yet they are still nothing more than children. They are not men for what defines a man? These children all came here deluded that they will return home as men, ferocious beasts that will live on their farm life pleasantly and that the memories of war would not come back and haunt them. They will. When someone kills another man, whether they be the enemy, or whether they be an ally, that moment is etched in your mind, along with your first kiss, your first home-run or your graduation. They have all degraded themselves into scum, fighting for a cause they are unable and unwilling to understand. Just the seductive power of the gun and Uncle Sam’s finger was enough for them to unleash their vehemence and convert into violent beasts.
I bend over, my foot gradually sinking in the wet soil, and grope the cold steel of his dog tag just before I yank it from the chain around his pale blue neck. His name is Jake Singer. That’s all I need to know to conclude that he was human. I do not need to know his mom or dad, I do not need to know where he is from, I do not need to know anything else but his name for that is what identifies us. We are all known by the name we have been given, not by our properties and yet the man that killed this boy only knew one thing, “he’s the enemy, kill him!” Everybody, dead or alive in this wasteland only knew one thing about he person he killed, if he killed, that that person was the enemy. They were all deluded by some greater and overwhelming power. He was Jake Singer.
I am Robert Branson. He may be dead, he be no longer capable to look into the passionate eyes of his lover or the beautiful shoreline of Hawaii, but he still is and always will be Jake Singer. His white marble tombstone will be etched with that name and his mother and father will always know him by that name. Whether he was a father, I do not know, probably not but I will not jump to conclusions. He will always be Jake Singer, it is his identity, it is his barcode. Not the caption of enemy in the Nazi eye. We must all look beyond the captions and really try to focus on the person. It does not matter if the fact that we are actually going to kill a person like ourselves and cause a chain reaction of grief and exasperation that will make us break down and tremor like a coward, we must look. For then what are eyes and perception for? We must look at the man, and the innocence, at his youth and ask ourselves, “Is he really dangerous?” Somehow, we are always drawn to the gun in his hand, that abomination, and that triggers some entity in our mind. “Yes, yes he is.” We must omit this trigger, flush it away with our tears and live in a world of tranquility and commercial wealth. We must not be seduced by the atrocious finger of Uncle Sam.
We live in a world based on moralities, one that we strive to fit in to. We are all puzzle pieces trying to fit in the greatest and most complex puzzle of all, Life. There is no greater reason to do all this than rather the fear of not meaning anything, to be a no one in the world. All of us want to believe that the world will be much different if we had not been born when really, locked up in our subconscious, we know that the world would rotate just as fast, that the grass would grow just as slow. None of us want to accept the fact that alone, by ourselves, we are nothing more than pawns for no man is an island entire of itself. Only when we are together, working as a community based on the redemption of the rights in which we have founded this world and tried to live by can we make a difference and change the destined course of faith and life. Otherwise it is hopeless; otherwise it is just like trying to erode a rock with a feather at hand. We can not justifiably ignore the fact that we cannot stand alone but rather united, and as one. All of these boys lying down here in the mud, or in the blood drenched pools of rain, they worked together as a community, they stood up together as one to thwart the tyrant and yet what is their prize. Death.