“The gods of yesterday become the devils of tomorrow.”
- Robert E. Howard
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I don’t know who else is in the room with me. There are adjacent rooms populated by folks with whom I don’t care to associate but I know there are other people in this room and we should discuss a few things. Namely, the elephant. The big white swinging dick elephant we should all admit is crowding us out. I don’t want to leap into this thing and give any impression that I am displeased with this elephant, that I resent this elephant, that I carry any animosity toward the saggy beast. I don’t. This creature’s presence is akin to inclement weather, an inconvenient blast of sunlight during an evening drive. It’s just a fact of the day. But we need to examine its existence. Again, not saying its existence is unjustified, just proposing that we investigate it. Or rather that we—the poor bastards suffering with it in this room—investigate our relationship with it.
One wonders when the caucasoids (using this outdated, controversial term for reasons revealed soon enough) emerged in the general population of the world. History, as always, is a slippery thing when the object of yer inquiry is so old. After years of assumptions about Africans migrating into northern regions 40,000 years ago, it seems researchers have tracked the true emergence of light skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair to a mere 8,000 years ago, all thanks to a few genes with names like SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 in typical frosty scientific nomenclature. Regardless of timelines, robust eras of logic and thought flame the malicious tropes broached by ignorance and bigotry over the last few hundred years—Biblical and primitive scientific justifications for the subjugation of browner complexions and the destruction of aboriginal cultures. This element of white supremacy is a mere cut of the meat on our pachyderm subject, the other section: the matriarchal nemesis of our ignorance and misunderstanding. But we will get to this portion of the examination soon enough. A bit longer than it should be but it befits the book 😉
Someone is dying. There’s always someone dying. Always someone on the verge of their own oblivion. Always eyeing the razor line between everything they know and that thing which is unknowable. Unfathomable. And that moment is eternal. Eternal to them. Eternal as the structure and composition of all things. The things that make a stone are tiny stones and the things that make death are tiny little deaths compiled in crystalline lattice across time and place.
At this moment, the moment your mind processes the language in these words, other lives are cut short as well. All shapes of lives and life lose their circuits and cease to be what they were before, a final ceasing of the things that constantly change from one instance to another. By sheer math, the daily demise of insects is incalculable. And now we know that due to Earth’s changing climate, those deaths have increased exponentially. Many species are are disappearing as I write this, as you read this. Again, the result of both human activity and the churn of time. Death comes for us all… A cliche anchored in brute fact. And of course death on a physical spectrum is the mere disconnection of material. The band has broken up. The team has been decommissioned. Let me pause here and say, I am not obsessed at all with death. I have not dwelled on death for any extended period of time since I was very young. Maybe 9 or 10. Once I reconciled my disbelief in a spiritual realm, the idea of my demise went from horrific to unfortunate. |
Archives
April 2024
Chrysalis, a growing collection of very short fiction.
That Night Filled Mountain
episodes post daily. Paperback editions are available. My newest novel River of Blood is available on Amazon or Apple Books. Unless noted, all pics credited to Skitz O'Fuel.
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