A Story

Discussion in 'The Artist's Corner' started by Dtay, Nov 11, 2010.

  1. Preface
    I will tell you a story of a man. But it is important that you realize that the story is not about a man. A good story should provide the reader with a strong introduction, which will make the reader feel as if he knows the characters and setting intimately. This, obviously, is not a good story. A good story should also make sense. Like I said, this is not a good story. There are three things that you should know before I begin the story. The man's name is Fredrick. Fredrick's life is devoid of any higher purpose. If this was a good story, perhaps I could tell you all three. But even I am not sure what the third detail is. It is fair to assume that since we do not know this third detail, it is important. That assumption, like most others, is most likely false. Perhaps we shall find out together. Perhaps we shall not.



































    1

    I do not understand women. I admit this. I do not understand how they think, why they do things, why they smell good, or why the hell they annoy me so much. I can think of some reasons why they annoy me. For one, they believe that they have men figured out to a formula. It annoys me when people think they understand me. I pride myself in my privacy. In my mind is my own private sanctum from the insanity that is life, and for someone to say they understand me implies that they have intruded into my sanctum, forever tarnishing the pure impurity that I have spent my life crafting, destroying, and reworking time and time again.

    I know one other thing about women; no matter how much they think they understand the inner-workings of my brain, they do not. They are nowhere close. With men, there is an unspoken connection. Some mysterious force has us forever bonded in manhood. Perhaps it is the unimaginable feelings that come along with our genitalia, or perhaps it is the unimaginable feelings that only a woman can create, and only a man can know.

    For some reason people look at me as if I'm a lunatic. I understand them. I look at most people the same way. Many years of disgust with humanity has left a sour look permanently painted on my face, to the point that I sometimes do not recognize myself when I look in a mirror. Apparently, my mother was not lying. If you make a face long enough, it will get stuck like that. But I think there is a much deeper message lying within that saying. I view my life in three portions: before, in between, and after.

    I suppose that convention tells me I should begin with before. You may ask, before what? I don't know, exactly. Before I began to form? Before some great realization? Before my eleventh birthday party? It doesn't matter, really. All that matters is that before, I was innocent. I was naïve. I was young. I was pure. They say ignorance is bliss. I don't claim to know who they are, or what they meant, but I know that before, I was happy. Unfortunately, I was ignorant, and I did not know what happiness was yet. It may seem as if I would want to spend a great deal of time talking about before, but I don't. Before doesn't provide me with any insight into myself, because I had not begun to mold my self yet.

    In between was a very interesting time. I was still young and naïve, but my innocence and purity were out the window. The world was a different place than before. It was in between that I began to make realizations that would lead me to after. I witnessed the strongest of bonds shattered by the weakest of men, cowards who justified their weakness by trying to destroy the strength of others. It hurt me to see how often these cowards succeeded. It hurt me to realize that so many of the people who I had looked up to before were cowards. Carpenters who could not construct, and instead turned to demolition. For a time, I hated these cowards. But the greatest thing I felt was sadness. Because the cowards had an uncanny ability to knock down the strongest of men, men whose only weakness was their kindness. I was distraught, caught by the feeling that nothing good could survive the attacks of the cowards.

    Fortunately, in between lead to after. Again, you may ask, after what? All I can say is that after succeeded in between. There was no clean transition. There was no overnight feeling of in between being over and after beginning. But somewhere along the line, it happened. After, I was no longer young or naïve. But, somehow, through some freak accident, I had regained my purity. It was a new purity. Not the innocent purity of before, but purity all the same.

    It is after that I would prefer to focus on, because, really, after is all that matters. Before and in between are in the past, and modern science has yet to find a means to travel back to those periods. If I could, I wouldn't. After is where I am, where I belong, and where I wish to be. So, I will focus on after.

































    2

    Remember how I said women annoy me? What comes next may conflict with that statement, but do not be fooled. Conflict exists even in the most stable of systems.

    I love a woman. Yes, she annoys me. Yes, she thinks she understands me. And that annoys me to no end, because I love her. A physical description of this woman is pointless. What is important is that this woman is not in between. She is after. In fact, she is one of the only people I have ever met who is after. The others are mainly considered spiritual men, and the majority have been murdered by cowards, killed because the cowards could not accept the after.

    The next logical question you should ask is how do you find those who are after? And to that, I would say your best bet would be to go to a mental hospital. Weed out those there who are cooperative with the staff; they are obviously insane. Search for a man who is by himself, staring into nothing, with a completely empty look in his eyes. This man is knowledgeable beyond your greatest imagination. Or he's crazy. That's for you to decide. Really, you won't be able to find those who are after unless you are after. Otherwise, they will make no sense to you.

    If this makes no sense to you, I am not surprised or offended. This was not meant for most people. I would recommend you continue reading. You may discover meaning in some of the nonsense I say. If you do, then you are missing the point.























    3

    Before I met this woman, I was happy. I was alone, but my solitude brought me peace. When I met her, it was a shock. I thought that my solitude was a fact of nature; I had never met anybody who I would rather be with than myself, because only by myself could I go to my sanctum. Only by myself could I find happiness. Not the ephemeral happiness brought on by the release of endorphins, but a true, metaphysical happiness, to which there is no comparison. But for some reason, after I met her, my sanctum seemed empty.

    In general, I do not like people. Some I can stand more than others. There are a select few that I actually enjoy being with. These people I am glad to call friends. But even my friends do not understand me. What makes them my friends is that they do not pretend to understand me. They accept my strangeness, they listen to my chaotic theories. I do the same. Hopefully, a mutual gain of knowledge occurs due to these friendships. I cannot say for certain, because I do not know what they know, nor do I pretend to. In general, I find men more bearable. I'm sure if I were a woman, the opposite would be true. Unfortunately, I do not feel any physical attraction towards men, contrary to the jeers of my middle school peers.

    There is one person who I have ever felt has understood me. One person whom I have let in my sanctum. He was my best friend. I have been separated from him for years, but I still feel comfortable calling him my best friend. His name is Alexander. Alex. My friend.





















    4

    I met Alex in between. I was on the verge of after. We both were. In fact, we made the psychological journey together. We were young. I was 16, and Alex was one year my senior. We met as most men do; sweaty, exhausted, playing with balls. We were pitted together against our peers in a war game commonly referred to as basketball. The bond was not instantaneous. However, we shared mutual friends, and soon, through a common love of basketball, girls, and a wonderful plant, we became inseparable.

    Basketball ended, but our friendship was only beginning to blossom. Every day Alex and I would meet to depart from the repetitive boredom of high school and make an herbal sacrifice to the heavens, hoping that our wishes of freedom would be recognized. Our wishes were granted one lazy summer day when we graduated high school. It is the following summer that pertains to my story.

    We were now two young adults, with nothing to do for three and a half months besides smoke weed. The majority of our days were spent out in nature, smoking, sometimes talking, sometimes engaged in a silent conversation. Perhaps the silence was more important than the words. Perhaps not. Many interesting events took place that summer, but I will not bore you with the details. But somewhere along the way, we changed. We were no longer the awkward adolescent boys that we were when we met. We were men. We had discarded everything that anyone had ever said, and, between us, reinvented the entire world. Our mindset could be best described as careless. We no longer cared for negatives, for fakeness, for insecurity, for any of the societal norms that had previously weighted us.




















    5

    Those three and a half months ended. I departed, starting my life on my own. Alex never left. I haven't gone back to my old home since. In all honesty, the only thing that has ever made me consider returning is Alex. I love my family, but the last thing I want to do is see them again. My family is filled with broken souls, lost paths, cowards, and the heart-wrenching memories of their work. Many of them cast me aside, and the rest are better off without me. If you haven't realized, I don't fit in very well with groups. I never have, and I have no desire to start now, or at any time in the near future.

    But I miss Alex. Every time I smoke a bowl, load a trench in my vaporizer, roll a blunt, or try to have a meaningful conversation with another human being. I miss him.

    I tried to let her in to my sanctum once. She did not fit in. Simply because one is after does not mean one is where any other after person is. She was not in the same after. She had her own, as was necessary. We were both happier alone, in our own sanctums. My love for her was such that we were better suited apart, and that is, of course, how we ended up. But I still love her. And she made me realize one thing. I am happiest apart from her. But not alone. I am not happy alone.

    My greatest fear is that I will never be understood again. I desperately wish there was another person who could get inside my head. I can figure out many things about myself. I can control and contort my mind. But I am missing the insight of another individual in my sanctum. My world is peaceful. It is calm. It is happy. But it is no longer fun.



















    6

    Today, after ended. I don't know what will succeed after, but I know that after is gone.










































    7

    I went home today. It was a surreal sight as I stepped foot on the streets that I once knew like the back of my hand. They were nothing like the streets I knew. It was dark when I arrived. Clouds covered the sun, allowing only the most persistent rays of sun to penetrate their gloomy shield. I saw my father first. He had tears in his eyes. His grey hair was thinner that I remembered, but somehow managed to cling to his scalp. I smiled. It was a genuine smile. I was surprised. My father knows me too well. He used to be me. But he changed. He has never been admitted to my sanctum, but I often wonder if the inner-workings of his mind differ very much, if at all, from my own. But I do not claim to understand him, because I have more respect for him than any other man I have ever laid my eyes on. He is strong. He is not a coward. And, somehow, he has resisted the most fiendish plots of the cowards.

    Next I greeted my mother. Her tears prevented any speech. I was glad. I do not know if I could have handled it.

    Finally it was time. The reason I made the pilgrimage. When I saw Alex I wept. Tears of joy, sadness, sanity, purity. Neither of us uttered a single syllable until the first blunt was halfway done.

    “Bro.”

    “Yeah?”

    “Shit's dank.”

    “Yeee!”

    It was as if no time had passed since the day I left. Perhaps none had. I do not claim to understand the fabric of the universe, but spacetime is not always constant. I had a smile on my face that emanated pure joy. In all of my happiness alone, all of the after days spent alone, calmly meditating in my sanctum, I had been missing something. This was it. A companion. A friend. More than that. A family.
     
  2. Good shit brother
     

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