09 February 2012

Flashes of Life


Greetings Dear Reader,

Some weeks ago my beloved editor, RJ requested that I publish an excerpt from my current novel in progress. Since I plan most of my BLOG ahead of time it took me a bit to get there.  RJ means more to me that she realizes and so here is the answer, though late to her request.


“The world decays around me.  While I sit here in my private bookish domain tamping in one of the last bowls of McClelland I will ever smoke, the rest of the world falls headlong into barbarism and dystopia.  I realize that I contribute to the decay as I puff on my hoarded tobacco in my cherished churchwarden, for I sit hear pondering and punditing the decline of man without doing anything to hinder it.
 In the early years of study, when I was young, brash, and foolish, I often wondered how long it would take for our society to crumble into madness.  I would sit at the pub with my colleagues commentating proudly on our solutions to the world’s ills.  Even taking up pipe smoking back then was an act of bravado.  But I was determined to mold myself as the sage amongst his books; knowledgeable and wise.  I am sure that journey began when I was just a boy reading science fiction. 
I gathered around me knowledge and clung to the quote from one of my early readings.  “Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books.  For to you kings and armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment to be overturned with the flicking of a finger.”  This lead to a philosophy of theory instead of philosophy of life.  I became adept at theorizing for others but very poor at living my own life. 
All that the knowledge did was blind me and make me swollen with pride.  The more I was secure in my own vast stores of knowledge, the less I courted his all important mistress, wisdom.  Lonely for the sweet love of wisdom that humbles him, knowledge became a raging megalomaniac within me.  I dismissed the vital truths of my knowledge for the hunger of possessing its vastness.
My friends, my loved ones, and my lover were all driven away as I squandered my God-given intellect pondering the great questions without ever really believing in the logical, reasonable, and true answers that lay before me.  Book by book I en-tomed myself into a world that was all mine, and like Mr. Dickens’ Scrooge, ‘as single and solitary as an oyster.’  I used to say that everyone abandoned me.  In truth, it was I who abandoned them.
Excuse me a moment while I light this.  Ouch!  I miss the bowl with the match and catch my thumb more and more these days.  Ah, there we are; a nice clean cherry on top of perfectly packed McClelland.  This is the Cavendish; one of their best it is.  Dark, sweet, and moist; It will burn slowly and provide a good half an hour’s pondering.  I will have to see if blending the last of this with some of the lesser tobaccos can stretch out the flavor.  War took the tobacco farms four years ago and the Virginia soil will never grow anything this sweet again.
My oldest son would scoff at me for that, and he would be right.  Outside of this hidden sanctuary of mine people die of starvation and worse causes daily.  There is no more FEMA or Red Cross.  The broken world will not mend itself this time.  All this is true and yet I worry about my supply of McClelland.  My son would cock his head to the right; always the right, and take on the tone of a teacher.  Then he would say something like, ‘Father, I do not think that your pipe tobacco really matters with all that is going on right now.’
I miss his fiery gaze and the crystal clarity of his thinking.  It just occurred to me that I will never see those eyes again, nor his brother’s.  Maxim, the older has eyes like the Caribbean sea on a cloudy day, blue but struck with enough grey to show the intelligence there.  My younger son Joseph has blue eyes as well but they are the same sea when the sun shines high and the wind is still.  His charm shines through those eyes and many women fell into them when we were all much younger and there was time for such things. 
They are brothers but as different as night and day.  We often jousted over words and their place in the world, but it is obvious I digress.  I was talking about the decay of the world; how our society got to this point and what needs to happen.  I must focus on that and not chase too many rabbits or our time will be gone and the Cavendish wasted.
The worst of it, the decay of social structure occurred at the end of the second decade, right around 2019.  It was the discovery of true cold fusion that ultimately doomed us.  That happened after the oil scares in the first decade.  The scientists were determined to find a source of clean energy and they did.  It could have been nice.  We could have worked to build the society imagined by Rodenberry and his ilk, but man is depraved.   He may be civil when the situation warrants it, but man is selfish, proud, sinful, and wicked. 
I know those words fell out of favor back in the end of the previous century.  The current wisdom, ha, was that we were all basically good and we could make a tolerant world.  If I had manure that pure now, I could grow my own Cavendish.  The thing is that we are evil.  We have rotten souls that care only about whatever petty thing we want right foot-stamping now.  You wish proof.  It sits here before you.  I will mourn the passing of my last pipe of McClelland much longer than I have the passing of so many of my fellow professors.  I will think God cruel to deny me my only true friend, the pouch and pipe, while giving little thought to the carnage around me.  We are all fallen depraved fools thinking that God owes us something to merit our favor with him.
He gave us something.  He gave us limitless energy.  Few realized that this was a gift from God and not the brilliance of man.  Most were too busy demanding God prove his existence to see his actions.  We could have made the world lush and green again.  The skies could have been sparkling.  Water could have been safe to drink and bathe in. 
We used the limitless energy of fusion to power our greed and consumption.  As with all things bright and beautiful, we found a way to rape and pillage it.  When we could have cleaned up the planet, we instead amped-up our consumption.  The first sign of societal collapse was the economy.  Most bought on credit and found themselves unable to pay.  Limitless energy yielded limitless laziness.
Those nations with power began to further their manipulations of those that did not have it.  National debts and resource tension grew until 2023 when one of the South American countries figured out how to make the fusion power generators into bombs with little effort.  Nations once powerful were now held captive by their own energy resources.  This last war over energy consumed so much food, materials, and life that it just ended because no one cared any more. 
The global village became a frenzied animal-farm cum lord-of-the-flies nightmare that consumed human life as greedily as man consumes resources.  The raid on this university left only Jared and I alive.  I have never had a better or more loyal research assistant.  I am not sure why I was not found before now.  I was content to stay in here with my books, my tea, and my McClelland.  Jared still needed what passes for sunshine and fresh air. 
It has been three years since he went out for some air and did not come back.  I only have a voice still because I talk to myself all the time.  I probably should have checked on Jared, but I could have been spotted.  He went out and never came back.  That just reinforces my opinion that my choice to stay sequestered in my basement suite was a wise one.  These three years have been quieter but my routine has not changed much.  The vast stores of the larder and supply rooms down here will last one man a lifetime.  But then what is a lifetime without a good bowl of McClelland?
My personal fusion generator seems quite healthy and I have a backup. The water recycling system is fully operational and so I saw no reason to leave.  Oh, there goes the kettle.  Do you wish sugar and milk in your tea?  I will bring some biscuits too.”
The visitor, in his late fifties, smiles at the old scholar.  His voice is gravely and rough, but still kind as he offers, “Let me get the tea.  I was taught how to make it properly by an expert.   You have already burned your thumb once today.  We will enjoy a cup of hot Earl Grey and then we can discuss how to help you with that failing eyesight.”

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn
Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a home owner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store."


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