(F&R) To Err is Human Once Devine

I learned a long time ago that on the long list of lists, and on that list of the last thing you want to do, in the top ten of that list there is the axiomatic understanding that you never ever forgive someone their sins if they haven’t asked you for that forgiveness. It is, apparently, smug and self serving, and all too often presumptive to forgive the non repentant. What if, after all, they have nothing to repent? We are, apparently, highly subjective beings, and because of this, we will no doubt – under this paradigm – from time to time, find ourselves in the wrong. Making bad judgments is a common trait among even the best of us…or so I’ve heard.

I’ve heard a lot of things in my lifetime, and not everything I’ve heard amounted to a whole hill of beans, and even that that was tantamount to a hill of beans was…well, just that, a hill of beans. Mountains out of molehills, acorns hit my head and the sky is falling, accelerated hyperbole, I guess maybe not all of you, but alas for me this has been a defining characteristic. I can get so goddamned subjective in my own insistence on the way things are, I drive not only everyone else crazy, I drive myself crazy and no matter where I go…that is not the point, because here I am to say, even with all that nonsense, I managed to learn a thing or two about life. That’s all I am saying.

One of these things I’ve learned, a pearl of wisdom, food for thought, strategies for life one should consider is that it is really not a good idea to forgive people who don’t want your forgiveness. Unless you like being treated like some smug son of a bitch whose arrogance is as insufferable as your neuroses, then don’t smugly and arrogantly forgive someone who hasn’t asked for that forgiveness. They will despise you for it, trust me, I know. I know more than you think I know, and if you really want to know the truth of it, you know a hell of a lot more than you think you know, you know what I mean?

I don’t really have to get into all the sordid details of a love story gone South, or a real life tragedy of betrayal and dishonor because you all ready know how it is. You know the score. You know what time of day it is. You know. Who cares how I know, just know I know what you know, and that pain…that constant ache that numbs the soul and weighs heavy upon the heart…that pain is the pain we all too soon, often, and without warning come to know because we placed our trust and faith in another. You know.

Pain hurts, I’ll tell you that. I don’t mean the physical pain of toothache, broken arm or broken back kind of pain; I am talking about the mother of all mother loving pains, a broken heart. That kind of pain, the kind of pain that hurts so magnificently so that to call it pain would do great disservice to the actual agony the pain of a broken heart can bring. That kind of pain really hurts.

Look, it’s not like I’m going to bore you with some Dear John saga of a lovelorn dope desperately waiting for his unrequited love to relent and…that ain’t me, man. First of all, I’m…well, a man! Real men don’t waste their time writing romances that lament love lost. At least I don’t. I am more concerned with more practical things than love. Not that love ain’t practical, in the end – and as the Silver Surfer used to say – love is the power supreme, but that kind of thinking is for later because right now I am more concerned with this idea of forgiveness and redemption. Besides, I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of immortalizing her in a story that is all about me. Nope. No love story here. Sorry to disappoint.

The thing about forgiveness, as I’ve come to understand it, is that it is best to only forgive those who ask it, and to only to do so because they have asked, and it is the very least one can do when asked, to forgive. The very least as I have come to see forgiveness as this sort of base or primal urge to triumph over another’s hubris. Forgiveness, to me, seems to be as base as emotions like sympathy and empathy. Oh come on! Don’t look at me like that, you know. Just what good is anyone of us doing by sympathizing with another? What the hell is the point of it anyway? Are we validating another’s suffering, is that why we sympathize? Do we encourage the victim to be a victim with our tea and sympathy?

These are questions I have long asked. Is sympathy a good idea and will it help those people who obviously needs help, otherwise why sympathize? Is sympathy just a crafty way of getting out of helping? Do our carefully crafted crumpets and tea and sympathy exempt us from any further action, is this why we sympathize? And, Please for the Love of God, let’s not even get into empathy. How stupid is empathy? I have seen these comic book heroes’s whose super power is --- what? Yeah, I like comic books, so what? That ain’t the point, anyway, the point of pointing to superhero’s who have superpowers of EMPATHY is to point out how stupid that idea is, and if you ever read a comic book with one of these stupid ass superhero’s who really, really, empathize, you would know exactly what I am talking about. Too bad you don’t read comic books.

Diana Troy! Or Deana. I don’t know, but it was Troy on Star Trek the Next Generation, remember? Oh come on! You never saw Star Trek? No, no-no-no. Not Captain Kirk, Picard. Shut up! Not one episode? Really? You don’t know anything about the Borg, or Q, or Warf? Really? Wow. Just wow. Okay, okay, okay, I’m sorry, forgive me, okay? I just realized that that chick that played the empath on Star Trek the Next Generation was a good illustration of the stupidity of that idea. It is profoundly stupid to empathize with other’s, in my humble opinion.

I mean, and just to avoid the appearance that I reify, consider the ramifications of literally feeling another person’s emotions. WTF?! I don’t know about you, but I have a hard enough time just handling my own goddamned emotions, man. I am pretty sure I can’t handle yours. And as to you empathizing with me, I wouldn’t wish my emotions on my worst enemies. I mean the enemies who have never ever asked for my smug arrogant forgiveness enemies. You know; the bad enemies. I know this is a wholly subjective point of view, when I am coming from my own experiential knowledge of my emotions – and let’s be honest here, who better to chronicle, categorize and explain my emotions than moi? Not that I am going to chronicle, categorize and explain my emotions. I’m just saying. If someone is going to do that, that someone should me, don’t you think?

Continued....

My point is that all the sympathy, empathy and forgiveness crap is a whole lot of hoo-haw that way too often gets hijacked by a bunch of mystics – I mean mystic posers not the genuine mystical universe – who likes to amaze and astound with their strange utterances and incantations. “You should feel what I feel before you judge me for my actions” is an underlying rallying cry for the growing mass of irresponsibility that has become so much of my generation’s cultural milieu. When I was younger, I grew up in New Mexico, and this state was, comparatively speaking, rich with Native American Reservations, and I lived close enough to the Mescalero reservation that their Native American totemic wisdom was a part of that culture. My mom took to saying, at some point; “You know, the Native Americans have a saying.” She would look at me knowingly and proudly because she was looking so knowingly and continued. “Before you judge another walk a mile in their shoes!” She nodded her head with certainty to accentuate the well worn wisdom she was imparting.

“Moccasins.” I would respond. “What?” She would say leeringly. “If the Indians said…” She interrupted; “Native Americans.” I continued without acknowledging the correction. “…walk a mile in another shoes didn’t they really say in another moccasins, and when you really get to thinking about it, I don’t think the Indians…” “Native…” We both said in unison: “…Americans.” Then she glared at me as I continued. “If you really think about it, they weren’t thinking in terms of miles. I don’t think they were saying walk a mile in a another shoes, or moccasins, because Native Americans didn’t have miles in their lexicon.” My mother, fed up with my smug arrogance, rolled her eyes and said; “I suppose they could’ve said walk a day in another’s moccasins, but when you really think about it, the Native American’s didn’t use words like day, or walk, so whatever the hell the Indians said, I’m telling you that you need to watch your judgmental little ass, and make damn sure you have the whole story before you fall into your knee jerk reactionary sensationalistic donkey crap.”

I never really was all that knee jerk, and as far as I have come to understand one man’s reactionary sensationalistic donkey crap is another’s Rosetta stone. It is all in the eye of the beholder, and without letting on too much abut her…you know. Yes you do. The one of whom I will not empower by writing about her now, that one. You know. Yes goddamn it, the one that broke my heart. If you want to know the visual truth of that, I think the expression “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” might give you a clue as to how pretty she was. I don’t think I am being bitter by saying this, it is just that she was sort of a plain Jane. Well, she had big breasts, but outside of that a plain Jane. But, when I first started seeing her, she was like that Rosetta Stone and I couldn’t see any of her knee jerk reactionary sensationalistic donkey crap.” Unfortunately, her plain Jane appearance was just a veneer to hide the demon within…okay, okay, I guess that came off as a little bitter.

My point anyway was that empathy is stupid. I don’t think feeling other people’s emotions helps them in anyway, and it is arguable that is a gross intrusion into their very private lives, so what the hell is the point of empathy anyway? My ex sure as hell has no empathy for me and at this point I ain’t got any empathy for her either, and that’s a damn good thing, man. This is what I figure fuels forgiveness, some misguided attempt to sympathize and empathize with some person who you imagine has done some wrong…unless you’re forgiving someone because they feel they’ve done you wrong. Wouldn’t it be cool if you actually get to a point where if, or when you are forgiving someone is not only because they have asked for it, you are in amazement at what it is you are being asked to forgive even if it is something actually pretty heinous? Did that make sense?

What if even the bad crap just didn’t really disturb us? What if, for most of the time, we remained undisturbed? Would that be cool? Sometimes I think it would. I mean, I tend to remain pretty disturbed. People think I am disturbed. I spend most of my waking hours, when sitting somewhere, for whatever reasons, incessantly shaking my left leg. I am the physical manifestation of disturbed. But, even so, I try to remain undisturbed. But if you really think about it, is remaining undisturbed 24/7 really the best method of living? I know this guy who is all into the Tao – which if you are not aware of is pronounced Dow – and the Tao is cool and all, I mean it is where I got this whole idea of remaining undisturbed to begin with, but I am pretty Western in my thinking, even if it is rooted in classicalism, I have a hard time grasping all that Oriental hoodoo voodoo.

Continued....

My Taoist friend looked at me a tad judgmentally as if to say with his unforgiving eyes that I could have been gentler in doing right. Being gentle in doing right sounds like sound advice, and this is why I like my Taoist friend, and why I felt a little ashamed for going just a tad too far with the zealous Buddhist. I should’ve been gentler in my understanding of what is right. Maybe, if I was gentler with…her…maybe, but it ain’t like she was gentle. Believe you me when I tell you that she was far from gentle. It was hardly a fairy tale romance, that’s for goddamned sure. Maybe I could have been gentler with her, but that wouldn’t have saved that loveless love story, I assure you.

Wait…what was my point? We were talking about pretty cool Taoists and goofy little Buddhists and…oh yeah! The point is that all this phony mysticism only makes what really is mystical look stupid. What the hell is that? I have seen a genuine and very tangible mystical universe dancing just outside the edges of our physical universe, and I know that this is real, but if we refer to the rational world to contrast with a mystical world, this makes sense when referring to posers like the silly Buddhist who thought perfection was found by letting others provide for you so you don’t have to worry about providing for anyone. It does not make sense, however, to insist the genuine mystical world is irrational.

The mystical does not by default become the irrational world, and certainly not synonymous with the unexplained. The unexplained is better suited for the physical rational world anyway, but the mystical universe, not irrational, is a rationality all its own, and in this universe laws such as cause and effect have a different meaning in that it is that world where you and I come to understand our own power to be either cause or effect. The rational world has a way of beating us down and convincing us that all our efforts at expansion are meaningless, pointless, and futile, because in the end, mere mortals contract. It is so hard to resist that contraction, and I have long resisted it. I want to expand and keep expanding, but getting to know some of the guiding principles of the Tao, I have come to understand that there is a duality to life, and probably even beyond.

The Tao, pronounced the Dow, means the path. One does not practice the Tao as much as one taps into that flow that is the path. The Force for all you Star Wars geeks…no, I wasn’t a big Star War’s fan. I mean Princess Lea was hot, that I certainly concede, but it just wasn’t my thing. Even so, I saw those movies, and when I write about the Tao now, it reminds me an awful lot of Obi Wan Kanobe’s yammering on about the “Force Luke…the Force.” That idea that you just simply tap into this flow and it empowers you beyond any physical abilities you have all ready accomplished is an attractive idea. Some would say it is fantasy, fiction, myth. Star Wars is undeniable mythological, and it is truly fantasy and fiction, which doesn’t change or diminish the power of the myth in anyway.

What am I talking about? Is this what you’re wondering at this point? It isn’t easy to explain, but if we are going to have some understanding of forgiveness and redemption, I can’t help but see this in terms of crimes and heroics. Forgiveness is for the repentant but redemption is for the heroic. It is better to seeks redemption than ask for forgiveness. It is even better to do things in life that won’t compel you to later ask forgiveness. Do unto others aphorisms are not just nice ideas these are words to live by. As a rule of thumb, I find that much of the classical worlds observations on ethics and morality was generally spot on. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you doesn’t mean that everyone is going to play along. Other people…some people…like to come along and change the rules, and rig the game so only they win and I always lose. This type of thing you have to be aware of because it is real.

I don’t know. Forgiveness is a bizarre concept if you ask me. Not that she ever would, but I don’t know if I could forgive her even if she did ask for my forgiveness. I mean, why should I? She really hurt me, man. I mean it. If you could feel…well, you know. I’m just saying that this chick really hurt me, and that’s why this story isn’t even about her, but still, when it comes to forgiveness, I am not sure I could muster up the kind of genuine compassion it would take to forgive her. Redemption? You can forget about redemption, there is nothing she could ever do to redeem herself. I’ve moved on, man. I hardly even think of her.

Continued....

It’s true! I haven’t thought about her in…I don’t know how long. It’s just all this talk about forgiveness and redemption kind of brings up that situation, you know? You know. Maybe some of you think you know – and let’s be honest here, if you think you know you still know even if what you think you know isn’t really the way it is – that maybe I should be the one asking for forgiveness or better yet seeking redemption, but you have no idea what you are thinking about. I’m not saying I was a saint. I wasn’t. It’s just that I didn’t do anything wrong! I can’t help but feel my biggest crime was being a good guy, and that really makes me feel like crap because only a sap would think like that. That’s why I refuse to write about her, and that is that.

The thing is that I have to move on, and that is what I was trying to do for too long. Trying isn’t doing, and now I am just doing this thing of moving on, but here I am now here writing about crap like forgiveness, redemption, and arguably love and hate, and she finds her way into my thoughts and it makes a certain sense. Not just she, but the many she’s that occupied my life, coming and going as if I were some international airport. I seemed permanently doomed to temporary relationships, and love was this thing we called the negotiations that took place until some breach of contract ended the merger. They all come to mind as I consider this – and if you think about it on a practical level, what is a very silly, silly – question of forgiveness and redemption, and you consider what love really is?

Don’t you? You do. I know you do. You know. We know what love is. We know that love is unconditional and we know this is true…don’t we? I do? Am I the only one? Do I and the Silver Surfer surf alone in this solitary belief that love is the power supreme? I used to have this boss who would always tell me, with that nodding head of assurance that reminded me of my mother and it amused me because I knew my boss was using Nyquil to disguise his need for alcohol, just like my bobbing head mother did. Not all head bobbers are tea totellers, but in this circumstance there was this similarity. Wait…what was I talking about? Oh, right! My boss would always say to me as he was imparting pearls of wisdom that life always comes down to multiples of two.

It is true and correct; everything can be broken down to their simplest equations, which are multiples of two. It is really very Zen, or Tao, or Eastern in its thought. There is the Ying and the Yang, the duality of the universe, and you either have attraction or repulsion, health or disease, wealth or poverty (there ain’t no middle class, man. There never was.), love or fear. Some might say that duality is love and hate, but I am pretty sure that hate is a subset of fear. We do not hate out of love, we do so out of fear. Some might argue we do so out of pain, but who do those clowns think they’re lecturing about pain? I know pain. I have suffered plenty of pain. I am the king of pain. Sigh. Nope. I think the duality is love and fear, not love and hate. Love and fear.

If you’re afraid, or stuck in some reality of fear, you can be rest assured you are not loving enough. Can you love enough? I know this, you can’t love too much. I don’t mean doting adoration to the point of obsession that thing we call love, love. I mean actual unconditional love. Can we extend this unconditional love too far? I could not extend it enough to her, if you know what I mean. She was like a vortex light sucking black hole, I’ll tell you that. Nope. I am not being bitter! I know what bitterness tastes like, and I know what it feels like, and when I tell you that she was real ball buster, I do not taste even a hint of bitterness. It tastes a little sweet and sour to say so, but not even bittersweet.

She kept saying she once loved me…there at the end…but I don’t buy that. She never loved me. It was all about something else, but it sure as hell wasn’t about love. Certainly not unconditional love, but not even that thing we call love. You know what I’m talking about, that thing we do when we couple with someone. That stuff where we start heaping a whole crap load of expectations on the other, making demands that wouldn’t be reasonable under any circumstances, but that funny little thing we too often call love finds us trying to meet these expectations and demands. Not even that kind of love. Not her. Her black heart couldn’t contain even sympathy or empathy.

Continued....

Not that I want her sympathy or empathy, and don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to persuade you to shed a little sympathy or empathy upon me, I just want to clarify this thing we call love from actual love. We can look at her and feel desires so strong and achingly urgent; we know not what else to call it but love. We can, after a long and passionate night of heaving bodies coming together and pulling apart, coming together and pulling apart, coming together and pulling apart, lie next to each other tangled up in the web of physical addiction, and for lack of better word, we call that love. We can, after months or years, plod through our routines with nary a word to each other, but at moments of pulling apart peck each other on the lips or cheek robotically, as if to remind ourselves that this thing we are doing is what we call love, but that ain’t love.

What the hell is love? If you ask me, to be honest I couldn’t tell you, other than it is unconditional this love, and that it is a damn sight better than fear. Outside of that, I couldn’t tell you a goddamned thing about love. I try to be love, but trying ain’t doing, and what I am usually doing is spending my days far to disturbed to slow down long enough to share a little love. And to even consider sucking it up and sharing love – unconditional love – with that black hearted soul sucker of an ex-girlfriend makes love look a little scary. Sigh.

I read somewhere that there are no contradictions and that if you run into a contradiction you should check your premise. So, when I tell you how goddamned scary allowing love to be my only emotion when thinking about her, I recognize the contradiction and understand the flaw in that premise. It is me. I get it. I am the dunderhead fool who cannot move on. I’m the silly sap who still wants to play that game of negotiation, at least long enough to get revenge. I’m the self involved putz who just will not let go of all these negative feelings and thoughts. I get it. I am wrong. I couldn’t be more wrong. Forgive me, all right? I’m only human.

I wish I was more, and deep down, way down there in the crevices of my soul, I am pretty sure that I Am more than I’ve ever been so far, but that’s New Age kooky stuff. Thoughts are things, like attracts like, and love conquers all, baby. I want to believe that stuff, but if their right, then the very fact that I am sitting here now wanting to be this Shamanistic super hero of the New Age only shows that I am not Doing what any Shamanistic super hero of the New Age would do, which is just be. Nope, I’m over here stuck with wanting, and if like attracts like, and then here I am attracting a whole bunch of wanting to be a Shamanistic super hero of the New Age.

Anyway, the whole point I have been trying to make here is that all this lovey dovey “can’t we all just get along” crap seems to miss the point that we are all only human. I know, I know, we are more, and I believe this, but for whatever reasons we all find humility a hell of a lot quicker than we find pride, that’s for damn sure. Hell, all I have to do is get out of bed, and usually within minutes I found humility, or probably more accurately humility found me, and if you want my opinion, humility didn’t even have to find me because humility was there all along, perched in some predatory glare as I soundly slept, just waiting for me to wake and make an ass of myself.


I’m just saying, that’s all; I think it would be great if we could all get along…even me and my ex, but this kind of ideal is really truly a lot to expect of we puny humans. I wish we could be like the Hulk only our power is driven by the power supreme, love, instead of the green as envy rage that courses through Bruce Banner’s veins, but it seems to me that too often we are just puny humans, with petty little desires and these subjective views that come from all sorts of obtuse angles, and it seems to me that getting along is not even why we are here to begin with! Maybe this is the game: To disagree.

Not “agree to disagree” nonsense. Isn’t that crap nonsense? Agree to disagree. WTF? I ain’t gonna agree to disagree with anyone, man. If I am going to find agreement through disagreement it is going to have to be because we agreed to agree. What? Does that make me some kind of scum bag, or something? Fine! Color me inhuman. Color me evil, red dripping blood red evil. What the hell do you want from me, huh? Oh, all right! Forgive me, okay? Forgive me for wanting a game. I’m just saying, maybe we are here to play this grand narrative of a game, and that game is to find agreement. Not surrender. Not compromise, to genuinely find agreement.

Continued....

Can we find agreement through forgiveness and redemption? I highly doubt it, but hey! Whatever floats your boat, right? Me? I don’t know. I suppose I am going to keep working on finding ways in which I can get past her, and other stupid crap that has left me feeling so hurt and alone, and just learn how to be happy with what I have. Anyway, this is what I Am thinking. What about you? What do you think?

Very, Very, Thought provoking!!

ATS has many thought provoking writers,but you always bring your "A" game to the front of the class!

Bravo!



I leave these well written words,as a parting thought.



Love is a loaded word
Spoken in coded terms
If spoken at all.............................

Rob Dickinson
Oceans

Not enough (lunch) hours in the day I am posting just to get this on MyATS (and bump a deserving author). I will read this evening and get back with a comment.

Dang! I missed a portion of this story when entering it all. Sigh. What follows belongs between the second and third posts:

So, my friend who is all into the Tao and I were sitting at a café drinking coffee and yammering on about the meaning of life, the wonders of the universe and what’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding, when a friend of his walks in and joins us. My friend had actually just met him a few months back, but they were introduced because my friend is all into the Tao and this other guy was all into Buddhism so whoever introduced them figured they should meet them both being into some exotic ism. Anyway, this guy who is all into Buddhism susses me out and determines that I’m a pretty disturbed cat. He boldly declares that he has come up with an exercise for me. That exercise was nothing To think of nothing. Ha! Ha ha-ha-ha.

I didn’t laugh in his face. I’m not as rude as you think I am. I’m certainly not that rude, but if you could please allow me the brief satisfaction of laughing at that now, it would be more than greatly appreciated. This is typical of the ismists. They have their silly dogmas, and their “koans” or their “mantras” or “prayers”, and they can be just as smug as any knee jerk reactionary sensationalistic purveyor of donkey crap. You know why he decided to act as my wise old man and impart upon me an exercise that would set me along the right path, don’t you? Sure you do. You know. He did it because I pissed him off.

Before this grand gesture of kindness where he has bestowed me upon the mystical wisdom of a conundrum as daily exercise, he was attempting to explain living life in perfection. So finally, a bit frustrated with what he perceived to be my obtuseness, he told me about a story of some initiates to the monastery lamenting the rigidity of their overly austere lives, and failing to see how this would lead to perfection, they inquired noisily to their master, who told them about the Buddha. He described a usual day in the Buddha’s life. First Buddha would wake up and beg for his breakfast. Then, once fed, he would beg for alms for any amenities he might need, and once satisfied he walked up to the hill where a large tree sat, and underneath the tree he sat and meditated.

My friends Buddhist acquaintance stopped and stared at me waiting for what looked like expectation of praise for this pearl of wisdom, but I was mildly annoyed. I looked at him hard and asked; “That’s it?” His disappointment was obvious and this grand pearl of wisdom, he was beginning to discover, was cast at swine, so he did what any enlightened soul would do among the unwashed primal ones, he got pedantic. He began to explain to me how this was a fable; A life lesson instructing us on how to live and find perfection.

“So, you’re saying that the perfect day is a day where you ate breakfast because you beg someone to feed you breakfast, you then buying whatever you needed because you begged for alms to do that, and then after a day of profit, you walk up to a hill or some place of solitude and contemplate your navel”? I asked somewhat incredulously.

My Taoist friend laughed, but the Buddhist did not appreciate my Married With Children bathroom humor. Not that I was employing bathroom humor, all though I am certainly not above it, and I love a well crafted fart joke just as much as the next guy, but I wasn’t telling any fart jokes, I was calling him on his horse manure. I was on roll, so I kept going. “Does living this kind of perfection make you superior to those who fail to achieve such perfection?” And before he could say “well, no…” I kept talking. “Because that would be pretty asinine to think that the guy that begged for his breakfast is superior to the guy who made him the breakfast. I mean, just imagine if everyone decided the superior way to have a perfect day would be to beg for your breakfast, for your alms, and then hang on a hill and hummm silent mantras that mean a thousand things and nothing at all. Who the hell would make our breakfast and earn the alms we need to buy the stuff we want so we can remain undisturbed on hills sitting under trees wondering what one handed clapping sounds like.”

Please forgive the discontinuity

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


At work -- but wanted to get this up on myATS. Excellent first couple of paragraphs!

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


I perfectly understand that you cannot forgive yourself for the unconditional love you've given to one who isnt worthy. However even if you were my best friend and we we having coffee say, and you yammered on and on like this, Im afraid I would have to stab you with something sharp.

OK, JPZ...i finally got to read this. What a great literary work. I recognize some of the elements from other stories (like the Taoist friend). I presume those elements to be a part of your life.

RE: the unrequited love (or love gone sour, whatever you call it), it reminds me strongly of the writing of the singer from Slipknot / Stone Sour. Same guy (mostly the same band). A good example:



Great song. He is a great lyric writer.

By the same measure, great story. Youare a great story teller.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


Thanks for reading it, my friend. I am glad you picked up on the reference to another story, and yet, here I am wholly writing fiction, even if I am mining my own personal store of characters that happen to be real people too. The What's So Funny About Peach Love and Understanding essay was truly based on a true story, even if there were acknowledgments that relating truth was problematic, but just as it was with the Doom and Gloom piece, I was writing what I considered to be fictional characters.

If I were being more biographical the references to "she" and "her" would mean very many black hearted soul sucking exes. And you know my friend, all my exes live in Texas, and this is why I reside in Los Angeles.

I am just kidding, but am saying that I have certainly had more than one broken heart in my life which is one more than any person should ever have to suffer in my opinion, but the broken heart thing was just a device to demonstrate how difficult it can be to truly forgive.

The poster above you Mangatice was damn near spot on with the assessment that it was a story of a man who cannot forgive himself for unconditionally loving someone who wasn't worthy, and the only thing I hope is missing from that assessment is that the irony isn't missed on him and that he does understand that there is nothing to forgive of himself or of her because it never was about unconditional love. Whether I accomplished that or not, I am unclear at this point as I am still too close to the story to see it with that kind of objective eye.

Of course, Mangatice did not speak of this as if it were a character who had this flaw but as if it were me! Ha ha ha! This is funny to me because of my referencing story's I doubt that poster even knows of that are true within this fictional tale of guy yammering on about forgiveness and redemption, and of course the kind of unspoken concern for JPZ that hung like a wisp of a cloud in the Doom and Gloom thread as if maybe I was going through a really tough time, and you know what? I am, aren't we all?

The beauty of fiction is that it becomes a medium by which to analyze the truth in various forms, in some ways paring characters down to their most parsimonious of humanities characteristics in order to hopefully point to some truth, or truism. To invent scenarios that ring of truth, this is fiction. I am confident that if Magantice and I were best friends, no stabbing would be necessary and words would get in more than just edgewise. Not so likely a word will get in edgewise with this character in Once Divine, but whomever was having lunch with this character, it was presumed by me that character knew the score before agreeing to this scatological lecture on forgiveness and redemption.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, my friend.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


I know only one way to love: unconditionally. Because of this i have very few friends (2, this guy i have known for ever and his lesbian sister). I rarely dated in high school. And i have a few sisters and a brother that i rarely see. My life consists mostly of my mom, my wife, my sons, and my 2 dogs.

This does, however, carry on to humanity in general. I have an unconditional love that extends to every person. I will never watch a person suffer when I can provide aid. Of course, and as you mention, "love" is a word that means many things. What i feel for my wife is nothing like what i feel for my son and mother. And what i feel for humanity in general is nothing like what i feel for my wife, mother, or children. Of course, I love my dog, Sasha, like my sons. It is strange to admit it, but i really, really do love her immensely. When she is sick i am beside myself.

But i give everything to those few who are close enough to recieve anything. Everyone else just gets the basic, impresonal, "brotherhood of man" type love And that is still a whole lot more than some people reserve for the ones they love most.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


You sir have no idea how much I admire your work. The very fact that the reader is convinced that the person in the story is real brings you character to life and shows your true talent. The reader surely can read a story but the true talent of a writer is to make the reader a part of it, to live it as I did. I was there, I heard his voice, I saw the expression on his face and the look in his eyes. He overwhelmed me.

A very well written short story that begs the reader to think deeply about the complexities involved with love, forgiveness, sympathy and empathy. I enjoyed the first person perspective - which showcases the character's strengths, flaws and eccentricities rather nicely - and the overall voice of the story. The character seems confused, enlightened, bitter, hopeful and indifferent all at once! It felt very real. Well done.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Very good stuff, and it helps to have the missing part. Great prose, and my favorite lines are below...

S&F of course, and keep it up.

Forgiveness is for the repentant but redemption is for the heroic.

I can’t help but feel my biggest crime was being a good guy, and that really makes me feel like crap because only a sap would think like that.

Very thought provoking JPZ. A little hard to follow at first for me but then smoothed out better as you got going. Interesting perspective on forgiveness. I have always felts forgiveness was more about you then on the one you are forgiving. It cuts the emotional ties that bind weather they be bitter or not but especially if they are bitter. To harbor unforgiveness is to harbor a piece of that which makes you bitter. Life is too short to harbor that crap in my opinion and it assures you will meet up again in a future life to resolve that rift... I like the star wars references. Yoda to Luke when he said he would try to lift the xwing out of the swamp: there is no try only do....