-JHM

I remembered the first time I crossed the Atlantic on a contract bound for the Virginia colony as an indentured maidservant, where so many had died in that stinking hold. I also dreamt of the much more recent, second long sea voyage of my life: from Bermuda all the way around the tip of South America. As I dreamed, the smell of brine again filled my nostrils, and the stink of rot and vomit. The heaving, horrible seasickness, the nauseating vomiting had all but consumed me at first. It took me almost two weeks to get the heaving under control, and I was barely aware of my surroundings. One night as I clung to the port rail in agony, a stupid young sailor grabbed me from behind intent on rape, and I callously broke his neck against the rail and threw him overboard. Fortunately it was dark, and no one thought to ask me about it later. I spent the rest of my time in the little cabin I shared with six others, clinging to the post or huddled in the bunk. I managed to eat or take a little water from time to time. I doubt I slept more than an hour at a stretch, for even after I finally overcame the motion sickness, it seemed always that the cold, deep and merciless expanse of heaving water surrounded me, like some malevolent beast hungry to destroy me.

Although the trip to Mexico was ill considered I had needed to get away from the people and the families, from pretense and from everything I’d known in America.  I had thought Bermuda would suffice, but the gentility of British society jarred against my baser nature and I lasted barely ten years there. I hated everything and everyone and once again being a whore seemed as good a way as any to be alone. The little portside bar was always looking for whores, and pretending to be Irish Catholic made it acceptable for me to be in that part of Mexico.

I had been there silently nursing my resentments for six months when the knock came at the door.

That somebody would be at the door was not unusual- my lamp was lit so any passing man might be inclined to stop by.  But this night, at this time, I glared at the closed door feeling my heart hammer in my chest as I fought down the rage seething there.  This was certainly not an opportune time for some horny drunk to be pestering me.  I considered remaining silent- “Let this one pass,” I thought, but even as I considered it I rose from my seat at the table, strode to the door and flung it open.

A number of impressions struck me at once: he was a stranger and he was neither drunk, nor overtly aroused and seemed almost nervous to be standing before me like this.  He was not a tall man, perhaps half a head taller than I, certainly no more, but he had a certain air of strength and confidence despite his current unease.  He was clearly surprised at my appearance, having expected some Hispanic wench to open the door.

“¿Qué quieres?” I spat.

“Ah, good evening, miss…”

“And what would you be wanting, knocking on a poor girl’s door at this time of night?” I demanded in my best impression of an Irish brogue.

He surprised me by laughing and then said, “You’re certainly not Irish, and I’m looking for a place to hide until morning.”

So he was an American, perhaps from Pennsylvania or Delaware.  There was no good reason to take him in even though I could tell he was not in any way desperate, but I found myself stepping aside and allowing him to enter, closing the door and turning the lamp so the shield would dim it from the outside.  When I turned he was standing by my table with his hat now clutched in his hand.  Inside I was at war with myself, fighting between the urge to throw him out now or to bed him and then slit his throat, make of him the first of many.

Hours later I lay upon my bed unable to sleep and watched him as he snored quietly, curled on a blanket on the floor.  It was almost comic in its incongruity, that this man, who was obviously accustomed to hard living, might eschew the comforts of a feather mattress and the attentions of a comely whore out of some sense of… what?  Chivalry was certainly not the appropriate term.  Propriety?

“There’s no need to sleep on the floor,” I had offered with a knowing smile, and I had sensed his immediate desire, but saw it overcome by something so uncommon- a sense that he had imposed upon me enough this one night; gratitude that I had taken him in, and yes, gratitude that I would offer to share my bed even though that was the nature of one such as I.  The bitter retort that sprang to my lips when he politely declined died there when I saw the truth written in his face: he would not cheapen my charity by taking further advantage.

Men had been kind to me before.  They had been deferential, polite and even gallant… but this? In this place, in these circumstances it was certainly not what I expected.  When I opened my door and saw him standing there in the failing light he had been so clear in my understanding- a traveler, a bit of an adventurer, a bit down on his luck, thinking of home and of staying out of the clutches of the commandante.  Behind all that there was hardness, a solid core of realism built on grim experience.  That he had seen horrors on his journeys was clear. It occurred to me that I might have to hold my churning rage in check until this one had moved on.  Little did I understand the corner I had turned at that moment.

Epiphany, thy tread is light and thy manner subtle.

Sudden commotion shattered my quiet reverie and I sat up in bed as the thumping and banging in the next room became a mixture of male curses and female screams.  Anna obviously had one of her nastier regulars in tonight and things were getting ugly.  Jeremy sprang to his feet as I got out of bed, but I raised a cautionary hand as I took up my club and threw open my door, stomping along the widow’s walk to Anna’s room.  I pounded on the door with my fist, but the screaming and yelling just kept on apace as I saw others sticking their heads out, some grinning in anticipation of something amusing.

The door suddenly flew open and an angry mountain of tequila-soaked sailor confronted me with a screaming Anna clinging to his back, beating him about the head with her free fist.  She connected next to his eye and the man roared as he reached behind him and seized her by her hair, twisting as he peeled her from his back.  He turned and threw Anna against the wall adjoining my room, then turned back to face me… and my fist connected squarely with his nose.  It was not a hard hit because he was so tall, but blood exploded from his nose and he staggered back in shock.

Left-handed I hauled the club down hard on his right shin.  He howled in pain and collapsed on to his knees as I rounded again and struck him hard in the gut with the end of the club, folding him in half.  He made a retching sound as I thrust the club under his chin, pulling it tight with manic strength as I flipped him onto his back and dragged him down the widow’s walk to the steps where I tried to throw him down the stairs.  He managed to grab the rail, but left himself vulnerable and I kicked him hard in the crotch, then again in the rump, sending him tumbling down the stairs in a spray of vomit and urine.

“I’m trying to get some sleep, dammit!” I shouted after him, then wheeled about and strode back to my door.

“¡Irlandesa estúpida!” Anna screeched at me, but I simply glared at her and lifted the club.  She had had enough of bruises and bloody lips for the night and fell silent as she ducked behind her door.  I looked up and saw Jeremy standing in my open doorway, his face a study in shock and amusement.

“Everything is fine,” I smiled at him, “you should go back to sleep.”

Of course, the devil could not let this go unmatched, hence Zoning Boards and Inspectors. I do try to not be overly harsh, for I understand the town’s dismay over my arrival- it stood to benefit greatly from the development plans laid out, and they had the property virtually within their grasp. Nonetheless, it seems petty to place needless obstacles in my path. Fortunately Joshua is up to the task, taking some personal pleasure in the reversal of fortune represented by my plans to reoccupy the house.

So, the wiring is now reluctantly admitted to be up to code, the barn and stables are now properly permitted and under construction, the McAllister Family Cemetery does not require relocation, and the interior work is well under way… It has been a marvelous maelstrom of activity.

Of course, it has left me little time to consider on further topics for this little journal. I am mindful of the question posed in comments to the previous post and I shall address them in a somewhat timely manner, but for the moment I do believe I shall laze about and draw something that existed elsewhere and place it here. What follows was originally offered as a guest post at Etherian’s Island in October of 2003…

The house was more difficult to find than I had expected. One Hundred and Fifty Three years is not such a great span, but for this once small town… the changes had been profound. A small town had become a larger town, had become a suburb. Still, there were traces of the past to be found in the historic buildings downtown, and the aged ante bellum farmhouses that had survived the rapacious maneuverings of developers. One in particular called to me.

There was no road. There had been, but the house and the property had been unoccupied for so long that the track had overgrown. Yet landmarks remained; the lay of the land had not changed so much. There was a bit of a struggle on going between the trust that held the property and a group of land developers who envisioned multi-million dollar homes and a championship golf course. But the legal strictures of the trust were strong and the land remained as it was. The house had been empty for more than fifty years.

Given the contention surrounding it I was required to be secretive, approaching cross-country, taking most of a day to reach it. The air was warm- summer giving way grudgingly to fall. The heat was real, but it hinted at the cool night to follow, the buzzing of beetles giving the lie to the day. I walked out of the woods, past the faded “No Trespassing” signs, crossing the low rise to bring the house in to view. It sprawled across the next small hill, still majestic in its own way, despite the obvious toll of decades of disuse. The outbuildings were gone- the stable and the barn, either removed or collapsed.

The sight of it gave me pause. Suddenly, and again, this seemed foolish- what was the point of coming here? Everything that had made this place precious to me was gone long, long ago. There was nothing here… no. Almost nothing.

I crossed the field of high grass and brambles, feeling the weight of the past settle upon me as I drew closer to the dilapidated structure. The years certainly had not been kind, nor had the occasional band of squatters, for some of the damage was obviously deliberate, the work of teenagers marking the spot of their private drinking parties.

The sun was setting behind it as I drew closer, stepping in to the shadow of the house, into the embrace of it. The long, wrap-around porch was sound, barely creaking as I walked along it, past boarded up windows and the sealed front doors. There had been changes, of course. Nothing lasts so long without changing. Nothing but me.

I spotted the way in with little effort- one of the windows had had its plywood carefully removed then replaced more than once. I slid the wood from its frame and squeezed through, my large pack making it a tight fit. Somebody had actually gone to the trouble of attaching a handle to the inside of the plywood cover so I used it to seal the window behind me. The house, so old and full of ghosts, now had one more.

I was in the southern parlor. The room was empty of course, but I recognize it and my mind’s eye filled it with those familiar things that made it such a delightful place to take a morning’s breakfast or brunch. The house was gloomy with so many windows covered yet it was as if I could feel it warming at my presence. Silly, yes, but suddenly I as if the house were so very happy that I had come.

I stepped through the arch to the entryway, the front parlor: the grand staircase sweeping up to my right, the entry to the northern parlor across from me, the hall to the dining room offset to the right from that and the entrance to the sitting room leading due west. I dropped my pack, suddenly eager to be free of the weight.

The house was empty, just some beer cans and other trash piled in the corner near the front doors- whoever made a habit of visiting this place at least had the courtesy to clean up after themselves a bit. I strolled through the lower floor, pausing to remember here, or there, noticing things that were now missing, or were new. There was a scent to the place, even after all these decades, even after being empty for so long, I could taste the familiarity of it.

The staircase beckoned.

By then I was nearly manic. I snatched my pack from the ground and swept up the wide steps, but something halted me. A memory, an echo, teasing at me and taunting me until I sat a moment and finally called it up from the place it lay buried. I turned it over in my mind, tasting it, feeling it until a trick of the deepening darkness and my own desire conspired to make it real.

I saw him, standing at the foot of the stairs- he could not look at me nor I directly at him, that would shatter the spell, but I knew that this memory of him, this pale echo of him knew me. He heard me.

“I came to say goodbye.”

We said goodbye long ago. We parted- you on your path to future days; and I, on mine to oblivion.

“But I held on to you. I was selfish, but no longer.”

I understand, but this is not the place for goodbyes.

“I will come. I will see you in the proper place. That is why I am here.”

Would that I had eyes with which to see you…

He turned to bring his eyes towards me and the moment collapsed in to the shadows. For the first time since setting out on this journey a twinge of sadness brushed my heart. Not grief. Not bitterness. The time for those had passed.

Upstairs I made my way around to our bedroom and my old dressing room. It was quite dark and I had to use the flashlight I had brought to find my way. Once there I opened my pack and drew out the lantern, filling it with oil and priming the wick before lighting it. The pale yellow illumination suffused the room, rendering it in an almost surrealist cast of flickering shadow and light. Another time this might have been depressing, the empty room, the bare floors, the walls stained and faded, but to me it was a welcome sight. I knew this place. I could feel the past alive in it.

The remainder of the pack held only a blanket and one large, carefully folded and wrapped item. I spread the blanket on the floor and took out the package, carefully opening it, laying out the contents, smoothing the fabric. Then I began to undress.

The dress precluded slipping out the way I had come in. Fortunately the door out the back to the garden was easily opened from the inside. The sun was almost below the horizon now and I stood a moment to admire it as I had so many times before, so very long ago. I set out westerly from the garden, walking in to the lowering sun until I encountered a rusted iron gate, still hanging awkwardly from a single hinge attached to the skewed granite pillar whose twin lay broken in the grass opposite. The remainder of the fence I remembered was gone. I could see the stones, three neat rows of them, miraculously unmolested by those who had claimed the house as a favored nightspot.

I counted the headstones- fifteen of them. So, he was the last to be buried here after all. I stepped to the end of the short row, my feet touching the very spot where I had stood One Hundred Fifty-Three Years, Two Months and Eleven Days before. The day my beloved Jeremy was given to the Earth to hold for all eternity.

Come, Elaine. Sit with me once more.

“I miss you, Jeremy. I will always miss you, but the pain is gone.” I set the lamp atop his headstone and spread the blanket, tamping down the tall, dry grass, then carefully took my seat, folding the dress and the petticoats just so.

Your wedding dress. How appropriate.

“Let me tell you of what has come to pass…”

Seated there by my husband’s grave as darkness fell, I made my final peace: a quiet, laughing communion with the memory of the one who had made me so happy, so joyful, so alive.

And we were interrupted only once…

“I know you, my love. I know this missive shall remain unread for decades, perhaps centuries. It is conceivable you might never read it, and never know what I have done, or why…”

He was correct on both counts. I had only recently begun carrying bits of my past forward, storing them against future need. Oh, I have left hordes in the past, but I have never returned to them- best to leave the past behind, let it remain dead. Only over the past few centuries have I made an effort to change this, with some success, I might add. Thus I still had my diaries from my years with Jeremy.

I retrieved the first volume of that diary some months ago, along with the letter he wrote on his deathbed. At first I had not opened it because my grief was too deep. Later I was afraid to read it and reopen the wound his passing had left in my heart. Finally, I had set it aside as part of the dead past. When recent events lured me in to revisiting that time the letter was still there. Once I had made my peace with my past I decided it was time to read it.

I cannot begin to recount it in its entirety for it is too detailed and I am loath to remake his words for my own petty needs. I am also somewhat at a loss to describe how I feel about this.

Five children survived the fire that took the lives of Reginald, Clarice and their youngest child, Sarah. I have made little specific mention of them for several reasons, none of which I am at liberty to discuss here. The eldest I shall refer to as Joshua, the youngest as Catherine (named after Reginald and Jeremy’s sister). Joshua was fourteen when Jeremy and I arrived in his life and while he respected his uncle he absolutely despised me. His intense dislike persisted until the day Jeremy’s Will was read and he understood that I had been left nothing of the family’s fortunes, and that I had been pleased to have it so. After that day he subsided in to simple irritation with me and with his youngest sister who, along with her husband, inherited the family home and its lands.

Catherine had always adored me, something I am sure contributed to Joshua’s dislike of me. After Jeremy died she insisted I remain with her and her family at the house, and I did so for one year, mostly in response to this odd feeling that she desperately wished me to remain more out of concern for my welfare than for her own purposes. When I did choose to leave, journeying to Boston, Catherine went to great lengths to maintain correspondence. We exchanged frequent letters for several years and when I was ready to set aside my identity as her Aunt Elaine I actually went to the trouble of hiring a law firm to collect any further letters or packages from her and hold them indefinitely until I sent an agent to retrieve them. I then became Melissa Burns and disappeared.

I had always wondered in an offhand manner why Catherine had been so concerned with me. Now I know why.

Jeremy revealed my secret to Catherine just over a year before he died. That I did not detect this I attribute to my foreboding of his coming end. He was still healthy, but he was no longer young. At sixty-one years of age he was now prone to infections in his lungs during the winter and I knew that it was only a matter of time. Preoccupied with what for me was an immanent change I failed to notice or properly account for Catherine’s change in attitude. In the wake of his passing, well, everything had changed for all involved.

His letter explained that he was not content to have me wandering the world, hiding here or there, always lost, always alone. He wanted to provide me with a refuge, a place to come to whenever I wished where I would be known and accepted. He wanted me to have a home. He charged Catherine with seeing to it that our home would always be available to me. He laid that obligation upon her because he knew she was fond of me and because she was such an extraordinary woman herself (a trait he insisted was my doing), having studied literature and law and the sciences at an advanced level despite her youth. He trusted her with my secret because he felt he knew her heart nearly as well as he knew mine. What surprises me most is that she might have believed him at all.

My very first instinct was to disappear: to drop everything and go underground in Eastern Europe or South America. I thought better of that- the secret had been “out” for better than one hundred and fifty years to little or no effect so there could be little harm in taking the time to examine what this meant. Still, I did make certain arrangements against possible need.

Then I returned to Boston to sift through everything I had from Catherine.

Regarding the nature of Man: the view of Man as animal, slave to a genetic imperative and playing at games of morality and civilization has always seemed a desperate ploy to legitimize the despicable in their own eyes. I have read your site, watching you cast out questions of moral weight, and I have refrained from commenting as I felt that by the very premise of my identity I would be somehow impure, contaminating the flow of the debate.

Modern (and by that term I refer to post-Renaissance) morality seems overly concerned with concepts of life, death, and the right of one being to place bonds of obligation, consensual or otherwise, upon another. This has become immensely intensified in the past century, as the religious and political spheres have separated to some degree. In America it is quite acute and has been for some time. This serves to de-focus the understanding of morality and how it relates to everyday life and the choices made by sentient beings. By casting morality in political terms it becomes simpler to eschew it.

Let us consider love. You recently questioned your readers regarding the relationship between sex and love, with somewhat predictable results. The problem, from my perspective, is that you muddied the real question (What is Love?) by casting it in the context of sex. A recipe for unsatisfying results. I would have asked simply this: what does love mean to you?

Let me see if I can offer a cogent answer to that question.

Love, in its simplest form is a recognition that others matter. That their tragedies are your tragedies, that their triumphs are your triumphs, that their sorrows and joys are yours as well. Love is the fundamental connection between human beings, beyond all other things. It takes many forms and it hides in many places. Suggest to your local police officer that he engages in his profession out of a fundamental love for his fellow man and he may scoff, but inside he will recognize that there is a grain of truth to it. These are small relationships. Should we be tempted to blend emotion and physics we might call this the Gravitational Force of Humanity. This small love is what makes it possible to live in towns and cities, and to pass strangers on the street without fear or confrontation. This small love fails sometimes, tragically, but overall it seems to prevail.

Let me approach this from another perspective: do you on a daily basis desire to harm others? Do you seek to place your fortunes always above those who surround you? Would you deliberately harm a man who was looking you in the eye for petty personal gain? I submit to you that a significant majority of people would not. I understand that there have been psychological tests and experiments that might seem to bear out the opposite, but put the question in the terms in which I have stated it and ask yourself honestly what the answer would be? Then ask yourself the most important question: why?

The answer is again, love. Not that you love the man you might harm, but that you yourself seek to be loved and that such an act could not only harm the love you feel from others, but that which you feel for yourself. Self-love is powerful- just ask anyone who lets it get out of control. Look at those who do abuse others, those who would take the advantage that casual harm might gain them. Look at those who clearly place themselves above others in all things. They have common traits, not the least of which being that they find themselves surrounded by people who pretend to love them, people who are motivated by the same thoughtless need for themselves as the man or woman who has clawed his way to the top across the shattered lives of his betters.

What to make of this? Nothing more than that mankind seems to be as hard-wired for love as he is for procreation. If there is no hope for you in that statement then I doubt we could profitably continue this discussion.

Love manifests itself in many ways. Sacrifice, either of a lifetime or of life itself, is the most visible manifestation. The religious leader who gives up the chance for a wife and family in order to answer to a higher calling- he acts out of love for his faith, and that is by extension a love of Man. The clich?d soldier throwing himself upon the hand grenade to save his fellows, is that not an expression of love? The doctor who daily grinds against the depredations of nature upon the human body, what motivates him? If you think lucre is all, then you do not know many doctors. And what of engineers, electricians, carpenters, dressmakers, pastry chefs, cobblers, stevedores, drovers… it is the satisfaction of being part of an overall good that drives them far more than simple greed or need. It is the understanding of that basic connection that lets one take satisfaction in a job well done, regardless if that job entails shaping the foundations of a nation or merely stacking those bails in the barn.

In the end, just about every profession practiced by men is a manifestation of that overreaching force of love: none of it direct or even truly presenting itself openly to be seen, but I submit that it is utterly essential to making civilization work. When that love is sundered, civilizations fall.

Romantic Love is a construct of modern civilization, a mixture of the carnal with this smaller “l” love I have been discussing. That it can usurp all common sense, bring down the mighty or elevate the base shows how powerful it can be, but it is not the driving force of civilization. It is not at the heart of what it is to be Man. It is the advent and the elevation of Romantic Love that provides the despicable with their wedge to separate Man from Morality- pointing to this beautiful confluence of the carnal and the spiritual and calling it the mere satisfaction of genetic imperatives. If one must find the Devil whispering in the eaves, this is where he lurks: it is that which points to the underside of civilization, those dark and festering swamps where Man and love often fail, and calls that the norm, the nature of Man- there is the true voice of evil, the antithesis of love.

My point is that love is deeply written into the smaller parts of day-to-day life. Love is a basic function of human existence. As such it lends credence to the idea that there is an overall purpose to that existence. Not proof, just another hopeful sign.

I oft am concerned by the reactions I engender in folk, even when I cloak myself in the guise of the ordinary. I dislike the way my existence can warp the lives of those who stray close. Another scientific metaphor: my life as naked singularity for the human spirit.

Enough of that.

The question of my existence seems almost inconsequential to this discussion. I feel certain that the notions I presented could as easily have been born of a life in which one’s own demons had been unleashed, confronted and eventually overcome. This is germane to the reason I noted for declining commenting on your posts directly- the stated nature of my existence tends to distort the discussion. Either my words carry added import due to my immortality, or they are rendered suspect by my charade: a classic example of Catch 22, and another reason why I am enjoined against ever answering the question in an even remotely dispositive manner. Mystery makes me what I am in the virtual world. This pains me, but my choices in this matter are nil.

I hide from the world, my only exposure a web site upon which I spin tales and occasionally opine on the nature of Man. What would be the reaction were I to become publicly known as a verifiably ?immortal’ being? That my freedom would be forfeit is a given. That my destruction would be sought is to be expected for my existence would threaten too many hide-bound ideologies. You would likely be surprised to see how many people considered rational and thoughtful and committed to the scientific pursuit of knowledge would become irrational when presented with the certainty of my existence. I would become a symbol and a tool claimed by every faction as proof against others, or denounced as an incarnation of evil, some diabolical manifestation to be eradicated as a test of faith.

Could the Devil not dangle eternal life upon the mortal Earth as a lure to damnation? Do not misunderstand- I do not believe in the Devil, or in Evil as some coherent force, rather I use the terms because they are easy and recognizable, despite their ability to fracture the discussion. Nonetheless I believe my point is valid: there are those who do believe in Evil as an active force and my existence would be an intolerable outrage to them. I know this from bitter experience. Furthermore, there are those who would stop at nothing to possess what I have, my warnings as to being careful what one wishes for notwithstanding.

All in all, I am again left with no choice.

It was noted that I dwelt on the darkness without considering the balance of light; however, I believe my position is consistent with the idea that love counters evil, that hope counters fear. I find it odd that in my recent spate of bitter unhappiness I still seem more disposed towards taking a kindly and optimistic view of both the nature of Man and His prospects, than are you. Perhaps I misunderstand? My comment that you should be able to find hope in the statement that Man is as predisposed to love as he is to procreation was offered in the smug assurance that there would be no disagreement with the premise. That you might disagree with the fact is another issue entirely, for I am in no position to expect that anyone should accept my words as indisputable. My arrogance does have its limits.

You said:

As for the nature of man, I must disagree. There are many people who might justify their actions on the basis of simply being animals. The question is not their intentions- but rather what “despicable” could possibly mean if there is no greater purpose. If we are animals, then all we can do is follow our instincts. If we are hardwired towards behaviors, then how can we follow a construct of morality that is not completely based on pure utilitarianism or genetic success?

The argument becomes circular, and for most the only escape from the circle is faith. Faith is a lovely thing to behold for it provides courage in the face of hopelessness and stands as a bulwark against fear. In the age of ignorance it was sufficient unto itself; however, in the modern arena of ideas the critical thinker cannot easily dismiss the evidence of science. Being a person of faith the fear is that science is merely a tool of damnation, seducing one away from that which has served him so well for so long. It is a frightening dilemma and for those who fall prey to the idea that Man is naught but a somewhat more ingenious animal the slide in to darkness can be short and steep.

That there are those who justify their perfidy on the basis of the animal nature of Man does not lend credence to the notion. If Man is naught but a clever beast why does he possess a sense of right and wrong? For he certainly does. What purpose does it serve? Is it truly just a construct designed to give institutions such as the Church or the Prince control over the populace? How so? Why would a moral sense be required when the threat of death is as easily at hand? It seems to me that the question to be asked is not why so many are capable of such evil, but why any one man would eschew the practice of evil when all around him embrace it? Furthermore, why would any nation elect to abstain from the Empire of Power, why would any collection of peoples elect not to slaughter their foes en masse upon victory in war? Ask not why there is Evil, for the answer to that is the submission of men to the notion that their acts have no consequence beyond the pleasure they obtain and need no justification other than the ability to commit them. I include in this those who commit evil in the name of their faith. Ask instead, why is there Good? That is the difficult question, and the one worthy of the thinking Man.

Hope for Man can be found in a single man, and be valid for all Men. The Christians out there would be nodding in agreement; however, I see Jesus only as an example of something I see manifest all about me. Hope for Man does not require that all men be capable of choosing Good over Evil, just that some are, or even one. For if one can, others can, and that is the essence of Hope.