OPENING QUERY...

Split me once and make me two. Take the two of me and place them in different houses in different lands. Now watch me and me go and grow. Wait. Why not throw some more of me in the equation. Yes, lets do that very thing shall we. Hmm, a good number of me might be six. Six of me in six houses in six lands. Yes that is better. Six blue eyed, brown haired, white skinned me. What will we see when we take a quick boo at so many of me in lives so far apart. Let the film roll and lets see what unfolds. Then we can think about the why we are the way we are.

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1) Far away I sit from the crowd. I don’t care much for people and their ill planned lives. Victims of circumstance is a phrase good enough for wiping the back-sides of monkeys. How the world can one plan for their lives while not even knowing what hand the plan-makers have already dealt out? They can not. Friggin robots not yet self-aware. I might take what I want from the world when it fancies my need but, quite honestly, I don’t want anything from this world. Let the robots take it all. All my life I have felt only contempt for these lesser then me people. I see no chance for that to change. What am I doing here is a mystery locked away in an unsolvable puzzle buried  with some ancient pirate captain’s treasure. I live, wasting away, not ever having lived. And it is this way because of all of the robots who stir the mud off the bottom of the primordial soup bowl.  I can’t see the road through the glinting light that bounces of the hides of all those around me. I know I do nothing. Nothing was the power given to me from the start. What can I do? I shrug my shoulders and keep my distance. There is no beauty. There is no hope. There is no meaning. There is only waiting...waiting for the next thing. That is what life has taught me.

2) I stand tall and I stand on the heads of anyone it takes to keep my lofty perch. There are people who are meant to be eaten, and there are people who eat other people. Survival of the fittest is what my old dad always said. That was when he was strong, before he allowed himself to grow weak. There is no place for the weak. I destroyed him to save him from the humiliation of being weak. I did what he taught me to do, I used what means I had to get on top and stay there. I am sure he would be proud of the man I am today. Ruthless and incorruptible. My father had a heart attack, something he always told me happen only to people who fake strength. They are people who can’t handle the strain of being top of the food chain. After the attack, he began to talk sentimental drivel about love and meaning and things that matter more then power. It was mortifying for me to hear. I took action straight away and found the cheapest old-age care facility and locked him away in it. I arranged for the minimal requirements for medical care. I left him there to fade away and fade away he did. Just before he died, I showed up with many documents for him to sign in exchange for better care at a leading care center. He was weak and not at all in charge of his faculties and it took some time to get the documents signed. In the end, I got everything he had under his dominion, then left him there without a backward glance. It was a state funded funeral since no one showed up to claim his body when he died. Better that way I think. I know clearly the reason why I am here, alive in this world. I am here to dominate others and control the tides of power with money. There is nothing I can’t have done in a moments notice. I am power and I exercise power every moment of every day. There is only one thing that matters and that is power. That is what I have learned. That is what I know.

3) I love people. It is in the many people that live and experience the world that salvation can be found. I can see the key isn’t a single object at all. It is like a single object that has burst into tiny parts, like a big bang, and everyone has a small part of that key somewhere inside them. The pieces of the key are not even noticeable sitting in us in times when we are alone. The greater number of people that are together, and who share harmonious energy, the more the key is felt. My greatest joy is bringing people together and and evoking harmony within. It isn’t hard to do. All that is needed is the spark. Harmony is a highly combustible material and it is a glorious explosion of divinity when it bursts in flames. My medium is music and my tools are plentiful. I can see the sound move like water and watch it wash over those who hear it. No matter what the currents are that flow in any gathering of individuals, a sensitive spirit can sense what is there and orchestrate a symphony of energy that draws everyone together. Once together, the key is felt by all and the glory of those moments become self-propelling. I like to call it the holy-key. That is my calling; My purpose. I live to bring others to harmony so they can experience life in the grandest of ways. That is all that matters to me. And I have only known love consequently. Life is grand.
 
4) Women are all that matter to me. I tolerate stupid ones. What do I care about that? It isn’t like I ever intended to stay with any of them for longer then a night or two. My only prerequisite is a woman has to be young, or atleast young looking, and pretty. No fatties and no dogs. Leave those ones for the more desperate guys. I have no guilt doing this. Why should I? I tell them upfront what I want from them. If they think they can get more, that’s their problem. I know the game and I know it well. I have learned that women want to be banged by men just as much if not more then men want it. What’s more, they like being treated like dirt. It sounds crazy and wrecked but it serves me just fine. I have nothing tying me down. I own nothing of great value. Nothing except for some nice clothes and a kick-ass sports car. Image is everything. My advice for other men, say less and they will assume more. Women like men who strike them as powerful. All you have to do is look powerful. You get what you want, then walk away. They never get wise to it. I don’t get mixed up in emotions; Ever. That is a mistake. I have seen too many men go down in flames after letting emotion get hold of them. I intend to die alone but before that happens, I want to leave with a list of names a hundred miles long of those ladies I have conquered. That is why I was born I think, to have harmless fun and keep things easy. Well, easy for me. I figure I have it coming, that is a life of pleasure for me. I probably lived a previous life strictly by the rules and it was a terrible bore. Now I get to make up for it. And I don’t care at what cost. I don’t really believe any ladies I have had were ever hurt. They all wanted it and I was the guy to give it. If it wasn’t me, it would be some other guy. That is the meaning of life for this guy and if you don’t like it, too bad.

5) I am a bit of an old-fashion kind of man. I take it very serious when it comes time to put the bread on the table. Work is foremost and everything else comes after. I have four daughters and a wife and money made keeps them under a roof and food in their bellies. I sail on the great ships and am gone for months at a time. The work is hard and there are risks aplenty. It isn’t that I don’t miss my family, I do miss them. It is what a man must do. You have to do what you have to do and I do it for them. I wasn’t around to see any of my daughters first steps or hear their first words. I have never been to a any of their dance shows or heard any of them sing in choir. I always keep a hard face when I do see them so they don’t see how much it hurts me to have missed so many things in their lives. There isn’t room for that. I must do what needs doing to keep them safe and secure. No child of mine will hurt from not having enough and forced to go without. Having said that, I will admit to having some scars living life away from them, my ladies awaiting. There was the time my youngest grabbed hold of my leg and wouldn’t let go while I was walking to board the bus that was waiting to take me to my next voyage. She was crying and begging me not to go. I stood tall and walked to the bus with my face held hard as iron. I had to drag her all the way to the doors. That is where her mother was finally able to pry her off. I boarded that bus and didn’t look back. I will never forget that if I live to be two hundred. Scars I have and they are plenty. They haunt me in the quiet moments when it is dark and calm. I tell myself it is what needed to be done. It is my place in the world to be a man and to provide. As much as it can hurt, I hurt in the name of what I believe is right. That is who I am.

6) I have been called a hero though that word never sits well with me. I am no hero. I may run into the fire while everyone else is running out of it, but that is not heroic. That is how I am wired, thats all. I would even go as far to say fighting fires is how I find myself. It is in the chaos and confusion of a burning building that I find the center of me and can feel where I exist in the universe. Sounds a little hokey I know, but I have read a few books on this sort of thing. Some people label it and refer to it as adrenaline junkies but that is just that, a label. It isn’t the rush alone that is desirable. It is the coming to terms with the stark fact that death may happen in an instant and peace with yourself must be maintained in order to live another day. The other half of it is being there to help someone else in the moments that can literally mean life and death. I have lost some people and I have saved some people. I always pour everything I have into every person who needs my help in a fire. I don’t care if it is a man or a woman. If they are red, yellow, black, brown, white, or what ever other colors people come in. They all are equal in my eyes and I willingly put my life on the line for them without hesitation every time. That is how I have found myself in the great scheme of things. That is meaningful and it brings with it a sense of balance in my life. It is what I live for. There is nothing heroic about that, unless being true to your nature is heroic. If that is the case, then the world is teaming with heros. That is my feeling anyway. Some of us teach others skills, some assemble the things we use every day and have become so used to using these things, we no longer see them. Some of us practice medicine, and some grow food. Everyone has value and are heros in their own regard. I am no better then them. No sir, not by a long shot. We all do what we do and it brings us closer to god while we do it. Or so I believe.

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CLOSING THOUGHTS

What is the point I attempt in these six stories? So what that the character is me, written with six differing perspectives of life. What does it illustrate? It illustrates through each story a same tendency underlying a same character. That is a strong conviction and adherence to a belief. A deep trench carved by life experience that channels character development resulting in different manifestations that are me. Ofcourse the me who sits here writing this story isn’t mentioned here. No need to mention that me beyond this sentence and the one previous. All that is needed said is I recognize each manifestation of me is potentially real. Potentially real for me and just as potentially real for anyone. In making this realization I then become aware that, whether I like the potential me or dislike them, they are still me. Acceptance of me and all the potentials of me open the way to acceptance of anyone. Understanding how life exposure can direct and normalize behavior and thought, creating unique adaptations of self, while maintaining a constant predisposed nature of an individual, proves that neither nature nor nurture can be tagged as dominant in human development. Rather, it is a blend of the two that create the unique and personal experience that defines the landscape that are the lives we live. Yes, it is only an opinion and nothing more. I will reveal this, while writing each potential manifestation of me, I felt that person as though I was he. A simple trick of closing my eyes and seeing that fellow and knowing what life was lived beyond the short (but potent) paragraphs I shared with you, I became each man. I felt the same conviction until I closed my eyes and allowed the next me to be the current me. A bizarre trip into other realities. A trip that makes the world of people more sensible for me. By sensible I mean less time questioning why people are the way they are. Everyone is potentially me. Knowing this propels me beyond the question ‘why’ and makes more room for ‘what can I learn about me in you’. There now, I am done with my pondering. I hope there is something in them you may take with you. All the better for me if you do eh? Since you are me and I am you.