Having been relieved of my duties, I was sent below, never to stand another watch while I remained in First Division. Even I had to laugh as variations of the story, about how I’d hit the old man in the head with orange peelings, filtered back down to me through the crew. Lest I get [...]
Then, one day, upon the breath of a sigh from Fate, Herself, were a number of new guys wafted onboard–reservists, like myself, who were still very much alive with the warmth and the feeling of their own humanity–a welcome sight for sore eyes. The first person I met was Greg. From Los Angeles, he was [...]
Left standing outside the XO’s stateroom, I felt a bit like Jesus, who’d gotten shuffled from one authority to another, in much the same manner, as each one realized he had no authority over He Who Is. In that one brief moment, I felt as if I were in contact with some incredibly powerful force, [...]
Seeking Wulf out that evening, I found him up on the Signal Bridge where, with a fixed gaze, he stood wrapped in his own thoughts. Startled by the sound of my approach, he turned and smiled halfheartedly as if he weren’t too pleased to see me. “Hi,“ he finally said with raised brows and a [...]
Drawn to this one saloon, I burst in upon an old, rundown and abandoned burlesque house with its seating arranged around the stage, like an indoor amphitheater. “Hello,” I yelled out rather sheepishly. “Is anyone here?” Having received no response, I spun around to leave and turned right smack dab into the pockmarked face of [...]
“For four long years,” began my new-found friend, a rebellious intellectual from Boston, Massachusetts, “I’ve struggled against becoming an animal like the rest of these poor bastards. Next week when I walk off this ship for the last time, I’ll have prevailed.” “I know the feeling,” I interjected. “From the first day of my enlistment,” [...]
While an animal encounters no one, not even its own self, we humans are more fortunate, or unfortunate depending upon how you view the matter, in that we can encounter our Selves on four different levels. In encounters of the first kind, we gain some small sense as a child that “I” exist, though not [...]
I have found that two very different levels of law exist in life and that these two are often at odds with each other, only because the one has been fashioned by imperfect hands, the other by God to show us how to act as human beings should we ever get there. So does the [...]
