upon coils of a singular centipede. Man has become wasp, bee, ant, termite...man has become a nest of men. Destroyer, Builder, Devourer, Enveloper.
This is a perversion of man. This men. This long thing where one man is as another man as is another...yet...there are amongst these men, some who are more men than men. By that I mean , the Few who aspire to be the One. Those who believe they are the summation of the Parts of the Great Citypede, the Great Citysite.
You see, young Beggar’s Son, that in time each man of this long chain of men does not know that his sight is not his own. It is the sight of the one as the Few. But that they see out of these eyes then they see that they are equal in their place. They are perverted to believe that they could be emperor or king or of immense wealth or fed because some are so. They are told that this is because of abilities. They are taught to believe that those who feed on those who cannot feed do so by the Law of the Jungle. This is a Great Lie. Men feeding on men is not a Law of the Species...it is a Law of Men. It was created to allow the parts of the Many to sustain the Few.
It is a system of very long lies...and when one foot moves, all the feet move. Any ‘system’ is not the sum of the parts of the All as for Species. Any men system is the sum of the parts of the Many...to feed the Few.
This strangely enough, has not come from the Species, not from the Body but from the conscious mind.
It is men’s conscious mind which has created City. Not to flee into safety from Natural Death...but, rather to fall into the Jaws of Unnatural Death. Man-made Death. Death of the parts to feed the Few; or ,the One.
This Mind began, firstly to believe in immortality as a god, as a soul then, as some chosen religion, as great wealth, than a little wealth, as social status, as art, as brutality, violence and control over others....on and on the list goes lower and lower...lesser and lesser...why?
Anything which will bring ourselves outside the ‘pool’ of the Many to join the Few, to be seen apart. This gives the conscious mind the illusion of some ‘pre-selection’ to eternity and thus have our chance at immortality.
Socially, men always fail to equalize, because they are, indeed, unequal. Not in ability, though that is true. Men have always been unequal in their abilities but the Species used that inequality to create diversity.
Diversity enables success as a Species but it is the opposite of a Citypede. Of a conscious mind as One.
The problem is in the power of Quality versus the power of Quantity. If, in a small tribe, our best spear-thrower owns a thousand spears and the rest own none, it does the Species no good. For the tribe will perish if attacked by wild animals or starve because one man cannot be a tribe to its full abilities. It would be even worse if the flame maker owned the thousand spears.
In the City, however, Quantity is what is used to control, to create systems. For where there are many many men, Quantity gives the illusion of plenty. A lesser man is only inches away from a ‘full’ man in the sense of grasping Quantity. What the lesser man does not know is that ‘those inches’ are in reality many many men long, the lesser man is fooled by the coil of the Centipede in the City. His place is very far from the Quantity, many feet would have to ‘shuffle’ for that reality to happen. What is important here to the ‘system’ of immortality of a Few is that all lesser men believe they are lesser only by chance. Thus Hope remains. That is all you need to give a hungry man as you, yourself, devour his parts for your own salvation. Hope. While you do that, you do not feel yourself being devoured. Only a very very Few can see in the City. The rest of us have given them our eyes.
Eyes...the Species would those eyes for the ALL to survive...man by man...The Great Insect of the City does not need many eyes to find its way to immortality. For It believes it thinks its way to immortality. It is Conscious only of that.
Beggar’s son “A question. You mentioned a Few. You mentioned a One. What are these things?”
The short man “These are men...the greatest of men...if such a thing can have a greatness. The ‘One’ is both the summation of the parts of the ‘All’ and the aspirations of each of men to become immortal...especially if that immortality will come only to one men (I would not call such a monster...a man.). The Few are closest to this , they are the eyes and ears and senses of the Citypede which all the combined Dread of men, society, City, tyrannic power, politics, wealth, cruelty and religion believe could become immortal...could make men immortal. All these things have over all history created a soul, a god , if you will.
That god answers to no one. In a way , born out of the combined conscious will of men, it has become the Anti-Species. It seeks to destroy all that was man before Dread; before Man realized he can die and, thus, slowly began to cease to live.
That god as ‘One’ will easily destroy Man, men, souls, nature, everything...even life itself...in order, that it will realize Self-immortality.
that is why I call it ...The One. It has moved men from illusion to delusion. In each man seeking a way out of dread, we have created a thing far more dreadful to each man. Not only do we still lose immortality, we have also lost the Life which went before it.
Understand that this ‘One”, these ‘Few’ , this collective, this City is as a million souls in a flood all huddling, jamming, killing, fighting, dying together over an imaginary tiny boat. It is sad to wonder how many would have swam away and lived without it.
The tall man “I, too, wonder if we may have lived without all this? So a City is filled with men who think they can think past Death. Who make up a tale of gods and souls and what not. Who call their Bodies traitors. Who...”
Here the Beggar interrupted “ Excuse me , my noble friends, but you have reminded me of what was said earlier. That the Dread of Death comes from two things. The one, then, is the actual death of Body. What is the other?”
To this query, the short man answered (while the tall man groaned) “The nature of Time.
There is a mystery in time for man. The past outside his past, the past of his of his own memory. For older men tell him of their past before even his beginning. So the man cannot deny a past before his own past.The past has ‘been’. And though a man’s mind can re-create the past, it will be mirrors, imperfect mirrors of what he has been told of the Past. Told by other imperfect mirrors.
The Past does exist, however. For a man does not wish for ‘everything’ around him to ‘pop-up’ into existence...moment...by moment...by moment.
If it is here than it was. How much changed from what was to what is, who can truly say. We say the mountains are eternal but outside the City’s walls lies the dust of its breath. And I have heard of mountains exploding into the air and swallowing leagues and leagues with the fire and ash of its corpse.
Also as the moment to moment progresses we see ‘is’ slowly change and thus either life is changing or experience of life is changing, ie if I look in a mirror 10 years apart, who is older, my face... or only my eyes. If my face, than here is proof that the Body is winning and losing the battle with Time and Calamity. If only my eyes are older in their view, than the Past doesn’t exist, nor Time exists, only my Mind exists and is it crumbling?
So that a Past was, it is now. But who knows what it was. A man looking through a glass of water into an imperfect mirror describes the world behind him; a past vague in recollection.
What does it matter?
Its importance lies in that which ‘was’ becomes ‘is’.
‘Is’ then is made from what ‘was’. ‘Is’ becomes proof of ‘was’.
The mind cares less, or in Time, cares not if the Body dies; it only cares if the Mind dies. Though it is resigned to such a Body’s defeat, it feels betrayed. Like dual warriors, one immortal, or at least believing so, but the other mortal and the victory dependent on both. No matter the highest valour of the mortal, his death in battle will seem a failure to the illusions of endless glory.
Remember, as in our tale of Body, once again a rider and a horse enter the race.
The rider h
as an expectation to the Finish; to the End...the Body only races...it does not race to win or to finish at some End...it races to be only...ALIVE.
Remembering only snatches of what hurdles over and over around him; the smells of flesh; the blinks of flying mud; of noise and danger and failure and triumph...all meaningless to the Mind which only wants to Finish at the End. Not its end but Time’s End.
For if Time exists beyond The Mind’s existence than The Mind does not achieve its immortality. It has been robbed.
Perhaps it is the fault of the rider expecting the horse to race full to the End. But who knows to what End or ends?
All fling their bodies forward into the great fog hiding the cliff.
Does the Rider, the Mind call it such? To avoid the other names, Chaos and Mere Chance.
Into these we cast the Mind and for its own sanity, it ‘floats’ up a soul.
Time makes no sense to men, only to a Man. For a Man lives only in the days of his days...he cares not of Time and Nights when he sleeps. Only men care about what happens to themselves while they sleep; for they have become Dreadful companions.
You see, Beggar, Time is necessary for Death to act. Time separates events so that there can be an Existence between Birth and Death for each man.
The act of Death is necessary to all men in order that there will also be an act of Life; of