The Seven Days of Wander
by Christopher Dutton
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“Why should we be in such a desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”
Henry David Thoreau
“When there are persons to be found, who form an exception to the apparent unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the world is in the right, it is always probable that dissentients have something worth hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something by their silence.”
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Dedication
Once upon a time there was a man who had two sons. Sad to say he didn’t do really a lot for these two sons, though he did love them in his way.
For me, he did do one great thing once. When I was at a loss as to what to do over an addiction, he made a call. Friends of his sent friends of theirs. And they became my friends and I got better. I healed and changed.
That healing and change led to my life, my happiness, my love, my children, my grandchild, my searching, this book.
All because that man, my father, Thomas Desmond Dutton, now deceased, made that one phone call.
So I dedicate this book to him. Partially.
I also dedicate it to the other man who basically filled in most of the other parts of my father. My older brother, Brian.
You see, for some men, a lifetime may be summed up, perhaps, in doing one thing of good for someone.
For others, a lifetime is about doing good for others all that lifetime. That is a brother.
That is my brother.
An Apology
I would like to apologies to any women who read this book, to all women in fact.
Because the novel was set in biblical times shortly after the Death of Christ, I used discussions which were very much gender biased. Towards the patriarchal.
The writing, therefore tends to use nouns like ‘man’, and ‘men’ instead of ‘people’ or ‘human’.
It was a ‘failing’ which I struggled with since it is not what I believe in but it made the dialogue seem to be more accurate for the historical period.
Wether this was fully accurate or not, I don’t know. the extent at which women were involved in religious matters and discussions was, I believe, minimal in those times. That, of course, was society’s loss as it continues to be today.
Like racism or slavery or elitism, no Society can be Just and Humane which excludes any members of that Society from full political, economical and theological participation. It is absolutely absurd when based on gender, thus attempting to exclude 50 percent of the population.
Exclusion is not ‘God’s way’ it is ‘men’s way’. It is not human.
So I apologize again for the use of ‘men’ and ‘man’...I pray I did not offend too much...
Thanks
How many people lead us into writing a book, through a book and ending a book?There are always so many people an author knows and works with who have helped him over the months and years write his or her book. Loved ones who tolerate his whiningfor time alone. Editors and friends who give sound advice and critique. We list those that inspire us by daily or past contact whom we know intimately as friends
and loved ones.
But there are more. Many more. These are the ‘lost’ voices to the conscious mind but surfacing again!!!!! There is the misted eye of the homeless man who perhaps on that day ‘nudges’ inspiration to continue question society’s values. A young woman’s laugh with her child two tables over. The contempt of an expensive tie passing you in the street. A prisoner being beaten on a cell phone camera. A very tired face at a coffee shop somehow finding the courage to smile at your friendly joke as cash changes hands. Broken teeth near an empty factory.A newscaster making announcements of political intrigue involving leaders you will never meet. Wether their coffee cup has water or coffee in it? Wether they are indeed left handed or right handed based on the cup’s place on the desk? Wether or not the handle is turned towards them or away, signifying a culture either of ‘grassroots’ or ‘old boy’. And realizing that mattered for the moment in your mind more than the death of a thousand protestors....because caring over and over and over again exhausts the heart...which is indeed the triumph of evil. And will one more typed sentence change any of that?
That I do not know...I only know for sure that silence will not.
It does not seem right, however, to thank the Silent for their desperation and despair which I have used to inspire the inner searches of this book. It would be better that I offered my apologies and shame than my thanks.
Thanking them for being alive to touch me, touch my soul....and for forgiving me for using their blood and tears as my paint. I do not do such a thing for evil, I would wish with all my heart that I had no reason, no materials, no human tragic oils to paint with.
So many have lived in brief and in too long, these man-made hells.
There is no good which can come out of that place, least of all...books.
I do not believe that evil is necessary to give background and shadow that we may see the good. If all the world was a transparent clear, we would not "crash" into each other. We see each other now and more react like mad bulls than crystalline angels.
Writing about good and evil is a circle. Always. It can be the circle of the hawk, the vulture or the dove. Or a kingfisher. Diving below the surface to recover strange looking metaphors.
Because Good men and women have difficulty describing their own evil and the Evil are always reconstructing their philosophy into seemingly Good.
So amongst all this are the Silent. Perhaps they speak a little but are difficult to hear.
They speak only with drops of blood. Their own blood. Their parent’s blood. Their children’s blood.
I thank them because anything humane about humanity; anything civil about civilization has come from their Blood; their Silence; their Suffering; their Waiting.
The Great, the Learned, the Leaders are nothing... who remembers the lead hyena from pack to pack, decade to decade?...
it is the rest of us... the common man... which is the Soil of all Human History...
We are given...and then we give back...
...that is my gratitude...for no one makes a better world than the man or woman dying beside me...dying with me...
Introduction
(written in 1992 at book’s conception)
Dear friends,
Let any who come upon this weave of words and thoughts be reluctant in their scrutiny of its construction. Keep to the distance of wide vision, not that I fear the detection of flaws (though they are as much as I am flawed) but that as in you unravel the loose thread of the tapestry...what was grand becomes ..alas.. rags.. Becoming less and less to your eyes until a voice has become a drooling mumble. Then your ears can not heed a whisper from man to man , and we, reader, are lost and separate again.
For those who begin read and a mind is puzzled but a heart cries not, leave the pages be. Do not go on. For thou hast been spared , Friend, and your heart knows not the notes of despair in tyranny. Some parts of life or hell have touched you not. Cease reading, reader, I will not open that door to you.
For those of you who study without compre
hension, yet your heart has such a grievous time that such as these pages grow heavier and heavier in the dampness of your tears, cease the torment, my friend. For it is a perversion against ourselves to take upon cruelty without reason; life is already too much a whip with an unseen hand. Rather go and find thyself a caterpillar, spend the days observing its slumber. This is my book. You need no more of the dark night; that dark cocoon. Your heart of pure and natural speaks already the yearn of flight.
There are those of you, who I fear, are plagued to grieve and having the burden of understanding, I beg read on. For thy sake and mine. For this is not written to impart knowledge or wisdom,( I am no teacher) but rather my hand moved across these pages as a hand gropes in the dark. Hoping. Begging. For another human hand, other hands, that reach too in this cold terror enveloping blank. So I beg read on, heed my whimpers, grope as I grope. We will touch, I know it. I can offer that hope, little else. I believe in the necessity of