From here to eternity

Another night creeps on. I have weathered the day on about four hours of sleep in the hopes that I would not be here tonight.

Instead I would be sleeping soundly, dreaming the dreams that the book I am reading produces. My mind is the screen writer and it composes each scene in symbolic order, or it would if I could sleep.

I lay down for the obligatory hour, even dozed some then lay there listening to my mind's soliloquy, strutting and fretting that hour approaching the stage, but I never arrived. I finally got up, moved to my chair and began to read.

I am reading the story of my life as seen through the eyes of a man. It is the perfect example of I am you. As the author, he is really every character, because no one can write of another without standing in their shoes as honestly as possible. But this time is is also me. I find my life scattered among the history, traditions and terrible insecurities that accompany anyone growing up in the fifties and sixties.

Born and bred in the wake of WWII's graphic horror stories, I moved through the politics of my time into the peace movement and like many young people, throughout history, was caught between the ideal and the fact.

We still live in a world run by power. An unforgiving world that, until recently, spoke of liberty and freedom for all in spite of having no intention of allowing that to happen.

Life is layers and this book I am reading misses none of them.  Violence breeds violence, worse than anyone wants to talk about, but in this book it is presented from the point of view of all the people in all the layers and all those things no one wants to believe can happen are heard from the mouths of those who experienced them.

It is a round table discussion of who I am, who I was, and how I got from there to here and it is keeping me awake whether I want it to, or not.