#//And how ALONE he wound up in the end; in pursuit of a heritage he desperately craved to know; people he was told were his responsibility | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

formulatrash · 3 years

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Lewis just got his 7th title. I'm happy for him.

Me too. What Lewis has done is so almost incomprehensibly titanic, in any sport, that it feels like something that needs contextualising again and again.

It’s easy, if you remember Lewis in the hybrid era, in Mercedes, since Rosberg left - whatever the recency is that creates the illusion it’s almost straightforward for him to perform at this extraordinary level - to minimise his achievements, even if you don’t intend to. Lewis now is a force of nature so impossible to rival that it wouldn’t really matter if you gave everyone GP3 cars and told them to go, the rest of the field would just be closer together behind him.

I am, as Tumblr constantly likes to remind me, very old - nearly as old as Lewis himself - so I remember him arriving in the junior formulas and hoping that he’d get to F1. He was goofy and nerdy and awkward and a bit of a gamer - actually way more like Lando than you’d believe, in retrospect but he had this burning, furious defiance that he was going to get there and win. Because that was what he needed, to overcome the barriers and my god, there were a lot of people openly saying what they try to at least code these days, back then.

Lewis when he was young was a Verstappen-esque firecracker of teammate beef. I don’t know that anyone other than maybe Max could have taken on Alonso, at that point, in his junior year - he’d destroy Nelson Piquet Jr, despite all his weight of racing heritage, the next - and it took a level of pretended self-assurance that I don’t think Lewis had, then, at all.

He’d proven himself all the way up, was still proving it. Licking his and McLaren’s wounds, meekly apologising after the end of the spygate scandal he’d had nothing to do with while Fernando pranced off from the smouldering remnants, there were plenty of people who were so pleased to see Lewis humbled.

He took the championship, instead. Which made a lot of people very angry, despite really it only being Felipe Massa who had a right to be. It was very underrated, in the British press; made more striking because Jenson Button’s win, the following season, really wasn’t and the ludicrous bar that Lewis would have to jump to prove himself was moved again.

Not just good enough for F1. Not just good enough to take on a two-time champion. Not just good enough to become a champion himself in his second season. Lewis was regarded as a sort of curious celebrity most people barely considered an athlete or British, in the press.

He’s never gone a single season without winning a race. Even in dog cars, biding his time for an opportunity. Olden times McLaren was a different, dysfunctional beast to the one Andreas Seidl has somehow steered back to success and especially the Dennis era was run with a pretty iron fist* so it wasn’t necessarily somewhere the drivers had much ability to steer developing the car and you can see how badly that affected them in the KERS and ERS era.

Comparatively, joining Mercedes, Lewis walked into an opportunity where instead of having to furiously fight for that, he could work on it as a project for the whole team. People really underestimate how hard he works, in terms of factory hours and how it wasn’t always the fastest car.

The team pitted him and Nico against each other to force the project forwards and that turned into a destructive mess, backfiring on them quite badly. It’s probably the worst call Mercedes have made, in their modern F1 existence, although a cynic would say: it worked.

Yes, they trod a line of near-implosion for years that was only steadied by Nico’s retirement but they became, unquestionably, the best, in the inter-garage arms race. Lewis didn’t necessarily become a better driver in the sense of having more brilliant race craft for it but things like qualifying laps, at which he is now without doubt the GOAT, became so crucial that he learned to take on more and more feedback from engineers without ever forgetting it.

When they tell them, on the radio, that their teammate is finding more speed through corner X and braking later - and they’ll show them more detailed telemetry - then Lewis can, like any driver, take that on and do it. But he can also make hundreds of micro-adjustments per lap without ever forgetting them or dropping one - again, they all can do it, sometimes, perfectly but he just doesn’t ever not.

Since 2016 he’s been able to grow as a driver without being in the pressure-cooker of mind games with his teammate and that shows, too. A more outward-looking, globally-focussed Lewis, a Lewis who’s more comfortable sharing elements of himself, treating himself less like an industrial espionage project.

(some irony, for a man who started his career amidst spy gate)

If Lewis was a white boy from a millionaire or billionaire family, his achievements in sporting terms would still be staggering. He’s neither of those things, so they’re placed on a different scale.

It is now, even for the most racist, the most close-minded alleged fan of the sport, impossible to deny that he has the records on paper. They can’t take away the seven titles and 94 wins, no matter how they try to minimise them. The bar that was constantly set higher has been met and exceeded and a driver who, for a lot of years, looked set to be a one-off champion whose brilliance could be more easily swept away as a footnote to diversity, has become the benchmark against whom other achievements can be measured.

That Lewis did that despite the odds against him? The racists won’t see that and sadly can and do try to deny it but that is a world-changing, sport-transforming moment that’s been a decade-and-a-half in the making, since F1 started looking achievable for him.

Lewis has nothing left to prove, so all that furious energy he’s used for years to get this will take other outlets - he still, after all, as everyone, has a lot to change. I am so excited to get to work in the sport during this era, to see what kind of transformative effects he’ll have, has already had. The work shouldn’t be on Lewis and mustn’t be on him alone but you do absolutely fucking love to see it getting done.

Anyway, I’m so proud of him. I’m so astounded by the skill and focus - the relentless pursuit that’s driven him all this time and that isn’t diminished at all by having got here. I truly believe Lewis is gonna carry on awhile yet and it’s fucking exciting just to think about what we’re going to witness this short-ass nerd kid who looked kind of sulky and defensive in press conferences for years do.

(and, of course, the first driver accused of being a social media poseur who didn’t pay enough attention to the sport. Plus ca change...)

*This is a really petty example but you had to wear a tie if you went to MTC, as a visiting journalist, in the beforetime.

#f1 asks

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ampleappleamble · 3 years

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—

Stubborn and haughty, it read. Dismissive of the soul sciences, as befitting his Aedyre heritage. Very rude and difficult to work with.

"Unbelievable," Aloth spat.

Upon leaving the sanitarium, the group had jointly decided that perhaps their trip to the expedition den could wait until the following day. However, there were still a few loose ends around town to tie up, and a few more hours of daylight in which to do it. Nevertheless– and despite his objections– Axa insisted that Aloth stay behind and rest at the inn, give his nerves a brief respite after all he'd been through that day while the rest of the party tended to business. And so now he sat in his room at the Charred Barrel, alone with his thoughts.

And with Bellasege's research notes.

How relaxing, he thought, glaring hatefully at the little stack of papers.

Most of the document was utterly unintelligible to Aloth, consisting of either overly technical animancy jargon or Vailian hen scratch, but what little she'd bothered to scribble down in Aedyran only asserted what he already knew– that this woman was a charlatan, a sensationalist hack more interested in reinforcing her own harebrained assumptions than in helping anyone. Least of all him, considering she evidently knew exactly what his fellow Aedyrans thought about animancy and the Awakened and yet she still intended to publish his full name and home province along with her ludicrous excuse of a diagnosis. All she was after, as he suspected most animancers were, was fortune and glory, and his reputation was apparently a sacrifice she was willing to make in the pursuit of that goal.

He had known since the instant the woman had started transcribing his very personal, very private memories that her notes would somehow have to find their way into his hands, so as soon as he'd seen his chance, he'd taken it– and as soon as he'd secured the notes and slipped them into his cloak, he'd seen Axa watching him. Not expecting to be caught in the act, he'd frozen in horror, silently pleading with the little woman to turn a blind eye– and he'd been pleasantly surprised when she'd done exactly that, glancing furtively at Bellasege and then back at him before turning her back on them both and heading for the door, the barest hint of disapproval in her eyes.

Part of him couldn't help but think that that was why she'd left him here by himself– because she was disappointed with him for betraying Bellasege's trust like that, promising her her long-sought prize only to rip it away immediately afterwards, and right under her nose to boot. But he reminded himself that Axa wasn't the kind of woman to practice punitive shunning like that, and if she'd had a problem with what he'd done, she'd have discussed it with him, probably even called him out right there in the animancer's office. After all, she had to know that it had been her who had truly helped him, not Bellasege. So what would she care if that fraud no longer had anything to show for her so-called efforts?

"'Be ever honest, forthright, and true'– fye, yer a fine auld piece o' work, laddie."

Iselmyr had been uncharacteristically quiet ever since her outburst in the sanitarium, her appetite for bickering seemingly sated until now, and Aloth jumped at her sudden resurgence in his mind. "Maybe you'd be perfectly fine with word of our condition becoming common knowledge back home," he retorted, recovering quickly, "but I would rather keep our private matters private. Besides, I didn't hear you objecting at the time."

He was expecting more of her usual sharp-tongued impudence, but was surprised when Iselmyr only scoffed softly in his mind instead. "Naught t' object tae. Fer once."

Iselmyr not sassing him was one thing, but Iselmyr actually agreeing with him was quite another. Stunned into silence, Aloth could only blink stupidly as Axa's words back at the sanitarium popped into his head– "Try it her way, let her in"– when there was a knock at the door, and, grateful for the interruption, he bid his visitor enter.

Axa stepped in slowly, carefully, only cracking the door just enough to allow her inside before shutting it behind her. "Hey," she smiled, rubbing at a fresh bruise on her forearm as she crossed the room. "Just got back. The others are downstairs having a late dinner. How're you holding up?"

"As well as can be expected," he replied breezily, shifting position to face her, frowning as he gestured to her wound. "Looks like you had an eventful evening despite my absence. What happened?"

"Oh, nothing serious," she sighed. "Helped an old man find and free the soul of his long-dead lover from a necromancer... gave an orlan who'd found himself on the wrong side of the law a second chance at life... exorcised a lighthouse by striking a deal with some pirates... The usual, you know." She grinned up at him briefly before thrusting her chin at the sheaf of paper in his hands, clearing her throat. "Still figuring out what you're gonna do with those, are you?"

"Oh, I know exactly what I'm going to do with them," he sneered, twisting the notes into a tight little tube in his hands. "I was just looking though them first for any information that might actually be useful to me. I'm sure it'll surprise you to learn I found nothing." He scoffed, rolling his eyes. "She didn't even get the color of my hair correct. You wouldn't happen to need a light for your pipe, would you?"

Axa laughed and declined politely, and so Aloth narrowed his eyes at the animancer's notes, gesturing with his free hand and whispering a few arcane power words, and in a few seconds the papers were ablaze, quickly crumbling into ash on the floor. Another gesticulation, a few more muttered words, and seconds later even the blackened remains were swept away into the aether, leaving nothing behind but a gray smudge on the rug.

"Well, that's that then." Axa sighed, shaking her head as she stared at the smokey spot. "Shame you two couldn't have helped each other more."

He looked away, crossing his arms over his chest. "More? She didn't help me at all. She pointed some contraption at me, humiliated me with prying questions, and when she couldn't even be bothered to put together her own conclusions, she relied on you to fill in the gaps. If anything, my destroying her ridiculous notes is evening the score."

"I know you've not much love for animancers, Aloth, but Bellasege really was trying. Whether it was to help you learn about yourself or to further her own knowledge of the soul sciences, I can't rightly say, but still." The orlan planted her fists on her hips, regarding him cautiously. "Personally, I think she was in over her head a bit. But how can we expect animancers to improve any or to advance the craft as a whole if we don't cooperate with them every now and again?"

"That would be fair enough if their methods were ever anything approaching sound," he retorted. "But you heard her. Black bile? My spleen? Drivel. Quackery. And publishing my identifying information like that is entirely irresponsible. What if someone from home were to see it? I'd be ruined." Color had crept into his face as he'd spoken, and he paused a moment to collect himself, but only succeeded in winding himself up further. "The only reason we figured out anything about my condition from that farce in her office is because you and I have half decent educations and a modicum of common sense between us. Imagine your average kith– Hel, your average Dyrwoodan going to a woman like Bellasege for a consultation. Big words and shiny gadgets are all most people need to believe just about anything a con artist like her can conjure up."

The little woman raised her eyebrow at him. "You do bring up some good points, I'll grant you that. Question is, what's to be done about it? As it is now, the only authority anyone seems to want to exert over the practice is to either let animancers– or anyone who calls themselves animancers– go totally unchecked, or to ban animancy completely. Is there to be no middle ground?"

"It's not our political leaders' jobs to understand animancy's deepest nuances so they can legislate it 'fairly'," he sighed, gently massaging his temple. "They've enough to contend with without having to study an experimental new branch of science, particularly in the Dyrwood."

"Then why not make animancers the ones who decide? Or, at least, give them the chance to advise those who do the deciding." Axa's eyes brightened as she argued, reminding Aloth uncomfortably of Kana. "A council of well-respected animancers, perhaps, selected from among those most trusted and revered in their fields."

Aloth's lip drew back in a grimace. "Let animancers legislate themselves? That's a recipe for disaster if ever I heard one."

She shrugged. "Just tossing out ideas. We'd all probably fare better that way than we do in the chaos we have now."

"I don't see how, but... seeing as it's coming from you, the idea might be worth considering." The words were out of his mouth before he really realized what he was saying, and he jolted slightly to hear himself say them.

She laughed. "Don't go around pinning all your trust on any one person or institution completely, Aloth. Not even me. You'll regret it, trust me."

He smiled at his feet, cheeks and ears growing warm. "As you say, Lady Mala. What's on the schedule for tomorrow, then? I'd join you and the others and discuss the matter over dinner, but if I'm being honest, I'm having a rather difficult time working up an appetite for yet more overboiled stew and watered wine."

Her demeanor changed in an instant, her casual slouch straightening, her face abruptly flipping from relaxed to sober. "Wyla, the justiciar from Crucible Keep that we talked to this morning, caught us on our way back here," she stated gravely. "Heritage Hill will be open to us tomorrow morning."

Aloth froze. "Heritage Hill," he repeated softly. "Did she... have anything to say about the conditions beyond the gates?"

She shook her head again, a haunted look drifting into her eyes. "Apparently, it's bedlam in there," she murmured. "Patrols go in, but they don't come out. The dead walk the streets."

"And the Leaden Key has something to do with it all," he finished for her.

"They do. They must. And we're going to find out what. Together," she answered, determination hardening her voice. She gave him a feisty grin, then, lifted her eyes to meet his, and the intensity of her gaze made him avert his. "So you'd better get some rest, then, if you're not going to eat."

He chuckled amicably. "As long as we don't get anymore unexpected midnight visitors, I'm sure I'll be well rested come morning."

She scoffed and swatted him lightly on the knee. "Well! I'll just bind my feet before turning in for the night, shall I?"

They laughed together for a moment, then, and Aloth felt something inside him finally loosening up and spreading throughout him, like an enormous flower made of light and air blooming in his chest. It made him feel warm and giddy and free in a way he never really had before, and the feeling persisted even after Axa had spun on her heel and sauntered across the room, smiling at him one last time before disappearing into the hallway beyond, pulling the door shut behind her. He didn't know exactly what it meant– he'd never felt it before, so how could he?– but he had his suspicions, none of which he was really prepared to get into tonight. So instead he got ready for bed, smile still stuck to his warm face as he changed into his nightclothes, washed his face, brushed his hair.

Was ye e'er plannin' on tellin' her it was yerself whit let her intae yer room last night? He could practically hear the cheeky little grin in Iselmyr's voice.

"No," he sighed, "because it was you who did that, not I. And you know it." He was still smiling. He couldn't seem to stop.

Fye, lad, whit diff'rence dae it make?

"All the difference in the world," he answered, and with a flick of his wrist, all the lights in the room simultaneously snuffed out.

—

#pillars of eternity #poe anthem infinitum #yes it's a joke about the wiki saying he has 'dark brown' hair #it's black though........?#also holy shit chapter 11 is finished #polishing and posting the full chapter soon!#thanks for reading ♡

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magnetar1 · 7 years

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A Cold Place

Fire is gone from his eyes: echoes of our past dwindled there. Distance we once could not live without, yet always finding our way back. Over centuries, even, if one could see it that way. Pillars along the road, stoically rendered.

Never once did I see him cry, but now he could not turn it off. I wanted to take the pillow from underneath his head to suffocate him with it, the thought making me instantly sick.

– My son. Where have you been all these years?

It was not a question I could answer easily. We came, he & I, from a time of no-time, constantly embroidered with the qualities of universal beings. Now, as I understood it, he had succumbed to his human side & did not love himself in the same way.

- - -

Where did I go? Away. Why did I come back? I don’t know. I suppose, like any orbiting thing, I’d eventually return to my spawning grounds: he who gave birth to me in the darkness of a cave on the edge of a raging ocean.

Finally, when the first civilizations came to be, we lived like God Kings . . .

Courageous fellows who opened the way, communicating directly with resonant masters. Transferring our knowledge to a rising populace who sacrificed themselves to our order. We who’d known chaos, intimately providing strength to those who had only lived once.

For millennia we thrived . . . Until time stopped. A serpent winding through Gulfs of Pathophas. Digging deeper into the earth as we climbed higher. Fueled by chaos concentrated in our souls, lusting after fallen stars . . .

Eve of Jamaz. Our pageantry grew. A feast for cannibals as streets filled with our willing guests, come to offer their flesh with adoring fealty. While sun bathed our court in warmth of an eternal summer & our kin flashed gold amidst its bloody gnashing. Vitality of nocturnes, absorbent of its craven masquerade.

So many lives we consumed in darkness of light. Spectral indifference cannibalized into being. Even as we watched cascading flesh pile at our feet, we knew the advent of its fortune. The gods, incarnated, suffered neither guilt or shame.

- - -

– Do you see what the world’s become?

The father looks at me distantly & with confusion. The tears have since dried, but the nervous emotion lingered in his face. He knew he was about to die.

I guess that’s why I came to see him, albeit unplanned. Dimensions we had crossed allowing us certain privileges – Even as I orbit, I am fractured. Logic distilled as a seed of destiny absorbent of that first ocean.

I saw it with my own eyes, but now is hard to conceive. All the mad struggles we had then, prior to our exalted union with outside forces. And now I could see he was returning to this state, before Illumined Ones came to wake us up.

It no longer mattered to him. The world, too, had become chaotic & was gnawing at his soul in the same way. Those masters, unfeeling, had let him become swallowed by it – Guilt of being human, suffering to live, fear of the unadorned majesty of the astral flame.

Having wallowed in it we should know, but I could tell he’d forgotten. Waiting at death’s door for the final push, enough strength to hump over the finish line. Maybe I should bring him something revitalizing to eat, to help him commemorate?

- - -

Cruel but sympathetic, he’d risen above the Host. Drawn into Olden ways, prior to magnetic storms. Delivered into the hands of masters who effaced the stain of apostasy. No longer a beginning or an end – Undifferentiated allusiveness . . .

Instead, savoring every morsel as if it was to be the last. I cut the flesh in tiny pieces, too, so he would not choke. And maybe that is the most inhuman thing I could have done: let him live.

A cheap motel in the burrough of another dirty city. That is how he chooses to live out his final days, if one were to call it living.

– But we’re immortal. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?

Drooling blood into the palm of my hand, he closes it into a fist. Even the blood has its limits, where the line ends & all astral communication is cut off. Suddenly, flesh tastes sour & there is no necromantic cure for bringing it back.

Everything he saw in the world came from them. Now, they’re moving on. To answer my question: it means nothing because it is nothingness itself. The last question either of us will have to ask if we are to understand each other.

- - -

For his sake, I tried to let go of the past. No longer Titans of a declining order, but ordinary men of a debilitating union.

Chaos intervening at the last moment –

Fire consumes, blinking out as quickly as it bursts.

Lashed by a serpent’s tail, passing through to another widening gulf.

Missing our ride from the start. Crepuscular twin; ordained, instead, by the snivelling traits of humans . . .

Watching as the shadow descends to envelop my father. Filled with weight of my mortality. Shaken savagely, I weep uncontrollably. A feeling that never left, lingering in a pit of darkness.

– Don’t leave me? Absolutely the weakest thing I could have said to him.

Sudden remorse: thinking on early days of he & I. Even though beggars, we were happy. Rarely did we starve, but I won’t lie about hard times. My father, susceptible to addiction, very quickly passed them on to me. Seeking a golden moment anyway we could. Eventually, our pursuit was no longer survival, but a prolonged migration into death.

– I need something more. One of the few clear days I remember. Street slumming, in search of a banquet, I prop my father up on a shoulder because he is weak.

When he says something stronger I know what that means. Skeleton groaning beneath his gossamer skin, the sanguinary lust in his eyes. Looking at him, now, I’m perplexed by how we ever made to this point . . .

Bags of liquid organs dripping into sewers. Coalescing brine of fermented souls. It was far from the ideal childhood. Still, when I held his papery hand in mine I knew there was beauty in it.

We rose above them anyway, I thought, as if harboring a reality in which we were the progenitors of a golden age. Mediators of the god-tongue informing the brightly shining aristocracy of those distant episodes.

I wanted to believe that we’d gone to war for ourselves. Not for greed, but to define the world as a living carapace. Elemental seed perfected to maintain a grid of order across the land, before religion came along to assassinate the terms.

- - -

Between pain & abrogation, I sift through the past no more. Ashes of its high storm roll toward indefinite thresholds of future catastrophes. While all grids meet here, in the basement of a hovel where the city sleeps & all wars are fought with the gross allegation that it will make them free.

Like I said, though, the time is now. The demonical heritage of disparaging races. Plebeian grid-lock held back by mysteries unordained: gods that vibrated inside the spinning wheel hovered over this world . . .

Instead, churches of today, each with some paranoiac disciple to pull the levers.

Even as the world fell into its most sociopathic stage, my father & I clung to the ideal we were better than that. Occasionally, taking a life to fight back the urge, we did not wish to disrupt the cosmic order – Conceiving of a universe little more than a dew drop, brimming with gods & demons occupying universes of their own.

In the palm of my hand where the brooding war ends. Life drawn back into itself as a vortex of possible outcomes is reduced to One. Calcination of a vision I had when I first lost my way. A golden beacon cuts through the fog. Flashes of mountainous waves whiplashed by frothing winds; deep, obsidian valleys formed out of misted vacancies, drawing down the current.

- - -

I walk away from the place where all the stars fell. Alone once more, the way it’s always been. Even though I mourn his death & years he gave me there is no mystical truth to be found; specters coiling in to reap their harvest.

While in the cave he had so many profound things to say & there was no complaint from the pulsing diadem. Center of a world I barely knew, yet so intimately aligned to the distance I felt from ALL things . . .

Not even the taste of human flesh could bring me back. Rites, imagined or not, developed or not, became the link I wished to erase. Somewhere along the way we got our demons & humans mixed up. Arbiters of Jamaz, brought through the shadow gate to reconcile the fates against us.

Were we even there, in that court, as the world repealed against us? Judging the mordancy of our lives as winter edged close. No more people of the sun, gone to let blood at their private altars. A wound that is not a wound closes as fear & dominance shut out any death affirming providence . . .

The nurturing wound that was their enemy is an old friend of mine. Licking the palm of my hand, not cannibalistic but reverent. Essence of a father, master, god; he who pulled me from the willowing current, rolling it back with his mind.

– I never left your side. Been right here all along, didn’t you know?

He does not answer, but sags gently on his tattered bed. No longer shining, but grey & humble; the silent mask he wore, inhuman & indifferent. A willingness to brood once more in the nullifying moment. Gases hissing out their defiance, articulating his most base thought: that we have been anchored here for far too long.

#CCParker #poetry #poetsontumblr #occult

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miniaturelovercollectionstuff · 7 years

Text

George Martin Burgess

George Martin Burgess and Friends Battled the Indians

Indians had stolen several horses from Pine Valley and neighboring areas. Although George did not have any of his horses stolen, he quickly gathered a group of men and searched out the horses and the Indians. The story goes as follows:

“The day after Christmas three Indians were seen hanging about the town. Two of them were tall and slender and had strayed in from the Navajo Reservation out across the Colorado River. The other, who was a local Indian, was short and fat and had some of his front teeth missing. Most of the time the settlers were on the lookout for raiding Navajos, but this day they attracted little attention because they were accompanied by a local Indian who was a friend of the whites or at least pretended to be. They were hanging around George Burgess's store doing a little trading. The youngsters of the village were standing curiously by watching the dusky fellows trade bags of bright blue Mexican beans for tobacco and yards of bright calico. The children had never seen beans like these before and were very much interested, but were still frightened enough of the Indians to keep in the background and not get too close.

As the day began to draw to a close, the Indians mounted their scrawny ponies and rode away toward the old trail that crossed the lower end of the valley and made its way out over the south mountains. As hay was scarce in the valley at that time, most of the town grazed their horses out in the Mohoganies and went after an animal whenever they needed one to work. The local Indian, who pretended to be friendly to the whites, had really come to lead the Navajos over the trail and show them where Pine Valley ranged their horses. They had come into town on the pretense of trading but really to learn the geography of the country, learn where the horses were, and how they could best make their escape.

The next morning "Cy" Hancock, a young man of 27 and a resident of the valley, saddled up his little mare Nell and rode out to the Mohoganies in search of one of his work horses that he needed. Joe Earl, who had planned to go with Cy, wasn't ready when Cy called so he went alone. He reached Mohogany Flat and was riding among the boulders, and a heavy growth of trees when he suddenly spied three Indians camped down in the hollow eating their breakfast. Thinking they were friendly Indians, he called to them. At first they ignored him and pretended not to hear and went on eating. When he called again, they left their breakfast, laboriously climbed up out of the hollow, and came toward him. They were on foot, but chose a position where it would make his escape impossible on his tenderfooted mare. He began talking and they made signs of friendship, and made him understand they wanted tobacco. He showed them that he had none. One of the Indians, under pretense of looking for tobacco, searched him, and upon discovering that he was unarmed became insolent. One of the Navajos took hold of his bridle while the other stood in the trail which led toward town. The local Indian knelt with an arrow fitted in his bow. Cy recognized the local Indian and thinking him friendly, didn't sense at first that there was anything wrong. Finally the Indian, who appeared to be spokesman, gave him to understand that they intended to kill him, steal his horse, and cover his body with dry leaves. They thought he was pursuing them to recover the horses they had stolen, and had hidden down in the hollow.

Finally the local Indian drew his bow and arrow ready to shoot, but Cy shouted to him to stop and he lowered his weapon. The Indian holding the bridle reins clutched them tighter and the local Indian again drew his bow, this time to the head of the arrow. As the bowstring twanged, Cy threw himself over backwards turning a somersault over the hindquarters of his horse and lit on the ground in a sitting position, and the arrow passed over him. Quickly scrambling to his feet, Cy dashed into the underbrush, and made for town as fast as he could go, the Indians in hot pursuit, sending a shower of arrows after him. He had on a long tailed coat, the tails streamed out behind him and were soon filled with arrows. One arrow went through his beard and stuck in the collar of his shirt, another passed through his arm just above the wrist. A full mile this race continued with the Indians in hot pursuit. The arrow shaft, sticking in Cy's arm, caught on the underbrush and hampered his flight, so he broke it off, leaving the arrowhead still in his arm. As they approached the lower end of the valley, they could see a wagon and ox team coming up the road so the Indians gave up the chase.

Exhausted from the chase and suffering from the wound, Cy reached the road just below the Lower Fields. There he met Old Man Coachee coming in from the Gulch with a load of posts. Upon hearing Cy's story, Coachee laid his birch whip upon the backs of his oxen and sent them tearing into town with the wounded man, and shouting to all he passed that there was an Indian raid…

At this period there was no telegraph or telephone in town, so the quickest way to send a message was by a man on a swift horse. Within fifteen minutes after the alarm had been spread a mount of minute men were under way going out to the Mahoganies after the Indians under the leadership of George Burgess. Rance Allphin saddled his speckled mare, and soon disappeared in a cloud of dust out over Pine Valley ridge headed for St. George. He was going out to notify the militia there and warn other settlers that the Indians were out stealing horses.

Cy reported that he had seen a band of horses gathered near the Indians's campfire. George Burgess and his men followed the Indians's tracks until they found a small band of horses. Burgess and his men found only three of the horses, in the bunch, belonged to Pine Valley. The rest had been stolen from other settlements. One of the three was a large gray horse belonging to James B. Bracken Sr., one was a colt, and the other was Cy's black mare Nell. Down in the bottom of the hollow, they found the remains of an old gray mare that belonged to Erastus Snow. The Indians had killed and breakfasted on her that morning. Upon a flat higher up they found an old mare of Sylvester Earl's filled full of arrows. The Earl mare was always used for the bell mare in the Pine Valley herd because she was so wild that no one could get up to her but Brother Earl. Evidently the Indians had tried to get up to her and couldn't, and so to prevent the whites from tracking them by the sound of the bell they had finally filled her with arrows. This flat, where they found her, has been called ‘Earl Flat’ from that day to this.”

Apparently George and his men decided to wait for the militia to help with the situation. Two detachments with a combined total of 80 men were sent to the area. They located the Indian camp and attacked. Seven Indians and three white men were killed in the ensuing battle.

Elizabeth Beckstrom and Bessie Snow, “Oh Ye Mountains High, History of Pine Valley, Utah,” St. George Heritage Press, 1980.

#George Martin Burgess #Sylvester Earl #Erastus Snow #James B. Bracken Sr.#Rance Allphin #Cy Hancock #Indians #Battle #Killed #Story #War #Horses

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thelifeofascholar-blog1 · 7 years

Text

In Which the Scholar Homecomes

(Artwork: Composition in White and Blue, or Down the Drain. Ink on Paper. © The Scholar, August 2017)

There stood I, dear readers, ‘pon the walkway of the home of my infancy. Sad was I to have to behold it once again. The paint, a vague and indeterminate brown, seemed everywhere on the verge of sloughing off in one massive peel, and had been in such a state all of my conscious life. A pair of plastic chairs rested on the porch, which (between their accumulation of rain muck and their utter lack of regard for even the more basic principles of aesthetic design) offered a less inviting sitting place than the ground they occupied. I wanted not to proceed into this terrible breach, but I was a man on a vital mission. The very well-being of the woman that bore me depended on it.

I should mention without further delay that my moronic sister Doris’s car was parked at the curb. This was a most unwelcome sight. I have made it no secret in my past writings that Doris and her golem of a husband signify all the worst characteristics of those who have utterly abandoned their high culture and heritage in favor of a life of sloth and manual labor. What business did they have terrorizing my mother in her fragile mental state? I had to put an end to their machinations before any more lasting damage could be done. I took some solace in the fact that they had likely brought along little Nathaniel, their son and my ward, so that he could see up close how a man of dignity and class handles a crisis. I dusted bus floor grime off of my torn blazer and proceeded up the walk.

It was not without trepidation that I proceeded. Mind you I am a courageous individual (indeed, I braved the bus voyage here) but to cross that threshold was to risk more than just a physical return to my roots of squalor. How could I know with certainty that I would not be infected by the bug of triteness that has held sway upon my entire family? If I was to be the beacon of hope and fortitude that dear Mother so sorely needed (and desired, whether she knew it) I would have to exercise that fortitude now more than ever.

I brought one foot up upon the first stair of the porch and paused, battling my reticence to take another step. Stepping back down, I paused and took a breath. I attempted again, and again was paralyzed on contacting the porch. Withdrawing again, I reasoned perhaps I ought to try with the other foot. Still nothing. Some fortitude I was displaying at this moment, unable even to take the first step! I supposed I simply had to bear it as though removing the metaphorical banded aid (unfortunately, I have little experience in that regard, owing to the fact that I generally leave the dressing of wounds to my manservant Chip). I stepped back again, took a mighty heave of air, and stepped forward once more, only to be blocked again by my own discernment. With one foot on the first step and one foot off, I pondered my predicament.

The front door opened. In the exchanges that I quote hereafter, I have omitted my name, for it suffices that you know me simply as the Scholar. “Oh, it’s just C------,” I heard in the dreadful voice of Doris. Drat her hide. How was I supposed to help restore my mother’s sense and sanity with such senselessness as Doris’s in close vicinity?

She called to me. “What are you doing out there?”

I responded with due indignation, “That’s my business, and mine alone!”

“Were you going to come inside?”

“As soon as I am finished here!” I could not let on to that harpy of a sister that I had suffered a lapse of mental resilience. She’d never let me hear the end of it!

“Whatever,” she dismissed, reentering the home.

My exasperation with Doris gave me unnatural strength, such that only a minute or two more passed before I succeeded to lift the other foot and arrive upon the porch. I stepped forth and tried not to think too intently on the peculiar shade of nauseating brown that ornamented the front door as I took its knob in hand, twisted, and entered.

Even before my eyes adjusted to the murky, dim interior, the smell wafted into my nostrils, recalling the care-free and enlightenment-free times of my youth. I shuddered. It was the stale waft of old coffee and prosaic existence.

The aspect of the room said no less about my mother’s stagnant reality. Quaintly decorated, but all covered in a sheen of dust, nothing touched for there was nothing worth touching. Against one wall stood an ornate, though bawdily carved, hutch displaying a set of grotesquely saccharine porcelain figurines passed down from my paternal grandmother. Why these were on display rather than hidden away in the attic (or better, the landfill) I cannot hazard a guess, but that the poor taste of the man of the house had supplanted my mother’s own. Against the opposite wall sat a divan, emblazoned with garish floral patterns indicative of a less stylistically adept period in American upholstery practices. I knew the divan well from my youth, I am sorry to say.

Atop one of the couch cushions sat a workman’s bag, protruding from which I saw some sort of tool, perhaps a monkey’s wrench. Whatever sort of simian apparatus it was, though, to me it served a sole, dire purpose. It meant that my father was not presently at work.

At once I was on edge. At any moment he could emerge from some forgotten room or closet and force me to participate in a brain-liquefying conversation about hordes overpaid manchildren and their sporting matches. I abandoned my designs on doffing my traveling coat, though the house thermostat seemed to be maintained at a hellish seventy-five, for I had no desire to try my fortune with the coat closet.

He did not, however, emerge from that closet nor from any other space. Instead, my mother, my dear, tragic, socially downtrodden mother, entered the foyer from the neighboring parlor (what my father always called a “den”, as though we were a brood of cave-dwelling bears; He may as well have called it a “lair”). In any case, my mother emerged from the lair and addressed me.

“[redacted]!” she blurted. “I wish you would have called first. I could have made you dinner.”

“Mother,” I responded, “I had to come at once upon receipt of your missive. There was no time to call.”

“Oh, you mean my letter? I was just saying hello. You didn’t need to come all the way down here for that.”

A likely story. I would have to dig deeper to get to the meat of my mother’s agenda. It was odd, though, that she appeared not as the mentally exhausted pale and frail being I had expected. Rather, she was chipper, and coherent, and gave no indication of illness. I should have been overjoyed at this, but the perplexity of the situation outweighed any delight I might have experienced.

She continued, “but now that you’re here, why don’t you come into the den? The whole family’s here!”

Why? Why did everyone happen to be visiting on this very day that I decided to arrive? Why would they all be in the same space, tolerating each other? Something stank about this visit. There was a pernicious haze permeating the whole affair. I could not but assent to the wishes of she who brought me into the world, however, so I proceeded, though not without substantial caution.

Entering the parlor, the same cacophony met my senses that had traumatized me for years. The television was blaring nonsense about padded men hitting each other for a ball in the corner, and my father, in his unkempt nature, slouched in an armchair facing it with a fermented beverage in hand. Doris and whats-his-name, my imbecile brother-in-law, rested on a couch together, opposite my father, emulating his dishevelment. On the floor in front of them was their son, my nephew and ward Nathaniel. He held in hand some sort of portable video gaming device. I found his indifference to my entry vexing.

“Look who’s here!” my mother exclaimed. I cringed as my father noticed me.

“C------,” he bellowed, “Come over and give your dad a hug!”

“Yes, sir,” I replied in filial submission. I inched toward him and he made great strides to close the gap. I feared he would crush me in his meaty paws as he enveloped me, but thankfully I made it out of the embrace with my spine and my ascot intact.

“I trust you are well?” I asked. Let no one say I have no respect for decorum.

He confirmed that he was, and asked how were things at the university. Of course, I had not informed my relations of my unceremonious entry into my current sabbatical. “Quite, quite,” I responded.

Note that through all of this, while I played the model son, I was nevertheless as on edge as ever. What did they want with me? Why had they gathered? Why had mother written the letter that brought me here? An inkling of unwelcome understanding crept into my mind.

It was becoming clearer and clearer as the evidence presented itself. That my mother would lure me here with a cryptic letter; that my sister’s family would happen to also be present; that everyone would be seated in a common space with no regard for the necessities of silence or solitude; that my ward would not spring to his feet to greet his favored mentor; these all pointed to the fact that all had gathered here for a somber purpose.

All that I needed for confirmation was to hear one question:

“Why don’t you sit down?” my father asked.

There it was.

“Nay!” I cried. “You will not lure me with honey into this trap!”

My mother began to protest, but I would not permit her to continue, for I felt supremely betrayed at her orchestration of this.

“I know an intervention when I see one! You all have watched my academic pursuits in jealousy for far too long and now you wish to put a stop to them!”

My father feigned confusion as Doris looked on in disdain. Nathaniel continued at his game. I turned to my mother, whose face echoed that of my father.

“And you should be especially ashamed of appealing to my tender nature to fool me.”

I was done, both with the people and the place. I turned to leave, but was caught by surprise by Mr. Tate.

Mr. Tate, I have neglected to inform you, is a cat. He was my cat in a former time, brought into my life as a kitten, introduced by my mother in an endeavor to raise my low spirits, for I went through a period of great dejection and loneliness in secondary school as I came to terms with the fact that so much of the world is below me, and so little is worth my attention. I never much cared for Mr. Tate, but it was my onus to name the creature. Young and foolish me opted to call him after the Tate Gallery of London, an art institution I had longed to visit, a good deal of time before I discovered how little interest I had in the banal collections therein.

While I left my childhood home behind to pursue greatness, Mr. Tate remained behind to lick his own nether regions, a fitting metaphor for the rest of my family. As I advanced in status, so did Mr. Tate in years, until the present, in which Mr. Tate has now become a raspy, decrepit old feline, whose gravelly mewling recalls thoughts of death and decay.

It just so happened that Mr. Tate had thought it appropriate to repose himself upon the rug that covered the parlor entryway, just as I had come to realize my family’s malicious intent. Perhaps it was all part of my mother’s plan; perhaps she had lured Mr. Tate there with some fancy feline feast, for he was instrumental in what followed.

I turned to storm off, triumphant in my rebuke of the turncoats, and my foot caught against Mr. Tate. A great sandpaper wail tore through the household as Mr. Tate felt the kick of my wingtip. He darted away, just in time to avoid the rest of my frame coming down on top of him. I felt a great pain shoot through my ankle as I collided with the floor, the second time I had done so that day, and then blacked out, also the second time I had done so that day.

I regained my wits in a hospital bed, my foot set in plaster and my mind addled with some sort of opiate concoction. My ankle had twisted and cracked in the fall, and I would have to remain in a cast for the next several weeks.

Unable to afford an electric wheelchair and unwilling to abase myself with a manually-propelled one, I was at the mercy of my mother at that point. Returning to the home, I demanded to be taken directly to my room and I have only spoken since with my mother, avoiding the ridiculing glares of the rest of them. Mother claims that the family had no designs on intervention, but of course I have already seen that I cannot trust her. She brings me food and draws my bath, and that is the extent of our interactions. I have whiled away the time writing these accounts, and intermittently relaxing in a nice Epsom salt bath, and I must admit that I have grown quite fond having my mother serve me day in and day out. Perhaps I shall stay a while.

I do wonder, though, how Chip is doing.

#home #beer #football #family #game boy #cat #Tate Gallery #broken ankle #mother #father #injury

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greggory--lee · 7 years

Text

Fatherhood: A Famine of Fatherhood, Processing Pain To Become Powerful

Greater Relationship, Greater Impact

When I attended Pastor Benny Hinn’s 13 week Timothy Class for youth desirous of entering the ministry in 1991 while attending Orlando Christian Center, at the end of the training I received a prophetic word from Pastor Benny.

Pastor Benny anointed me with oil and prophesied: “You will know the heart of God the Father and out of that will flow your ministry. You will have an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit.”

Some fifteen years later, I am just now beginning to understand that word and the principle of fatherhood in the kingdom of God.

The apostle Paul said we have ten thousand instructors in Christ, but not many fathers (1 Corinthians 4:15). Fathers are accessible, touchable, relatable and there for you when you need them. Fathers give you more than a sermon or word of instruction. They give you their lives.

“As apostles of Christ we could have been a burden to you, but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.” (1 Thessalonians 2:7-8)

There are not many spiritual fathers in the American Church who will train, empower and send the young out to do the work of the ministry. Pastor Roberts Liardon is one man who isn’t afraid to empower the younger generation.

I received outstanding Biblical training at Spirit Life Bible College, after which I have ministered in 40 countries and 6 continents. I served with Operation 500 throughout south-east Asia for the first two years this missionary labor force was sent forth to the “uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Pastor Cesar Castellanos has been used greatly by God to mobilize the body of Christ, train Pastors in proper discipleship, and implement church growth strategies that reap results.

The model of mentoring that Jesus used with His twelve disciples needs to be restored and brought back to the Church in our era. The day of the one- man show is over. The day of men of God lording themselves over God’s heritage is also over. The day of combining generational strength, the cooperation of the pulpit and the pew, the family of faith and the army of the Lord has fully come!

As Dr. Bill Hamon has written in his books on the apostolic and prophetic, we are in a day of the saints. Every member of the body of Christ must supply his or her part. We all have something to give and contribute. None of us are as strong as all of us. When we come together, it is better for all of us. Breakthrough believers are needed throughout the earth to reap the end-time harvest of souls. The church of the living God is the net by which to keep the souls that shall come in during these last days.

Unless we become as children we will not enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 18). Unless we get off our our priestly pedestals and consider the young, God will remove us and replace us with shepherds with His heart.

The younger generation is crying out to God like the prophet Isaiah of old saying, “Here am I, send me!” but there is nobody to give them the time of day, proper training and empowerment. Thus they are dying within, not being built up in Christ, nor released into their calling. Meanwhile this adulterous and perverse generation goes to hell in a handbasket. Only this generation can reach this generation. It is imperative therefore that the aged train and empower the younger.

When I bless small children, it does something for my heart. As I ministered in New Mexico and witnessed the Spirit of God touching small children, it melted me within. Small children testified of the touch of the Holy Spirit upon them and their families. All were amazed and captivated by the gentleness and greatness of our God.

Kids are people too! The young lions within the church count too! Unless we awake and begin to train them, they will get bored and walk away from God. What a tragedy to see gifted young people leave the church because they and their abilities were not embraced, celebrated and utilized for the cause of Christ.

Something that we need from our spiritual fathers is transparency. We need to see how they process their pain. Most often we get to see our leaders on the mountain top when they are powerful and victorious. Thank God for that! Yet in order for us to truly be able to relate to them and be victorious ourselves, we must see the total picture of their lives.

Elijah wasn’t much of a people person. His protege Elisha never got to see him when he was down. When Elijah felt defeated he ran away and hid all alone (1Kings 19:4). Elijah was a wounded warrior. Sadly by denying Elisha true relationship, Elisha too had wounds, only of a different sort. Elisha had a father wound.

Our God is the Lord of the hills and the valleys (Deuteromony 11:11). We therefore need leaders who can teach us how to get through life’s lows, how to rise above personal pain and process it with dignity. Denial doesn’t do away with our problems, neither does it develop our spiritual sons and daughters.

I greatly appreciated my natural fathers’s humility to apologize when he had lost his temper, acted out of character and made a mistake in any way. This taught me it is OK to err. It taught me to “buy the truth” (Proverbs 23:23) and not fear falling short as we grow in grace to live up to our values and beliefs. Progression is a personal process, as is transformation which doesn’t happen overnight.

Pastor Benny told us in class, “Never trust a man that cannot use his eraser.” That is to say if a person cannot admit to wrong doing and their own mistakes, they cannot be trusted. Every pencil comes with an eraser for a reason. We all are prone to err, as none of us are perfect.

You are not your performance! We need fathers who can love unconditionally, bear the reproach of their sons and not abandon them when they are need them most. Sadly many spiritual leaders only afford relationship to those who have some contribution to make to their ministry be it ministerially or monetarily, after which they remove themselves. This is not the heart of God, neither is it true fathering.

You know who your friends and spiritual fathers are because when everybody else walks away from you in your time of crisis, they draw near and support you. They love you unconditionally and support you wholeheartedly.

When warriors are wounded, exhausted, tired, weary in well doing and confused this is not the time to abandon them. We need fathers with experience of years, who are battle worn, wise hearted and understand what it is like to have been there who can relate. Such men can speak into our lives from a deep place of strength and inner fortitude. Because they can feel, their words can heal.

We need men who can walk with us, talk with us, see eye to eye, and help us through our times of turmoil. As sons and daughters, we must not let up in our pursuit of the aged who can help us get over the ditches life brings us. We need the fatherly impartation, wealth of wisdom and divine direction that comes from fathers in the faith. Elisha knew this and thus he received a double portion from Elijah by which he was strengthened to fulfill his calling (2 Kings 2).

Source by Paul Davis

Source: http://bitcoinswiz.com/fatherhood-a-famine-of-fatherhood-processing-pain-to-become-powerful/

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