human_credentials wingedSerpent those bits and pieces of what it means to have some sense of place, meaning and purpose i am not a universe of perpetual motion, not a fission chamber changing expanding and extending half-lives in the shattering of electron rings i don't know what i am nor why i am only that sometimes i like to be, and sometimes i wish i could stop being and some days i feel like less of a person or even none at all, as if my right to be counted as such was revoked like a criminal's passport at a guarded border no_exit_visa 031015 ... Death of a Rose We though we had snail mailed you those last week. We will check our records and routing lists. Please stay on the line, so we can fry your brain cells with some monkey organ music, while we search our files. We do appreciate your patience and careful loathing. Please stay on the line, we are out back having a cigarette. WE DO NOT LIKE YOU. 031018 ... Dafremen Do you care? Can you put your concerns and your ego and your need to be seen in this light or another aside long enough to heal the hurt of some person's condition? Do you have any human credentials? 031018 ... wingedSerpent thanks Daf, but i look at it this way as i get older and more thick skinned (to go with my thick skull) if it was intended as such, a hard word from a distant stranger lacks the sting of a strike from closer quarters, and even those, with some measure of inner detachment are survivable 031019 ... oldephebe sage words wingedSerpent ... 031019 ... Dafremen Well, that takes care of the YOU part of the equation. What of those of whom your surroundings are composed? Close quarters or in the street? What of their inevitable ability to affect the course of your life? I nurture hope, and therefore refuse to believe at this time that you really mean that those around you do not matter and that caring for them is a not in your interest. That would be the sentiment of a fool who knows NOTHING of the nature of his own composition, and you don't seem to be a fool. Understand that, you..your hopes and dreams...your wishes, habits and thoughts are as much a product of your environment as we probably all wish they were not. You don't really believe that a stranger's pain has no bearing on your existence do you? You aren't really saying that are you? And if you aren't, then again..what are your human credentials? Self interest and self preservation are animal in nature, not human. They are a throwback to the origins of our species. 031019 ... oldephebe well i can't speak for wS or for anyone else ..i identified wS's words as being entombed in the acrued apathy of the age..the heart encrust in amber under layer upon layer of nihilistic, or the detachment one learns to step into ..the sheild that buffets back the errant arrows of another's inhumanity..okay not really errant because when another hurls arrows at anothers throat it is an act of conscious malice..but still though a manifestation of unenlightened humanity careening on an errant course.. maybe that's not what he was saying but that's what i choose to see..still though your words resonate with (as mine do at times) an unrealistic aspiration that the human heart steeped in the rot of our frailties aspire to altruism .. i agree with most of what you say daf but i do not think mankind as a whole is evolved enough to elevate the heart above the ego, or the intellect .. not yet .. maybe the matriarchal wisdom that governed ancient communal systems needs to be rediscovered .. unwound from its inert form from the helix of our atavistic selves .. you caught me in a real dour mood daf..later, 031019 ... grendel boiled down to the reader's digest condense version: hard sentiments from those who are relative strangers are much easier to shake off than from those who are not distance in the figurative sense, though the literal and the figurative are becoming/have beome something of a blurry line 031020 ... celestias shadow why are we never tested, never asked to supply credentials for that most important task- simply being alive? nobody asked us if we wanted to be here, if we even deserved to be here. how do we know we're the right ones for the job? 031025 ... wingedSerpent there are those who have tried to convince me that the search for external validation is a fools errand and that it's better to look within. their self-validation seems to dodge hard, deep scrutiny and makes them insufferable... i am insufferable because i see and am aware that, over time, i have become a net_negative in my own equation 111004 ... thy my human credentials: i'm human. 111004 what's it to you? who go blather from