'Contemporaries I'

The Sufis say that 'our path is a lonely one'. And of course far am I from the Sufis and their path. All I can can claim is that little glimmers of light from their words and deeds that flicker across a dark, and desolate horizon.
But just as the path is lonely and arduous, 'congenial fellow beings', appear at difficult hours, at lonesome hours, at cheerless hours, and they offer us comfort and solace, they give us hope and inspiration, they shed a little light and remind us of what a joy it is to be human and to 'know' what such humanity entails, its potential to liberate, to reveal, to inspire.
For this spirit, for this camaraderie, for this brotherhood of humanity, for those generous and beautiful beings I dedicate the next coming few posts.
They will be part of a series that I will call, 'contemporaries'.
And they are pieces by people who inspired me, people who moved me, people who I had the utmost fortune of encountering and crossing paths with, people who are and were a witness. In gratitude, I invited them to speak and to shed the light so other can enjoy their warmth and sheer luminosity.
And they very generously agreed to share some of their light.

My first outstanding guest, is a WASPie princess who would put the Vanderbilts to shame. There is nothing in her bearings that could betray anything but royalty. God spared nothing when He created this one. Neither intelligence, nor wit, neither talent nor beauty.  It would be futile to number her perfections.
But it is not her bearing or noble disposition that I celebrate.
It is the sheer brilliance of every word that she writes. She illuminates her prose with electric intensity and terrible passion, there is nothing mundane or cliché about what she expresses. This is prose worthy of Kerouac or Paul Auster.
She outdid me in many ways than I care to think of, and I believe it is very selfish of me and of her not to share this tremendous talent with others.
Without further ado, the ingenious Ms. CTG:

"A complete and utter mess I am. An incoherent cornucopia of delirious thought. Thoughts, ideas, terms of understanding and self-understanding travel recklessly through my mind’s neuro-pathways and all too often end up in unsightly pile-ups or careening into hidden corners. I’m not surprised I frustrate, confuse and maybe even scare you but I too am frustrated by you. I too resent you, whoever ‘you’ may be. I resent my definition through, with and against you. I hate how I’m trapped in my hatred of your terms but am still unable to speak of such hatred except in ‘your’ terms. There are so many of you ‘yous’ out there and you’re all a mess too. Explain yourselves, your messes. Who dropped that there? Who draped that here? Who spilled that over there? Who made that mess?

I, for some reason, must explain my mess. As a victim of an easily communicable, tenacious illness my declarations and proclamations of self and/or thoughts must be written off as a product of the symptoms of that affliction. We cannot just be, we’re loitering, trespassing. We’ve been westernized and might as well have been euthanized. We are card-carrying members of the Cairene homo brigade, one of the many bastardized breeds of gay/queer that litter the geocultural-scape. We are mutts of such questionable pedigree that we strike fear in the hearts of other rarefied beings for what we might do/be. We’re only one of the many mutts running around unattended however.

Despite our less-than-salubrious heritage they still generously offer their aid and direction. We need an education in the etiquette of civilized existence and that’s just what they, oh-so-selflessly, offer. Their faults, flaws and atrocities are erased; much like the smashed up glass tabletops in hiding underneath the fragrant crispness of freshly laundered and ironed tablecloths. One of our tutors was on television just a couple of days ago, delivering the schooling we so desperately need. Some cameras flashed while others simply broadcast her wise words to the world. Dignity and freedom, those words were sapped of all their power, grace and sanctity as she uttered them. She, the poor imitation of an aspiring actress on the first day of acting class, twisted and contorted her face as she spoke of horrors unimaginable to her and her peers, their humanity preserved by the beauty of outsourcing the horrific. She attempted to re-write history as she spoke of their supposed support for seasonal change in our part of the world. Those attempts were more like the colorful scribbling of an infant given their first set of crayons, only less endearing. Despite her ineloquence and less-than-graceful delivery her message came across loud and clear; no matter what happens, to remain civilized, we must cling on to the pretense of values in rhetoric."