Socrates

and bending Rocks

De: Richard L Muehlberg

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Short Stories
Socrates
The elder wants me to learn. AFRICA is a space as big as several galaxies. It’s a planet unto itself. It’s a world with no boundaries. AFRICA is space itself. You go into AFRICA, and never come out. It’s the rabbit hole. It’s Alice in Wonderland. Accept what you see. Change what you can. Don’t, what you can’t. Respect AFRICA. It’s everything humanity came from, and everything humanity is going to, it’s the ALPHA, and the OMEGA. You can’t count the wars going on here because the wars keep changing. America sends its Special Forces here to train good-guys to fight bad-guys. Good luck. Your head needs to be screwed on tight or it will come off, but not so tight that you can’t look in front of you, to the sides, and behind you at the same time. And above you. And below you. And into the past. And into the future. If love is unconditional, and you’re a lover, then come to fight in Africa, because an “unconditional-mental-outlook” is necessary to stay alive here. What’s Africa like? Africa is everywhere. Being a Special Forces soldier can be weird. When you’re Stateside, things have their own weirdness but at least you're inside the United States. When you're "out", wherever "out" is, you get a whole kind of free-floating weirdness. That gravity-free weirdness can do things to your mind. Here are two stories to attempt to describe to you what I mean. The first story is about the beauty of Africa, about the people and the cosmically-wonderful things you can experience in a mind-state all their own. The second story is about the shit that can happen to a Special Forces soldier who is "out" there, where temptation waits like a snake that wants to crawl into your ear and do snake-things with your moral compass. You don't get to be a Special Forces soldier unless you are special, unless you have the physical but primarily the mental fortitude to do what we do and still come out whole. No matter, we go places where the human spirit can be sorely fucked with, even by things reaching out from Stateside. (Excerpted from "bending Rocks"...) "One of my guys showed me great respect. He knows I love Africa, in my own way. He knows I like to learn. He offered to take me to his village, and meet one of the elders who would be willing to talk with me. It would be just the three of us, a crappy idea in terms of security but a good idea in terms of intimacy. I’ll call my guy “Socrates”. So we end up, the three of us, sitting cross-legged behind the elder’s hut. We’re behind the hut so we don’t attract attention. We need to focus. The elder, through Socrates, says we should each stare at a rock about three meters in front of us. A rock. The elder doesn’t say what I should be looking for, but I guess it’s some kind of African-Zen meditation. Why else would I stare at a rock? Then the elder asks me, through Socrates, “Why are you staring at this rock?” I want to answer, “Because you asked me to stare at the rock.” But that would be disrespectful, and stupid. The elder wants me to learn."