Wednesday, January 25, 2006

The Fall of JAMES CORNET

A work only slightly in progress...

WHEN HE AWOKE for the second time, his nose burnt from the stenches in the air, reeking and curdling with odors he had never before smelled. The walls that formed the room were like melted snow and trees, brown and a pale white; blindingly dense lights encased in invisible orbs hung from the top and sides of the room, some neatly nestled within globes of blown-glass and others simply stuck to the ends of metal rods with a rigid sheet pulled over them, pushing the light of the orbs down and outward.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 8:51 AM | | Comments

Saturday, January 21, 2006

The Overman goes to Work


AS YOU CAN SEE, I am now--as of today--an employee of Ruby Tuesday in Smithfield, North Carolina, where I will fill the position of server. My brother, not near the overman as I am, is a bartender at this same store....this could very well cause problems that any intuitive reader can see.

I spent seven hours there today, from 0900 to 1600, most of which was spent sitting in a wooden stool with a low back watching video after useless video (and by video I really mean a VHS) on a small screen suspended by metal bars from the ceiling; it was while watching this that I realized how much smaller of a scale Ruby Tuesday works in lateral comparison to, oh say, Outback Steakhouse, with their training DVD's on High-Definition televisions the size of walls. There were three others with me, so I was not alone in the physical sense, but I assure you we did not speak, so....

There was a young girl, immature and with too much eye shadow on, training to become an SPG (a.k.a. the Smiling People Greeter, a.k.a. the host/hostess); a blond southern boy whom I believe I had met somewhere before, and who laughed at my jokes when I told them, training to work in Take-Out; last there was a very young looking mexican boy who wore his dress shirt unbuttoned just a little too much so that you could see his wife-beater, his sleevs rolled up, training to become, just like me, a server. A very good looking young guy, I imagined he would do well with just that.
I only began noticing these things as we sat along a round table, with Fred the Manager on the opposite end of me, the girl to my right and the mexican boy, Jose, to my left, followed by the other boy. As we sat there and Fred the Manager read from our book of papers an inch thick the restaurant began to fill up with customers as the doors opened, and there I was for all to see--a common trainee wearing what I'm told and doing what is asked. I imagined, to soothe my pains, that people would think I were there to inspect Fred the Manager's training abilities. That perhaps I made the big money, that I was important, and that anybody who's anybody could see that was true when they looked at me and who I was.
I endulged in the fantasy for the longest time.
Eventually, I like to think Fred thought I had a pleasant speaking voice, for he asked me to read so that he didn't have to...and I did, pausing only to let him add. This, of course, did not help my visions of vanity.
Eventually, we were told to follow around somebody in our field. I was assigned to a ver impersonal woman who I knew immediately was a tramp, and I mean that in the sense of an all-around wretchedly indifferent woman. She began to mention to customers that she was pregnant, and I realized that she simply looked fat--she sat down when she wished "for the sake of the baby." I eventually left her and attempted to find my way alone, which I did, for everything tended to work just as it did at Outback, the only difference being that this place was much, much easier to be in.
After the end of the seventh hour, Fred the Manager asked for me to stay and work the night shift as well, helping anywhere I could, running food, and playing gopher (you know, gopher this, gopher that). I said I would need to call my mother to find out if I was avaliable and walked through the rain to my car, where I sat long enough to seem like I made a phone call, and came back inside. I lied and said it was my mother and father's 20th anniversary and that they needed me to watch the kids. A wicked lie, I am the youngest in our family, but he will never know lest he asks my brother, Tyler the Bartender. He won't, though.
I start again tomorrow at 1100 and will work all day; I believe this may be the beginning of something large and long-lasting, so I will try not to flirt too much, for my own sake.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 8:54 PM | | Comments

Friday, January 20, 2006

On Death, or Darkness in the Absence of Light

I ONCE WROTE THE FOLLOWING WORDS in reference to love and death in The Mystery of Stillness around what I'd say would be two or three years ago:

The mystery of Love is greater than the mystery of Death, for Death is simple and Death is pure. For life in the present there is no death. Death is not an event in life. It is not a fact in the world. Death is everywhere and it lies within every person. It is inexorable, merely capable of being postponed or deferred, and with it, as well the thought of it, it has hurt well as it has healed. But it is not a fact.

Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave. Our birth is nothing but our death begun, and without an understanding of myth or religion, without an understanding of the relationship between destruction and creation, death and rebirth, the individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem alone.


Those who read her work would see that the last line is a quote of Marion Woodman, a mythopoetic woman's movement figure. Having not read her work I cannot say I know much of her philosophy, for I do not, but it was this idea I enjoyed of hers which only helped in the illustration of what I was trying to show, and all an idea must do is create another idea or vision.

I say that death is not really death in the sense of the word which has become popular in these times. It is nothing created--death is not a thing; it is intangible and not real. Neither is it the moving on from one place to another, the coming to of this world for the beginning of another beyond the human horizons where religion lives. The darkness of death is only darkness in the absence of light. Death is the dissipation of all energies, both physical and mental, for both of these energies are the same. It must be seen that we are all artificial intelligences, that hatred is only a biological greed and that love is the chemical reactions of the brain working for the ways of reproduction or physical pleasure. We are tricked by our human structure to believe these things as to make procreation and survival easier. Emotions are not emotions, they are the instincts of an animal and nothing more. There is strength in numbers, no doubt, so we gather.

But there is no death...things like this are words made for the unnecessary and redundant. But I find here that Love is no more complicated than death, although its effects can be exponentially more palpable. For every relationship I have in my years seen I call it "Like," no matter its length or power. Love is thrown around by the elderly just as carelessly as it is by the youth, and I submit that I have only seen one Love...True Love, as it were. And, ironically, this love is found in death. True love comes when either one person or another becomes stagnant and unchanging. With change, as it is seen everyday, love falters, and because we are in constant change, as human beings, there is no love. But in death--oh, in death there is the static and immovable image. If, when in that brief moment when the love touches the human soul, the other dies, then there is True Love, for the dead is eternal and unchanging for ever. In that sense and that sense alone there is eternity in death, but it is certainly not for the dead...they are gone.

In ending, True Love only comes when one sees another as perfect, and no one ever truly sees this after time enough to think and bypass the primal instinct--they may say otherwise, of course, for their partner's sake, but it is not true. If the dead ever rose, however, the eternal love would most certainly end. This is the way and power of death, or darkness in the absence of light....

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 1:00 PM | | Comments

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

On Significant Changes

A Short Essay by C. Nicholas Walker

WHEN I WAS IN middle school, I met a girl named Shauna. When I first saw her we were outside the school early in the morning of one day in September, when it was just beginning to get cold in the morning hours. She wore a leopard print fur coat (which I assumed was as fake as it looked), a denim skirt, white stockings and black church shoes. Her hair was dark red and short, resting just below her ears. We both must have been only 11 years old. She told me that we knew each other from a long time ago, back in early elementary school, and that we were good friends. I couldn't rememer her at all, but she told me things about my time back then that only someone who knew me would know, so I eventually gave her the benefit of the doubt.
It was obvious from the moment we met that we liked each other, and were even coaxed into calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend for a day by the other kids. That ended quick and awkward. Throughout middle school we were the best of friends, along with Barry who I'd known for quite some time but Shauna said we all played together back before I could remember her. We were an inseperable trio, standing in line for lunch together, eating together, standing together before school opened, walking between classes together. Whenever we happened to be placed in the same class, we stood together through what we considered thick and thin.
But then something happened to me. In 8th grade, I got a girlfriend. She was a grade above me, so she was already in high school, which meant she never knew Shauna the entire first year we dated. When I went to high school Shauna, Barry and I remained just as tightly knit as before and nothing changed. It was during this first year of high school I began to wonder if I really liked Shauna--I began to grow very strong feelings for her that, of course, she was never told about.
One day, however, this all came to sudden halt when my girlfriend saw me walking between classes with Shauna, both of us laughing as we always did together. My girl had always been a very jealous person and then was no different; she ran between us and seperated the conversation. Later she told me, "Shauna likes you--I can tell. Well, I don't like the way you two talk with each other, laughing like that. It looked like you were dating her or something. I don't want you talking with her anymore...you two can't be friends."
Looking back now I know all that I should have done, but that's the beauty of hindsight. For the moment, however, I had a girlfriend, someone who I could count on to always like me, someone safe who I'd never have to take risks with. I didn't want to lose that. So, the next time I saw Shauna, I told her we would never speak again.
And the saddest part that ever happened was...we didn't.
I switched schools and my girlfriend switched with me, worried that if I went to another school I'd cheat on her. Halfway through the 10th grade, however, I found out that my girlfriend had been cheating on me for quite some time. Ironic how, after all I had done and given up to secure a safe relationship without risks, it ended only the way it did. After our two and a half years together, I left her without a second thought and vowed that I would stay away from relationships for as long as it took for me to have a free life again.
Fast forward a little over a year and see me, sitting in the dark of night staring at the news and still happy to be alone and free. It was then that I saw her face...Shauna. After all those years I still recognized her easily, but the words that went along with her picture were "crash" and "family" and "tractor trailer." I ran to my computer and looked up the local news reports, when I found that, coming back from a trip in Pennsylvania for the Fourth of July, Shauna's car, with her entire family inside, was blind-sided by a tractor trailer carrying gas. Upon impact, both cars exploded, and everyone inside was dead.
And it was at that very moment that I stopped being alone and free. I was simply alone.
Mentally, I was confused. I looked to my own philosophy to find resolve and discovered just how little I could apply it to myself; my writings were like meaningless words that someone else had written. I was physically weak--I lost the strength to fight or to argue. But I was not depressed. I was lost.
I vowed to be different, for Shauna, I vowed to become greater than I was before. I promised that she would be my inspiration and reason for living, and that those I cared for would know it. I promised to her. But I still remained alone, and have since never held one love above the rest. In stead of falling for just one person, like I fell for Shauna but never told her, I love all people equally and protect them as best I can.
Significant changes? I know there will be more to come, for I know that eventually I will love somebody else like I love her. These things are inevitable. But it has been two and a half years and I still remain that I can never be truly alone with the love of the world on my side.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 1:25 PM | | Comments

Sunday, January 15, 2006

The Overman goes to the Theatre: Part One


IT WAS ABOUT 4:30 in the afternoon when I arrived at Sam's house. It would be wise for me to mention ahead of time that Sam is not a man, but rather a girl named Samantha around the age of seventeen.

We had been very close friends throughout high school when we shared classes together, originally meeting during the production of The Wizard of Oz, in which I played The Scarecrow. She, if my memory serves me, was a stage hand as well as a grade below me--I was in tenth grade, she, of course, was in ninth. Eventually we grew to trust each other, and she would come to me when needing advise on life, the universe and everything. A very sad and depressed young girl, she had been through much in her short time on this earth and I took it upon myself to try and help her through it if I had the ability. We had our troubles, of course, and any good relationship does. I grew vain, but together we got through such things.

We remained friends throughout our high school years. I'm in college now; she, a senior in high school. We had come a long way, but after I graduated we stopped speaking. I suppose it became inconvienient once we weren't in the same building everyday. I attribute this mostly to being my fault; it got to the point where we would only speak via internet once a week at best, and only arbitrarily in these few conversations, talking without really saying anything.

Finally we came to heads about it when, in my belief that I knew what I was talking about, I tried to give her metaphorical and metaphysical advise, answering her questions only with questions like I was some sort of a Wise Old Man on the Mountain. Little had I thought about, however, that she didn't need that anymore. It was to the point that if she mentioned something was going wrong I tried to give her my advise...I hadn't realized how little she cared or needed it. She could do things on her own, make her own decisions, and just because she mentioned a problem didn't mean she wanted me to try and fix it.

She eventually made the comment that I have no right to be trying to give her advise if I never even call anymore or visit when I should. So I apologized and promised to change.

It was about 4:30 in the afternoon when I arrived at Sam's house. By 7:00 that night we would be sitting in a dark movie theatre watching King Kong and being happy to be together again. I promised to drive her there myself, but first we went to the local coffee shop and talked before going back to her house, wallowing around together, and then into my car we went off to the next town over to see a movie. Little did we know that in thirty minutes we would be participating in a hispanic drug deal in a make-shift tent on the top of a hill in Smithfield, freezing in the cold of the night...

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 2:37 PM | | Comments

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Where Are They Now?

And by "they," I mean me.

MONDAY
0800-0850: Success & Study Skills
1000-1052: General Chemistry II
1100-1152: Literature-Based Research
1300-1550: General Chemistry II
1830-2120: Social Problems

TUESDAY
0800-0850: Success & Study Skills
0930-1045: Art Appreciation

WEDNESDAY
0800-0850: Success & Study Skills
1000-1052: General Chemistry II
1100-1152: Literature-Based Research

THURSDAY
0800-0850: Success & Study Skills
0930-1045: Art Appreciation

FRIDAY
1000-1052: General Chemistry II
1100-1152: Literature-Based Research

As you can see, Monday is my busiest day of the week. Believe it or not, I am fairly happy with my schedule; I got classes I enjoy and, so far, teachers I enjoy as well. The only class I think I'm really going to loathe attending is "Success & Study Skills," which is meant to be for first-semester students. They may as well have called it "Things That Don't Matter 101" and it'd of served the same purpose.
You see, I took "College Student Success" in my fall semester and hated it--I think that's why I failed it, too--so I just stopped going--then again, maybe that's why I failed it. Nevertheless, I have to pass at least one of them to graduate, and since I'd already traveled up Satan's Anus with the first one, I figured why not go through a different orifice this time?
What gets me is General Chemistry II; it's, like, twice as long as the first one. It used to be just go twice a week under the vail of darkness, learn and have all the fun you want, then go home and not worry about it till the next week. But somebody more important than I must have decided it should meet every other day. Whoo. Yippee. Hurray. I love science and all, and the teacher is fantastic, but too much is too much, you know?
My English teacher is good. I got one of those young guys who likes to be the "cool" teacher. And he is. First day of glass he gave us a lesson on body language by flipping out his middle finger. "See?" he said, "We all know what this means." Then he said Harry Potter was gay, which, well, he really is.
But anyway, if you're wondering where I am at any time, then you should really get a life. But if you're wondering about my college schedule, or thinking about your old friends asking, "Where are they now?" then this is the info you're looking for.
I'd say wish me luck, but you know I don't need it.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 12:18 PM | | Comments

Monday, January 09, 2006

The Omnipotence Paradox

A Dialogue on the Constraints of Perfection


I place this question before you: Can an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that he himself cannot lift it?

Although there are many ways one can phrase this particular paradox, for the purposes of this article I shall adhere mostly to this one. It may seem a simple question at first glance, but when looked upon harder it seems to show a grand weakness in the plausibility of omnipotence.

To make this argument plausible, first one must find a pure definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence is the command of infinite knowledge and power. An omnipotent being knows everything past, present and future. It has control over creation and destruction and everything subsiding within its own universe and beyond. An omnipotent being is a perfect being. The Christian God is considered by all in the religion to be perfect, and therefore unable to make a mistake. There is, in other words, nothing it cannot do.

But now we run the paradox through a Belief Vehicle, and see the outcome...

1) If the being can create a stone which it cannot lift, then it admits it cannot do something and therefore is not omnipotent.
2) If the being cannot create a stone which it cannot lift, then it admits it cannot do something and therefore is not omnipotent.

We see that, no matter how it is looked upon, the being must admit lack of power and therefore lack of omnipotence.

A response to this had been that the being could create a stone which it could not lift at that moment, and could only later reduce the weight of the stone so that it is able to be lifted. However, this is not legitimate omnipotence, because it forces the being to do something at a later time, therefore removing the beings free will...ergo, he is still not omnipotent.

Now, one could go into spasms of physics on how, according to Aristotelian physics, the rock is always being lifted in relation to its movement around the sun. That’s nonsense and completely semantics, which means it does nothing to disprove the apparent paradox. For instance, I could just as easily ask if God could create an atom which He Himself could not split.

The best response I’ve heard to this is that God is not essentially omnipotent, which means He cannot do the logically impossible. Instead, they say God can do the logically impossible. So, He would make a stone he couldn’t lift, then He would simply lift it. In that case, He could also make 2 + 2 = 5 or make a square circle...but that gets into semantics as well, and also renders all logic futile, useless and without meaning or purpose, destroying the need for an omnipotent creator in the first place.

In the end, this could just as well be another confusion humans have over their own creator, but it does lend the question...are their constraints to perfection?

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 5:40 PM | | Comments

Thursday, January 05, 2006

The Belief Vehicle

When an old friend comes to town...
Robert Gavon is a salesman who worked with my father some twenty-odd years ago at a corportation called Novar that, I can only assume, built commercial technology products for large companies in need of such things. If you ask my father, he'll tell you Bob is the best salesman in the world--next to him. If you ask Bob, you get the same response. Bob's good at what he does and is in charge of a many number of people.

Well, to the point, he traveled from Ohio just yesterday to play golf with my father. I haven't seen him in long enough a time that I don't remember him, so it was like me meeting him for the first time. Obviously a very smart guy who voices his opinion when asked it, no matter how...abrupt it may be. After dinner tonight, he sat down at the table and ate a piece of pie. Everyone esle being in the next room, I decided to have a piece of pie as well and give him some sense of company that I'm sure he didn't need. We got to talking, and he posed some riddles to me...asked me questions to which I should have had certain answers. I learned quite a bit in the following hour, some of which I'd like to share with you, My Humble Reader.

The first question he asked me was this: The owner of the company that you work for comes up to you and asks you a simple question...who is your boss? What do you say?

With this I had a thought process that began with, "I'm my own boss as I am responsible for my own actions." This sounded too egotistical, so I went with, "You are." Of course, the former was the correct answer, because we are our own bosses. We determine what we do and how we act and take responsibility for ourselves. If he wanted to know who I report to, then sure, it's him. But you are always your own boss.

Good. I liked that. But the best part came when he showed me a diagram on a post-it note. He never showed me how it worked in detail, but instead gave me this premise. When a person believes something, he cannot be proven wrong. It's impossible. We automatically attack the person, not the belief, which easily turns into one big insult. However, there is a vehicle one can use to discredit a belief and show its flaws. This is called the Belief Vehicle.

First, you state a belief you have...for instance, "The Iraq War is bad." Then you take it through the Belief Vehicle and ask what are called "If...then..." propositions. By the end of the vehicle, the belief can either be considered credible or not credible. Or in other words, a good belief or a bad one. I'm doing this one of the top of my head, so let's see how it goes...

If the Iraq War is bad, then we should not have invaded.
If we hadn't invaded, then Al-Queda would still be the major political force in the Middle East.
If Al-Queda is still the major political force in the Middle East, then they would still be attacking America.
If they were still attacking America, then hundreds of innocent citizens would be killed.
If hundreds of innocent citizens were being killed, then we would have to protect ourselves.
If we protect ourselves, then we have to stop or supress Al-Queda.
If we stop or supress Al-Queda, the must invade.


Now, this is working from scratch, but we see how it works out, don't we? I'm using this ot my advantage a little, but this is my line of thinking here. People against the war have never shown their side of it, save protests in the name of peace. Of course we want peace, but in some situations...the belief in peace is flawed.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 9:31 PM | | Comments

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Shauna, Dear

The following is a new poem written as an apology to Shauna, the only love I've ever known...

Shauna, dear, I have some things
I never got to say
I’ve held it all inside too long,
But here I am today

And really, now it’s all my fault
I said not what I meant
I’ve held it all inside too long
While the chances came and went…

I remember when I saw you
Standing in the garden near,
The flowers all around you;
That daisy in your ear

You told me that you knew me,
But I didn’t know from where
You said that I’d forgotten
All about you standing there

But then I got to know you,
And how soon I fell in love,
But never did I tell you
All the thoughts I’m thinking of

So young we were as time goes by,
And after all the years,
I took a gal who hated you--
You filled her with such fears

Shauna, dear, I was afraid
I knew not what to do
She told me not to see you
Or this gal and I were through

So I said the words she said to say,
Those words I still deny,
And when I said those words to you
I think I made you cry

And still you never knew my love
Never knew the truth
My secret no one ever heard
My love for only you

So young we were as time goes by
And after all the years
I went away and found a home
And dried up all my tears

The moon went overhead again,
The summer changed to fall
The Earth still spun around the sun
Yet nothing changed at all

Until the night I sat alone
And watched the TV glow
And saw your face upon the screen
A face I’d grown to know

I couldn’t quite believe it
Till I heard the anchor say
Shauna’s car was hit this morning
And Shauna died today…

Oh so young you were as time goes by
And after all the years
You never knew my love for you
As daylight disappears…

Shauna, dear, I was afraid
I knew not what to do…
And now I’m standing at your grave
To say…how I love you.

I love it when you laugh at me
Oh…that sound I long to hear
I love your eyes, your hands, your lips…
That daisy in your ear

I love how I still think of you
When I’m lying in my bed
I love how there’s no girl on Earth
Who I would rather wed

I’m loving how I’m wishing
Just for once to hold you near
How I’m crying as I’m writing
And that daisy in your ear

And I’m sorry, oh, I’m sorry
About the things I said that day
And all those things that still I kept inside
Till the chances went away

Just know I love you, I love you
There’s nothing more to do
And know that every breathe I take
I’m taking just for you…

Shauna, dear, I had some things
I never got to say
I’d held it all inside too long
But here I am today

In Loving Memory of Alessandra S. Hall
March 26, 1987-July 7, 2003

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Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 9:50 PM | | Comments