Principia Discordia

Principia Discordia => Literate Chaotic => Topic started by: Richter on August 21, 2012, 02:41:56 AM

Title: About Fred...
Post by: Richter on August 21, 2012, 02:41:56 AM
Fred never had many visitors; most of his life, in fact, was alone.  Not that he was a hermit.  He was hardly positioned by choice far from settlement or human habitation.  He lived in a city.

Not a crowded urban stain, mind you, but a beautiful city.  Idyllically proportioned sidewalks and streets.  Buildings laid out thoughtfully with trees for shade and fine architecture.  Perfectly flat on regular terrain as only a city of the plains could be.  Four stories seemed absurdly tall, there.  Why go up, when it was just as easy to go out?  There was decency, and certain understood presence to being there.  No man was greater than another.  Nothing as officious or macho as respect ran the place, but rather a subdued, familiar love. It was truly a city of conscience.

Pity how empty it was.

Not ever a fallen branch or trashcan out of place, (this was no ghost town or relic) just no one was there.  Well, that is a lie.  Very FEW people anyways.

Fred saw most of them.  Being one of few people in town he was a sort of living event.  Soft spoken and genial, he'd receive them in his oddly linear house.  A few minutes of pleasant, prosaic conversation and they would move on.  His most frequent visitor was his friend the speedy delivery man.  Not that they ever stopped to talk over lunch more than once or twice.  Not that they ever spent an evening talking over beers like most small city buddies, or over wine like two small-town intelligencia.  Much as the delivery man was compelled by his work to move on, Fred was compelled to stay.  His was to dwell, to occupy, to be neighborly, but brief.

Most of the time he was alone in his house.  Well, we've already said that, of course.  We've told you why he was alone too, but we haven't told you how.

Not much mystery to being alone, you say?  Every act has its art, its refinements, and those bent towards its artful enactment.  No matter how miniscule or obscure.

Fred was a master of being alone.

He employed the same rhythm.  Routines and cycles like verses in a song, or stations of the cross.  Wavelengths and patterns that might take a day, a week, a year each to complete.  Each with mindfulness and care.  There was no deviation over time to his rhythm, every exploration and change was balanced piously with a repetition of the base pattern, the first verse.  A drum circle jamming back to the beat it began on.  A tea ceremony carried out mostly for one.

He entered his house every morning.  (But where DID he sleep?)

He meditated on his place in the dwelling.  How he held himself in his householding.

He changed from street shoes into indoors shoes.  How his perambulation put him in mind of his keeping house.

He donned his sweater.  Cassock and stole for his vigil, a warm garment to warmly greet those who may come.



A good deal of time he spent on a long running thought experiment.  A make believe land of characters, each cautiously endowed with a virtue and a flaw.  No villains, no evil, just an aspect of humanity carefully excised and given an embodiment.  Characters matched and tested against circumstance and against themselves.  A man of conscience, Fred did this not to hate them, or discover how to deal with them.  He did this to lay bare the things he hated in humanity and role them out until he could accept them, until he could love them.
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: tyrannosaurus vex on August 21, 2012, 02:56:49 AM
BRAVO

This is a welcome change of pace.
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: Freeky on August 21, 2012, 06:45:18 AM
I love this so much.
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: Signora Pæsior on August 21, 2012, 07:02:29 AM
I adore this.
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 21, 2012, 07:31:31 AM
It reminds me of Fresno.
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: Richter on August 21, 2012, 01:15:41 PM
Thanks, another shameless over analysis of children's TV though.
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: Freeky on August 21, 2012, 03:31:49 PM
Yes, that's why is awesome.
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 21, 2012, 05:58:00 PM
Quote from: Richter, Baron von on August 21, 2012, 01:15:41 PM
Thanks, another shameless over analysis of children's TV though.

Ohhhh

I didn't make that connection, probably because I already knew that Fred Rogers was married and had two kids and a busy social life.
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: LMNO on August 21, 2012, 08:48:00 PM
I had to read this twice, but when it clicked, OOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH...
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: Richter on August 22, 2012, 03:05:48 AM
Quote from: Dear Departed Uncle Nigel on August 21, 2012, 05:58:00 PM
Quote from: Richter, Baron von on August 21, 2012, 01:15:41 PM
Thanks, another shameless over analysis of children's TV though.

Ohhhh

I didn't make that connection, probably because I already knew that Fred Rogers was married and had two kids and a busy social life.

Yes, but expanding on his life just from the context of the show, from an adult POV, it's downright surreal.  That's the part about it I loved, and had to mess around with.  If I had to sketch out the idealized christian heaven, it would be something like that.  I thought about dropping a few more hints that way, but they never worked in.
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: Richter on August 22, 2012, 03:08:12 AM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on August 21, 2012, 08:48:00 PM
I had to read this twice, but when it clicked, OOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH...

I thought I tipped it pretty heavily with the line about the "Speedy delivery" man, and spent the rest of the time trying to re-subtle it.

I meant to put in a bit about the Trolley too, but I didn't have the heart.  The trolley is like the Baby Jesus of the Machine God in my book for some reason.
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: Luna on August 22, 2012, 03:16:07 AM
This is awesome.

It always tickled the back of my mind that for somebody so focused on being neighbors, you never had a clue who lived next door.
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: Freeky on August 22, 2012, 07:55:36 AM
Quote from: Richter, Baron von on August 22, 2012, 03:08:12 AM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on August 21, 2012, 08:48:00 PM
I had to read this twice, but when it clicked, OOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH...

I thought I tipped it pretty heavily with the line about the "Speedy delivery" man, and spent the rest of the time trying to re-subtle it.

I meant to put in a bit about the Trolley too, but I didn't have the heart.  The trolley is like the Baby Jesus of the Machine God in my book for some reason.

I didn't catch on until the word "sweater." It's weird what will make a person do the pattern thing, when someone else wont get it for a bit.
Title: Re: About Fred...
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on August 22, 2012, 07:59:00 AM
Quote from: Richter, Baron von on August 22, 2012, 03:05:48 AM
Quote from: Dear Departed Uncle Nigel on August 21, 2012, 05:58:00 PM
Quote from: Richter, Baron von on August 21, 2012, 01:15:41 PM
Thanks, another shameless over analysis of children's TV though.

Ohhhh

I didn't make that connection, probably because I already knew that Fred Rogers was married and had two kids and a busy social life.

Yes, but expanding on his life just from the context of the show, from an adult POV, it's downright surreal.  That's the part about it I loved, and had to mess around with.  If I had to sketch out the idealized christian heaven, it would be something like that.  I thought about dropping a few more hints that way, but they never worked in.

No, it totally is. It's perfect, from that perspective.