Looking at this again, I'm struck that you wrote it in the present tense. Normally, I'm rather hostile to the use of the present but I didn't notice on my first read-through! Everything has its place and here, in a prose trance, you made me feel like I was not immersed but submerged in the narrative.
To the author: this story was beautifully told and well written.
I want to criticize the people involved, though. This woman is damaged goods and the relationship was based on use, not good sex.
Good sex with the presence of use is empty and cruel.
You freaks need to master your passions, break free from the chains of these dime a dozen succubi, find Jesus, find a woman who also knows Jesus, get married- THEN you will have good sex.
Or, just continue to be crushed by more of the same in your emptiness, and die broken.
Thank you for your comment. I think Michael and Katerina grapple with exactly those problems. They are both broken people. Whether they eventually resolve their problems I leave up to you. I think they both saw a vision of something ideal and real, and they long to return to it. Is it possible for them to overcome their past and achieve it? I'm not sure. What was really the fantasy: their relationship or the vision they both see?
I would argue their relationship and the vision they share are both a fantasy. Sadly, it is an illusion they may cling to, but in reality, the illusion is clinging to them.
Only individual, independent metanoia out of the realm of mortality, and into the realm of eternity, will satisfy their ideals and fantasies.
Like all mankind, they both seek a connection only love can forge, as they were created by Love, and for Love. Love is eternal. They connect their flesh in the forge of lust. Flesh is mortal, and lust spreads like a weed, using up life force in the closest place it can propogate, and dying in the same spot.
They both have immortal souls, created by and destined for love, descended from realms of impossible light...
As long as they keep springing up and dying in the weeds of mortal flesh and lust, they will not bear fruit or be any way fantastic befitting a fantasy!
Jesus is infinite love, a perfect expression of love, and longs for them to claim their inheritance in perfect love and unity forever!
I have known their reality, and the true love of Jesus, and am compelled out of love to say these things.
God bless you and really - I love to read your writing! Keep going.
While your argument is theologically on point, I think it addresses the survival of the kingdom, a story that hasn’t been written yet. The love in the story is recognizable to us all, as Jesus-loving people aren’t exclusive to it and brokenness isn’t exclusive to secularists. I think Michael has long decided how to respond, kingdoms, after all, are so very rare, and every king and queen will tell you, so very worth it. …and I think he understands the price to build it, reason why I hope he takes your advice, if only not to kill him, for starters.
I spoke of mortality, not murder... Man's mortality should be always before him, as a guard against the secular traps of earthly kings and queens. Memento mori.
"I did a little more thinking, and I realized that human mating is best regarded as a zoological
phenomenon that systemic legal definition does not bear on, and that every reactionary, i.e.
reality based, i.e. red-pilled view of sex and sexuality regards it and thus regulates it as such,
regardless of the legal world that sits above it. This means in practice that we have to let certain
processes play themselves out. We can’t pretend that women are pure and naturally chaste and
treat them as such, cannot treat heroic virtue and self-control as the norm and attempt to
inculcate it in the masses. Women are absurdly horny and manage to find ways to be owned by
a man despite the harshest patriarchy. Shotgun marriages are not just for forcing the man to
stay, they’re also for keeping the daughter from becoming a worse slut, to keep her from using
Joey to get access to Chad. In other words, the legal aspect of sexual regulation needs to
formalize the natural bond of ownership created by cock-in-pussy sex. We’re not saying “tie sex
to marriage”. It’s more accurate to say that “sex is marriage”. From this truth we derive the
notions of the common-law wife and the “natural marriage”. We are defining its limits rather than
its essence."
At the innermost layer, Micheal and Katerina are married. At the party, if someone had asked "who's woman is this?" that would have been a question with a real and clear answer. The conflict of the story revolves around society not recognizing their marriage. In our present age, our society doesn't recognize marriage in most of its aspects, having reduced it to a base legal transaction and diluted the concept with counterfeits.
I'm not arguing for fornication. I'm saying that something of marriage is already shared between Micheal and Katerina. When you have a man and woman together under one roof, he her strength and she his joy, the gravest threat is that they'll come apart, which is why, traditionally, their families [society] would compel them to formalize their relationship with legal marriage. Paulos set the story in a foreign land, and thus their tragedy is to be cut off from their family, but, in our degraded modern age, neither family nor society would nourish this spark into marriage. Quite possibly, they would actively sabotage it.
When I read this story, or others like it, a great frustration wells up within me. We don't have to live this way. Imagine if Micheal and Katerina could settle down, get themselves adopted into the village, light candles in the church, rebuild the broken stones and participate in the transformation of Hellas from a drooling corpse state to a land thrumming with real life.
"in his moments of release he sees endless glades, nameless shades of green, rolling hills, infinity."
That was absolutely beautiful.
Looking at this again, I'm struck that you wrote it in the present tense. Normally, I'm rather hostile to the use of the present but I didn't notice on my first read-through! Everything has its place and here, in a prose trance, you made me feel like I was not immersed but submerged in the narrative.
yeah I didn't notice it was written in the present tense either, amazing.
To the author: this story was beautifully told and well written.
I want to criticize the people involved, though. This woman is damaged goods and the relationship was based on use, not good sex.
Good sex with the presence of use is empty and cruel.
You freaks need to master your passions, break free from the chains of these dime a dozen succubi, find Jesus, find a woman who also knows Jesus, get married- THEN you will have good sex.
Or, just continue to be crushed by more of the same in your emptiness, and die broken.
Which way?
Thank you for your comment. I think Michael and Katerina grapple with exactly those problems. They are both broken people. Whether they eventually resolve their problems I leave up to you. I think they both saw a vision of something ideal and real, and they long to return to it. Is it possible for them to overcome their past and achieve it? I'm not sure. What was really the fantasy: their relationship or the vision they both see?
Thank you for the reply!
I would argue their relationship and the vision they share are both a fantasy. Sadly, it is an illusion they may cling to, but in reality, the illusion is clinging to them.
Only individual, independent metanoia out of the realm of mortality, and into the realm of eternity, will satisfy their ideals and fantasies.
Like all mankind, they both seek a connection only love can forge, as they were created by Love, and for Love. Love is eternal. They connect their flesh in the forge of lust. Flesh is mortal, and lust spreads like a weed, using up life force in the closest place it can propogate, and dying in the same spot.
They both have immortal souls, created by and destined for love, descended from realms of impossible light...
As long as they keep springing up and dying in the weeds of mortal flesh and lust, they will not bear fruit or be any way fantastic befitting a fantasy!
Jesus is infinite love, a perfect expression of love, and longs for them to claim their inheritance in perfect love and unity forever!
I have known their reality, and the true love of Jesus, and am compelled out of love to say these things.
God bless you and really - I love to read your writing! Keep going.
While your argument is theologically on point, I think it addresses the survival of the kingdom, a story that hasn’t been written yet. The love in the story is recognizable to us all, as Jesus-loving people aren’t exclusive to it and brokenness isn’t exclusive to secularists. I think Michael has long decided how to respond, kingdoms, after all, are so very rare, and every king and queen will tell you, so very worth it. …and I think he understands the price to build it, reason why I hope he takes your advice, if only not to kill him, for starters.
I spoke of mortality, not murder... Man's mortality should be always before him, as a guard against the secular traps of earthly kings and queens. Memento mori.
Maybe that’s the key to it all, finding the balance of our carpe diem(s) in our memento mori(s).
From Aidan Maclear:
"I did a little more thinking, and I realized that human mating is best regarded as a zoological
phenomenon that systemic legal definition does not bear on, and that every reactionary, i.e.
reality based, i.e. red-pilled view of sex and sexuality regards it and thus regulates it as such,
regardless of the legal world that sits above it. This means in practice that we have to let certain
processes play themselves out. We can’t pretend that women are pure and naturally chaste and
treat them as such, cannot treat heroic virtue and self-control as the norm and attempt to
inculcate it in the masses. Women are absurdly horny and manage to find ways to be owned by
a man despite the harshest patriarchy. Shotgun marriages are not just for forcing the man to
stay, they’re also for keeping the daughter from becoming a worse slut, to keep her from using
Joey to get access to Chad. In other words, the legal aspect of sexual regulation needs to
formalize the natural bond of ownership created by cock-in-pussy sex. We’re not saying “tie sex
to marriage”. It’s more accurate to say that “sex is marriage”. From this truth we derive the
notions of the common-law wife and the “natural marriage”. We are defining its limits rather than
its essence."
At the innermost layer, Micheal and Katerina are married. At the party, if someone had asked "who's woman is this?" that would have been a question with a real and clear answer. The conflict of the story revolves around society not recognizing their marriage. In our present age, our society doesn't recognize marriage in most of its aspects, having reduced it to a base legal transaction and diluted the concept with counterfeits.
I'm not arguing for fornication. I'm saying that something of marriage is already shared between Micheal and Katerina. When you have a man and woman together under one roof, he her strength and she his joy, the gravest threat is that they'll come apart, which is why, traditionally, their families [society] would compel them to formalize their relationship with legal marriage. Paulos set the story in a foreign land, and thus their tragedy is to be cut off from their family, but, in our degraded modern age, neither family nor society would nourish this spark into marriage. Quite possibly, they would actively sabotage it.
When I read this story, or others like it, a great frustration wells up within me. We don't have to live this way. Imagine if Micheal and Katerina could settle down, get themselves adopted into the village, light candles in the church, rebuild the broken stones and participate in the transformation of Hellas from a drooling corpse state to a land thrumming with real life.
Is that a fantasy?
All dreams are fantasy until we make them true.
That girl has the slut in her. If they get back together, it's just a question of when she starts having sex with other men.
He can handle her.
With all respect to you and him, no man can handle or control a slut. And that girl is a slut.
You god squad dorks are endlessly boring
Bravo, Paulos. I hope your friend Michael finds a good woman.
As an individual navigating a "post togetherness" after a beautiful relationship myself, this hits home
I hope you find what you are longing for brother.
This was great
Ambiguous endings ftw
Beautifully written story.
''What was really the fantasy: their relationship or the vision they both see?''
https://youtu.be/4OfH-Cq__1c
This post has inspired me to begin writing. Incredible, I've re-read it many times. Magnificent, makes popular literature look like garbage
LOVE
genius
Amazing, brother
Please see a podcast where I discuss this story extensively, linked below:
https://youtu.be/S1GPvHmThbc
The last line(s) is/are missing.
“Then he shrugs, touches the corner of the letter with his cigarette, and sees it go up in flames. Her carousel doesn’t stop here.”