Lee slipped into his disguise and entered the world of a subculture.
He was looking for the answer to a question: “Why do stories start with ‘A long time ago…,’ ‘In a galaxy far, far away…,’ etc.?”
He also wanted to know why subcultures store large number of weapons and never use them to protect themselves except in verbal defensive posturing positions (imagine two dominant members of a different species squaring off like peacocks strutting their feathers to prove their reproduction capabilities which have no value in defense against a hungry wolf) while their subcultures are slowly reduced by the onslaught of subcultures not like theirs, either intentionally or compressionally by the superiour sheer weight/size of neighbouring subcultures.
In modern parlance we call this détente, or mutually assured destruction when the weapons have seriously huge destructive capacity.
Lee looked at his disguise in the mirror but he didn’t feel like the character he was going to portray.
He needed to feel the character — the burning anger, the raging fear, the desire to grab the reins from polite, noncommitted leaders, refusing to negotiate their ongoing debate about the nuances of a truce with a perceived enemy, put the metal, the disguise, to the test and charge into battle.
The wind howled outside.
Water filled the trenches.
Battle-hardened foot soldiers looked at Lee wondering if he was the one to bare his chest to the enemy and dare them to light the fuse that would ignite the war the soldiers on both sides craved once more.
The courtiers and patsies of the king’s court had grown too soft living too long off the fat of the land and Lee knew they were outnumbered by the hungry and starving willing to die for a greater cause than feeding just another set of pigs running whatever version of Animal Farm they were selling to the highest bidder.
Lee adjusted the disguise.
Was it an actor’s costume? A uniform? The emperour’s new clothes?
With whom did Lee’s sympathies lie?
For whom would Lee lie, if necessary, to achieve the greater cause that made his efforts worth overthrowing yet another monarchy that cloaked itself in the power of the people, the tyranny of the majority, a supermajority of minorities this time?
The only way to know was to lose himself in the words and actions of the subculture.
Then, when completely immersed, lost in the crowd, rise up, climb the wall that separated the haves from the have-nots, and announce his intent.
Lee looked in the mirror.
He saw his parents’ and grandparents’ faces.
He saw the mannerisms and silent strength of his father, the wisdom of modest humbleness in his mother.
Lee walked to a hill behind his hut and practiced shouting, listening to the echoes around him.
He heard a few returned shouts as if they were mere reactions to his shouts but no echoing call for real battle.
Lee returned to the hut and contemplated what was next.
Many subcultures had claimed they saved, preserved and nurtured the links of civilisation for the next generation.
Several family members in Lee’s lineage had recorded their own facts that validated their rightful place, if modest, in the course of history.
Lee knew the judgment of his generation was not sufficient to determine if his future actions were justified.
Lee needed more, a longer view.
He called upon his advisors who used a variety of means to provide Lee cumulative wisdom upon which he could set a future course — supercomputers, online consensus of commentators both professional and amateur, crystal balls, ancient texts, divinations and mysterious methods shrouded from the light of day.
Lee pondered his advisors’ input.
Lee was a man of action.
Lee imagined he saw the impetus for the behaviour of his peers they could not fathom.
Lee not only dug deep within himself to feed a storyline, he also competed against his peers for the place of highest moral ground in history, knowing it would be civilisations hence, uncountable, unknowable, for whom he worked the puppet strings of characters in his lifetime.
Lee let the raw emotions of fear, love, hate, and compassion flow through his body unchecked.
Limbs flew across the yard, Lee unable to stop the wind.
Lee looked in the mirror, asking himself, “If I was the one who could stop the wind, what would I call this disguise I’m wearing?”
treetrunkdings 