Judaism's perspective comes from quite a different experience than the
others. His timeline is about the same time as the others, but a little in
the future. It's deliberately vague what happened to him and his family,
but its obviously connected to what Chris is experiencing.
Judaism:
Oh, what fools we be Having believed in our superiority
Oh, what fools we be The chickens come home to roost Mother, Brother, dead
Oh, what fools we be.
Pretty good stream of poetry I have going on here. Got the rhyme, got the ionic parameter, I even got a Haiku going. Before today I knew this art form only in books, devoid of any context although we had of course been taught to analyze the environment. But now I know truly, tragedy, angst, pain and agony, these are the feelings that beget poetry.
Our lives have always been so normal. So same. Every day, we study; we play...that's all we do here.
Never has there been a day like this. I dare say, with all I know of history, this is the worst day the Kinicha ever had.
I compose these words as my sister and I flee our homeland, four hours after witnessing the brutal murder of our mother and brother.
I have other things to think about, other thoughts deluging my numbed mind.
Like, if only we had realized how special that Spiderman comic was.
All our lives my siblings and I considered ourselves better than the others. Better than our friends, better than our teachers, better than our own mother. We were an evolution of the Kiticha; we have turtle blood and the mutant touch. All Kiticha study human culture, we all excel at learning because that is what we do our whole lives. We don't start wars, we don't visit other areas, we don't buy or sell things, but we learn about it all. We learn in as many different languages as we can. Currently I know English, Arabic, French, and Mandarin Chinese.
But at the height of our schooling, when we were thirteen years old, we failed to recognize the lesson laid out so well in that comic, laid out in words and pictures, in French even, which is our principle language.
The comic itself was new, but it was a reprint of an old story, the origins of Spiderman. This wasn't a character that interested me normally, but I was investigating the pop culture of America, and this was an icon that had been around for generations so I wanted to read it myself. The comic had blown in from somewhere, probably left behind by some campers or something, since we don't have many comic stores in the mountains.
Anyway, the lesson that we missed, which now comes to haunt me as I fly, was basically this:
Spiderman has all these cool powers. At first he didn't want to be a superhero. He let his first bad-guy go. See, he'd gotten mad at this guy who cheated him from money. The guy then ends up getting robbed, but he decides not to use his powers when he has the chance to stop this robber, because he's mad at the other guy. In a twist of irony that resonates forever now through out my life, the robber he let go then goes on to kill his uncle, whom he had loved.
I can't believe that, having been impacted by this story at such a young age, I refused the chance to help my own turtle family when they needed it eight years later. Our mother called us down that day, and I remember her exact words (they were in French though):
"Children, one of your uncles on your turtle side was murdered today. Your father has contacted me to ask that we assist in the search for the assassin. You know how I feel towards him, but he is your father, they are your family and you should decide for yourselves if you want to help. I'm sure your skills would be of much use to them."
And what was our answer? Did we show the maturity of our twenty-one years? Did I, with all my intellectual schooling, use this chance to demonstrate the lesson that should most have stuck with me?
Our answer was a unanimous and resounding "no". Why should we leave our home and comfort to put ourselves in danger for them? They weren't family; we had never even met them. Our father gave us the mutagen in our blood, the turtle features in our bodies, and that was all. It was genetic only; there was no bond there. We didn't care that our uncle we didn't know had been murdered, we didn't shed a tear over that. We didn't attend the funeral, and we didn't assist in any way to find the killer.
And so as we made the same choice as Spiderman did, we now share his fate. The assassin came around to kill our mother and brother, two very dear family members.
It's too late to think about how we could have changed things. Now we must take that lesson learned too late to heart.
We must find our lost cousins, uncles, siblings and unite with them to defeat this bad guy.
And then we will spend the rest of our lives making up for all the evil we allowed to flourish in our youth, our foolish youth.
Judaism:
Oh, what fools we be Having believed in our superiority
Oh, what fools we be The chickens come home to roost Mother, Brother, dead
Oh, what fools we be.
Pretty good stream of poetry I have going on here. Got the rhyme, got the ionic parameter, I even got a Haiku going. Before today I knew this art form only in books, devoid of any context although we had of course been taught to analyze the environment. But now I know truly, tragedy, angst, pain and agony, these are the feelings that beget poetry.
Our lives have always been so normal. So same. Every day, we study; we play...that's all we do here.
Never has there been a day like this. I dare say, with all I know of history, this is the worst day the Kinicha ever had.
I compose these words as my sister and I flee our homeland, four hours after witnessing the brutal murder of our mother and brother.
I have other things to think about, other thoughts deluging my numbed mind.
Like, if only we had realized how special that Spiderman comic was.
All our lives my siblings and I considered ourselves better than the others. Better than our friends, better than our teachers, better than our own mother. We were an evolution of the Kiticha; we have turtle blood and the mutant touch. All Kiticha study human culture, we all excel at learning because that is what we do our whole lives. We don't start wars, we don't visit other areas, we don't buy or sell things, but we learn about it all. We learn in as many different languages as we can. Currently I know English, Arabic, French, and Mandarin Chinese.
But at the height of our schooling, when we were thirteen years old, we failed to recognize the lesson laid out so well in that comic, laid out in words and pictures, in French even, which is our principle language.
The comic itself was new, but it was a reprint of an old story, the origins of Spiderman. This wasn't a character that interested me normally, but I was investigating the pop culture of America, and this was an icon that had been around for generations so I wanted to read it myself. The comic had blown in from somewhere, probably left behind by some campers or something, since we don't have many comic stores in the mountains.
Anyway, the lesson that we missed, which now comes to haunt me as I fly, was basically this:
Spiderman has all these cool powers. At first he didn't want to be a superhero. He let his first bad-guy go. See, he'd gotten mad at this guy who cheated him from money. The guy then ends up getting robbed, but he decides not to use his powers when he has the chance to stop this robber, because he's mad at the other guy. In a twist of irony that resonates forever now through out my life, the robber he let go then goes on to kill his uncle, whom he had loved.
I can't believe that, having been impacted by this story at such a young age, I refused the chance to help my own turtle family when they needed it eight years later. Our mother called us down that day, and I remember her exact words (they were in French though):
"Children, one of your uncles on your turtle side was murdered today. Your father has contacted me to ask that we assist in the search for the assassin. You know how I feel towards him, but he is your father, they are your family and you should decide for yourselves if you want to help. I'm sure your skills would be of much use to them."
And what was our answer? Did we show the maturity of our twenty-one years? Did I, with all my intellectual schooling, use this chance to demonstrate the lesson that should most have stuck with me?
Our answer was a unanimous and resounding "no". Why should we leave our home and comfort to put ourselves in danger for them? They weren't family; we had never even met them. Our father gave us the mutagen in our blood, the turtle features in our bodies, and that was all. It was genetic only; there was no bond there. We didn't care that our uncle we didn't know had been murdered, we didn't shed a tear over that. We didn't attend the funeral, and we didn't assist in any way to find the killer.
And so as we made the same choice as Spiderman did, we now share his fate. The assassin came around to kill our mother and brother, two very dear family members.
It's too late to think about how we could have changed things. Now we must take that lesson learned too late to heart.
We must find our lost cousins, uncles, siblings and unite with them to defeat this bad guy.
And then we will spend the rest of our lives making up for all the evil we allowed to flourish in our youth, our foolish youth.