portrait of a man falling.
(a short story by terry edwin walstrom).
get out of herethis is my fathers funeral; you dont belong here; you are a liar!.
Some things just reach out and grab you, and this was one of them.
I usually avoid thinking about tragedies. Once a year, however, it might be a catharsis to devote some time to consideration of what an unexpected day that was and the impact it made on the lives of those who became victims.
portrait of a man falling.
(a short story by terry edwin walstrom).
get out of herethis is my fathers funeral; you dont belong here; you are a liar!.
The Falling Man documentary was quite powerful, indeed!
At my age (68) not a day goes by when I don't remind myself we are all inches away from an unforeseen event--a Black Swan.
It helps keep life in perspective: you cannot take a single moment for granted.
i looked at my statistics this morning:.
terry.
joined 11 years ago.
.
I was wondering... most of us wake up with a desire to see the WT organization crumble. I'm sure you're no different. How have your thoughts on that possibility changed over the years since you awakened?
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One of my first posts was an embarrassingly naive topic about taking down the Watchtower!
I have to laugh now at the stupidity of my premise:)
If Scientology can get away with what they do, the Watchtower has a lot of larceny to perpetrate before they are in the same league. My motto is: Free one person at a time.
________________________________
And:
Of all the things you have accomplished since you've been out, what do you feel was your finest moment, your biggest mistake, and what might you have done differently?
______________________________
I've been directly responsible for confronting a young JW as he conversed with a Baptist. I laid it all out for him. We are now great friends and he is mentally free and searching for a way to leave the Borg permanently.
My biggest mistake was truly convincing myself my oldest and closest JW friend actually still cared about me. He does not and it hurts.
What I might have done differently is this--I should not have let him slide on his cognitive dissonance. I should have pushed really hard.
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Don't mean to bombard you with a big homework assignment. We all respect your insights around here and would enjoy hearing what you think.
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Not a problem, I'm humbled by your interest.
portrait of a man falling.
(a short story by terry edwin walstrom).
get out of herethis is my fathers funeral; you dont belong here; you are a liar!.
Well, Nine-Eleven is tomorrow and it seemed appropriate.
Thank you!
portrait of a man falling.
(a short story by terry edwin walstrom).
get out of herethis is my fathers funeral; you dont belong here; you are a liar!.
________________
(A short story by Terry Edwin Walstrom)
“Get out of here—this is my father’s funeral; you don’t belong here; you are a liar!”
The woman’s face reflected the terrible pain—the worst pain possible, to the point of breakdown. A thousand unanswered questions had been washed from her eyes by the flow of many tears. She was bent forward slightly—not from physical infirmity—but from the burden of suffering; a suffering shared by her family.
A stranger was speaking to her and in his trembling hand she caught sight of the photograph. There was pleading in his voice, a quiet voice, and something in his eyes meant her no harm . . . so she had dropped her gaze . . . and immediately collapsed.
The Editor and his staff listened quietly and a nodded hesitatingly.
“I don’t know who this is, but it’s pretty clear he was somebody.”
Faces simply stared back at him, wanted to listen, wanting to be convinced. Yet, at the same time, they didn’t want to do the wrong thing in the wrong way at this—the worst of all possible wrong times.
“A carpenter reaches for his hammer without thinking. I’m a photographer—I reached for my camera and started taking pictures . . . that’s all it was . . . that’s all.”
Outside the office, a bustle of activity bespoke controlled chaos. Like an anthill stomped upon, a flurry of busy randomness had seized everyone in an invisible panic.
“I’d like to know. But—it’s not my call. I don’t know what I’m asking, but maybe you all do.”
_______
The clear morning sky gave bright promise to the optimism of a perfect day. It was the kind of day even the most jaded urban sophisticate could glance at sideways and give up a begrudging smile of approval.
Traffic zipped, clotted, zoomed, or stalled to the dancing red, yellow or green of the bedeviling signal lights along the avenues. Horns honked, shoe leather patted concrete sidewalks in a pattern of big city syncopation. Commuters and panhandlers went through the motions of survival at both ends of the spectrum in a Darwinian paradise of tall, tall buildings and crisp fall air.
It was 9:41.
The photographer had snatched his camera up and took off at a brisk jog exactly to the spot where he suddenly froze. The carpenter reached for his hammer without thinking about it, Richard Drew would later say to the others, just as he pointed his camera upward toward the object which had caught his professional eye in the viewfinder, and he began snapping instinctively. There was no right or wrong about it—he snapped and his lens followed as it covered almost fifteen hundred feet of vertical space, top to bottom in blink, snap, blink, snap, blink of an eye.
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The theologian was asked to comment and he reluctantly agreed.
The photograph laid out in front of him seemed to be all stripes of black, gray and white with a random speck near the top. Doctor Thompson adjusted his glasses and drew in a slow, deep breath as if bracing himself for the worst. It took a few moments, like a strong drink swallowed too fast, burning on the way down until. . .he removed his glasses again and pinched the top of his nose with his eyes tightly squinted. The newspapers reprinted his comment.
"Perhaps the most powerful image of despair at the beginning of the twenty-first century is not found in art, or literature, or even popular music. It is found in a single photograph."
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Next day, on page 7 of the New York Times, the world stared at the photograph. Reaction came immediately like the image in Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream—an excruciating wail of anger, pain and denial swept back upon the monsters who would publish such an image!
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Official quote from the New York Medical Examiner’s office:
"A 'jumper' is somebody who goes to the office in the morning knowing that they will commit suicide. These people were forced out by the smoke and flames or blown out."
______
Only one man seemed driven to ask the questions nobody else dared to ask. In his curiosity and determination, he questioned the wrong people—showing them the terrible photograph. After all, he was guessing—and guessing means getting it wrong as easily as getting it right. If the unknown was too great a burden from him to bear, so too was it an unthinkable abomination—a blasphemy for the Hernandez family at their father’s funeral. It was a sin to commit suicide and it would send their beloved Norberto to the fires of hell! The daughter lashed out with her bitter words and sent reporter Peter Cheney back out into the street, stunned at the damage his questions had wrought.
The quest went forward. Another possibility arose: Jonathan Briley, as the falling object in the cursed picture, forever suspended upside down in mid-air, one improbable knee bent, as the slim healthy man plummeted at maximum velocity toward infinity below. Briley’s brother, Timothy identified him by his clothes and shoes, as well as a ridiculous orange undershirt barely visible as the white shirt ballooned out in the updraft of the awful fall—he remembered his brother wearing it that morning.
His grief-stricken sister told the reporter, "When I first looked at the picture ... and I saw it was a man—tall, slim—I said, 'If I didn't know any better, that could be Jonathan.”’
Approximately 200 people fell or jumped that day. None was deemed a “jumper,” but a victim of blunt force trauma in a murderous attack on the World Trade Center.
The Hernandez family was again contacted and their minds put at ease—not a minute too soon. Norberto’s daughters had been torn apart by embittered consciences stricken by devout Catholic teaching. At last they could accept he had simply been one victim—a martyr to be sure—among the 2,996 which perished.
Of all the unspeakable horror of that day of infamy, the photograph—a portrait of a man falling—became the focal point of unacceptable remembrance.
Why?
None could or would accept the small measure of “choice” implied in this man’s demise. The only possible way the human mind could categorize the event was in terms of murder—not elective suicide.
Few persons could wrap their mind around the idea of “postponement” of the inevitable, in those few incredible minutes out in the open air—free of smoke and terrible flames—the illogical logic of not wanting to be incinerated in choking blackness and screams. . . Yet—it is so remarkably beautiful to come away with a powerful sense of defiance and freedom in that last act—refusal to accept a death chosen for them by brutal sadists on a feckless and twisted Jihad.
To jump and sail free in an impossible escape on the wings of God’s angels—or the simple purchase of five seconds more of precious life—who are we to judge this man or the 200 others and affix blame or assign moral verdicts?
In that moment of 9:41 a.m. September 11, 2001—there is an eternal portrait of a man falling. He who may have greater courage than any human has ever shown. 1,500 feet of flight on a most beautiful day with its morning sun bright and clear, and a casual breeze softly caressing his flight in a transcendent prayer of human dignity.
FREEDOM at any cost.
i looked at my statistics this morning:.
terry.
joined 11 years ago.
Nancy Drew, James Woods asks about you all the time.
Where have you been?
i looked at my statistics this morning:.
terry.
joined 11 years ago.
I looked at my statistics this morning:
Joined 11 years ago
________________
I look back on the topics I started and posts I made and see a life journey, like an errant roadmap leading from smart-ass to Senior knucklehead.
It has been quite a trip!
I miss the wonderful people who passed through these gates who watered at our oasis and went on their way. Great characters no author of fiction would dream of creating, one and all.
More and more folks arrive each month like refugees from a tyrannical overlord purging a fiefdom of dissent.
It is good to keep in mind, these new people are collateral damage in a kind of silent warfare. Newbies are stunned, wounded, angry and bewildered.
They have, what is to the rest of us, the SAME OLD questions, POV's and complaints we here have already hacked our way through with steel-sharp machetes of inquiry and debate. But for them, it is square one.
I just wanted to say on this topic, I think a lot of healing can be done in this place.
I was an angry, chip-on-my-shoulder antagonist when I arrived full of piss and vinegar and very full of myself.
I've been softened into more of a normal human being because of the wonderful patience and love found here.
People come and they go. This is as it should be. But, for those of us who have remained after a decade, we've found something greater than virtual fellowship and social conviviality.
There is something more. . .
the cream rises to the top.
what will happen when 8 million jw's look on the witness stand before the royal commission this friday?
will they see superman.
or only clark kent?___________in the comic books, when superman shows up, readers of the comic already know clark kent has made an excuse to disappear.
I'm pretty much convinced that any JW watching the Royal Commission videos would see things completely at odds with the way Ex-JW's watch and respond.
It is certainly a cognitive tilt, but a psychological defense mechanism, too.
I like to compare it to somebody walking up to you and telling you horrible secrets about your mother. Who wants to hear crap about their won mom? Nobody.
But, they will kill the messenger soon enough.
the mangroves of lollard lane.
(a short story by terry edwin walstrom).
oh, christjust what i needed this morningjehovahs fucking witnesses!.
If that is the new arrangement I definitely will start door to door again.
I was an active Pioneer during the run of to Armageddon in 75 and remember the sense of urgency pumped into the preaching work. A moratorium on Bible studies lasting longer than 6 months was invoked because time was so short.
Previous to that, I know there were many folks who studied with JW's for years without actually getting Baptized.
In fact, there was one fellow in our Kingdom Hall who had come to the meetings without fair for over ten years and never went out in service or made the leap into baptism.
1975 was like a big DEFRAG on the Watchtower hard-drive.
They purged the congregations of lukewarm hangers on. Only the truly scared and stiff-necked fundamentalists remained behind. And that--my friends--is when the INQUISITION period of witnessing began.
the mangroves of lollard lane.
(a short story by terry edwin walstrom).
oh, christjust what i needed this morningjehovahs fucking witnesses!.
I thoroughly enjoyed it...if only this was what actually could happen.
It always seemed to me that Freddy Franz was goading Jehovah with those lame-brain predictions.
Didn't Freddy say: "It didn't happen because YOU BELIEVED it"
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If Jehovah's Witnesses had any true convictions, they would offer a guarantee.
