Have You Ever Felt The Feel Of Status?

the thing is... i'm near to certain you ain't gonna understand. but i s'pose i gotta tell you. or i should tell you. or i might as well tell you. At the very least.

it ain't so much that it were a different time - it was to be sure - but what it is at the heart of not understanding has less to do with a historical shift in perspective and more to do with the simple fact that a story changes over time. hell, when a story is actually happening it ain't even a story. it's just an "is," a some kinda thing simply going on. the story of it don't come 'til later. the story of it usually shows up on the doorstep right about the time it becomes necessary to actually understand just what it was that happened. sorta like the science you learn in grade school: you learn that your body needs to breathe in order to survive but that don't mean that the first breath you ever took was sitting in some school desk staring at the blackboard. sure it's easy to conflate the act of breathing with science proper, but not knowing how your lungs work don't make them do so any less.

hell, now i'm talking in circles - an easy fix to get yourself in when you get to be in my position. but like i say, the story and the thing are two different things entirely, and, in this particular case, so much so you ain't likely to understand much if any of it. but you're here. listening. and i'm already set to talking so i might as well keep on.

they say the best place to start is at the beginning though some would contend that the just before ain't bad neither. right before the stranger shows up in town, when all is still right with the world, but as i got no stranger to talk about as such i s'pose i'll start somewhere between the eleventh and twelfth shot he fired straight into that animal's skull. it was the twelfth what finally done it so i reckon that the important one. the one that counts.

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i have read the diary of Jerimiah Edward Macintosh nearly every evening for the last seven weeks, and each time i begin again with the hope that i will glean some new... something, some previously hidden fact, a deeper insight into who he was. but while it always feels as if i am reading it with fresh eyes, i have as of yet not been able to walk away with anything more concrete than i did on my first reading. the simple story plainly understood. not simple but rather... innate. it's almost as if i were breathing his words. automatically. necessary. unnoticed. i, of course, will return again this evening, though i expect little in the way of revelation. though, as always, some small part of me clings to the possibility.