One of our own.

How cruel the fate of man? Left to his own devices, he works and strives for his own survival, as does the humble plant or the peaceful dove.

But let us not forget the redness of nature - that fires consume the silent forest, that talons rip feather from flesh, that treachery lurks at every turn.

Such is the way things work - a natural revolution of fate and circumstance.

But man! Oh interesting visage of defiance! He would not fall to nature! He would not allow the redness to taint him. Instead he would order his own paint!

Weakness - the fuel for the fire of life, the pre-existing catalyst for evolution, the building block of progress. Man saw his own, and sought to eradicate it.

For his armor, he built walls. For his helm, towering buildings that serrate the skies. For his pace, he made cars. For his freedom, he conquered the skies with metal bastions.

For his survival, he works.

"Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work - Pride is the result." - Ayn Rand

And for his pride, man sought destruction.

Born in creation's hands, man took heel to his peers and wandered the lower castes of the hierarchy of life, victim to passion and impulse; slave to instinct.

That weakness was identified. That weakness was decimated.

Man soon found a new purpose - his existence. Self-worth overcame his primal urges and preservation followed suit. It was the beginning of an ideal, and it dug a grave for his soul.

Like all ideas, man's ideal of existence grew by leaps and bounds. He sought out being and from it derived pleasure and purpose. From the luxurious mansions of gold and silver came his Kingdom of Man-made Heaven.

Man wanted up, and he made that his Reason.

"I think, therefore I am." - Descartes

The functional purpose of a man is to think, to create a mountain range of ideals and impose his will upon his peers, the nation and ultimately, the world. he would change the clockwork of life and bend its steel to his whim.

Thought birthed Reason and Reason fathered Productive Work and Pride. Pride made History, Present and Future.

But when Reason is for Reason's sake, all that man made of himself is a redundant mess of chaos and destruction.

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." - Issac Newton

An increasing cost for material substitutes the decreasing value for morality; man works, man makes, and man gets.

Man loses as well, but he doesn't realize that loss until his soul lies empty with the purpose that he created. He chose to ignore his bankruptcy of morality and its cry for help.

I am not discounting the need for material progression, but to those who strokes the wolf of Thought, beware the fangs of Reason.

For hands who feed are often bitten.

Antonio

It ain't the Shangri-La, but I'll take it anyway

Light.

Three hours a day, I get a dose of sunshine. Every single day, I take in the bright warmth. Nothing stopped me.

This time it was different.

I wait for the dust to settle before I opened my eyes - the sound of screeching destruction stopped and the soft inviting hiss of the crumbling walls took over. I remember myself screaming for dear life, telling God that I did nothing to be in this shit and that if he took me today I'd pop him one good one. He must hate me a lot because he's left me alive and taken the rest. He wants me to know that I owe him one now, and when the time comes to pay him back, he can drown me in interest.

Talk about inbetween a rock and a hard place. Literally.

I chocked. Took me all the strength I had left to lift the damn stone wall that collapsed and saved me from the rest of the roof.

Sometimes in life we make mistakes, and we hate ourselves for it. This one takes the cake.

Just outside the piece of rubble I crawled out undernearth was the severed body of the asshole who threw kettles at me. All's fair as I smashed his ugly pie with the biggest rock I could find. Lo and behold, my letter fell from his pockets. Stained red with german blood. I'll get more merit for this one I guess.

It's a mad house - bodies thrown around, above and under. The runway's painted red from the burning metal and dripping with the boiling blood of the pilots. There's nothing in sight that's taller than a four-year old.

The fly boys did a pretty clean job this time round - no cars, no bikes, not even a freakin bicycle for me to steal. I'll blowup one of their planes and see how they like flapping around in wax feathers... That should teach them some consideration.

The hot sand burns through my boots and wakes reality from inside me. I remember the last time I saw my jail cell. The officer dragged me across the grimy floor to the beating of a lifetime, shoved the letter in my face and told me to deliver it so I can kiss the sunlight again.

Life's full of these little ironies where you find yourself out of the frying pan and into a bonfire of the decade.

They simply took the jail cell and replaced it with two fuckin big countries throwing bombs at each other. I hate germans - too proud for their own good. Makes it worse when I can't understand what they're trying to say.

And all they do is keep shouting at ya. Dumbasses.

So when I walked past this lunatic screaming at me, pointing fingers at my face, I let him know what I thought about his attitude.

"Go learn English, asshole."

I looked at the map inside of my head - they made me remember it so the enemy wouldn't know whre even if they captured me.

It's not far now... all I had to do was keep walking towards the sun.