And as told...

[tsumik]

Erich Claxton. A mystery to most of the world and an oddity to the small percentage of the population that does know him. From the beginning of time man has always asked “Who am I?” Evolution and millions of years have lead to the eventual creation of Erich Claxton. He is I, and we would like to take you on a journey through time to examine how evolution has worked to create him. From Prehistoric times through the modern age, natural selection and dumb luck have retained the aspects of humanity that have created me.

The creation of myself can first be traced back to the Velociraptor. One of the most vicious of the carnivorous dinosaurs learned that working as a group and thinking ideas through resulted in a profoundly efficient way of logic. The saying “Two heads are better than one” must have been a dinosaur saying at first. Where one individual is lacking another takes up the slack. The Velociraptor figured out early that the jock of the times, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, could be effortlessly beaten through skillful cunning. “The Pen is Mightier than the Sword,” or so the Velociraptor thought. The final outcome? I am still here as a descendent of the Velociraptor retaining his group seeking and cunning traits while T. Rex is extinct. The extinction of dinosaurs lended a new creation to help evolve into the eventual me.

That masterful creation was Man. While Homo Erectus never knew he would be me one day, he did portray one of the first mannerisms of myself. Erectus began with simple drawings, paintings and stone sculptures that exemplifies the first hint of any artistic ability. A need to express through the way of visual design. A way to communicate. Maybe one of my ancestors invented the first basis of the alphabet. Just as you could find Homo Erectus Artistis scratching away at a cave mural, you could as easily find me doodling away on Mead College Ruled paper. But Erectus never really thought about himself, he just existed and went day by day getting the things that need done completed.

Another ancestor of mine, the Egyptian slave, went day by day not thinking of tomorrow. Mindlessly carrying out the tasks put before him, he worked hard to avoid the shrewd, merciless whip. I have come to see that success is more often the result of hard work than of talent. The whip master couldn't care less if the slave could roll a limestone block up the side of a pyramid with only two logs (which required a great talent back in those days), but only that he got the block up to the top in place. Working hard usually yielded the least amount of cuts from the whip or in my case, the least amount of mishaps due to procrastination. The mindless slave lost the art of thinking from the time of the Velociraptor.

But another one of my ancestors, the Pharaoh’s assistant, re-introduced thinking. The Pharaoh, chosen as young as six, needed someone to help them rule the empire till they grew older and wiser. The Pharaoh still dictated the final say and the assistant dutifully followed orders. That principle continued down to be me over the centuries that the boss is always the boss, but giving him suggestions and other alternatives gives him more choices. Sometimes he listens and sometimes he goes with his ideas. The same way our President works with his cabinet. Ideally, I would be the perfect member for the cabinet. My parents and I follow the same routine when we talk about family situations. When my parents finalize a decision, I follow it to the letter, whether I agree with it or not. But thinking, still in a stage of infancy, developed into a more complex form to tackle the question 'Who am I?'

The ancient Greeks began the first questions of trying to explain existence. Little did they know that part of their existence was the evolution of me. I feel completely comfortable sitting around philosophizing and really taxing my thinking limits. Besides using science or psychology to explain the world around me, I inherited from the Greeks the ability to think between the lines. To ask why a cup is really a cup, or to wonder why I am me instead of something else having a dream of being me are some of the theories that I try to answer. They developed a way of thinking to answer questions they had about themselves.

But human nature took over and a few Greeks, unsatisfied about thinking about themselves, looked at the places they inhabited. Some people like to give these few thinkers fancy names such as draftsmen, architects, or builders. They cared vastly about how the space they inhabited on earth felt to them. The cave was fine, but with the ability to create a shelter that pleased them, architecture became all the rage. To take a space where humanity resides and make a simple necessity into a luxury is a great skill. Always curious about my environment, I use the principles and ideas that my ancestral Greeks pioneered. I have designed my dream home and constructed simple things such as shelves for my books.

However, too much thinking rots the body if it is not kept exercised and healthy. Exercise and health were no foreign ideas to the first Olympic athletes. Their enormous physiques resembling drawn models from muscular anatomy books dwarfs my physical mass tenfold. I do eat healthy and exercise occasionally but have always valued a lack of circus references when it came to my musculature. The Olympics held as a contest and a demonstration of human physical perfectness doesn’t seem to reside in my future. I am glad a diluted belief in physical flawlessness has filtered down to me in a form of physical maintenance over the ages.

In the time of knights and dragons, when chaos and disease were rampant, beacons of hope emerged. Lords and kings ruling the vast countries before them set just and fair laws. An ancestor of mine probably ruled great tracts of land and an innumerable following of people. People will not follow someone who simply tells them what to do. One needs a level of respect. My ancestor probably protected his people not just by fending off the enemies but by protecting the people from themselves. The day-to-day problems, which people nowadays take to court, were solved by the lord of the realm. I’ve understood that it requires one to be just and fair when helping people or protecting them from the enemies foreign and domestic. Domestic enemies, such as the ones we carry in ourselves prevent us from being truly good.

My ancestor the alchemist, who let the dark half of him rule his mind, let his vile stench seethe from him as he poured hate and pestilence over the victims that passed him. Frigid and unnerving was him put kindly. The shadows followed him, snapping at the heels of those who wandered to close. I act strange and evil for no apparent reason. Some say we all have a devil’s conscience, but the dark resides in me like an oily rancid pool at the bottom of my soul. He did not evolve into me. He leeched along my ancestors like a parasite feeding off the goodness of my other ancestors. Though he lurks in an abyss of myself, another ancestor of mine balanced his evil with his goodness.

Occupied as a small village baker, he talked to people about their daily problems and conflicts. He discovered that listening to people’s problems without giving advice or judging them allowed the individuals to resolve the problem just by talking to someone. The baker regularly had a smile for everyone that passed through his quaint bakery along with a daily splash of cheer. No matter what a person’s social standing or level of affluence, the baker was always courteous and greeted everyone the same. With this I’ve learned no matter what is going on or who is around, a little benevolence and cheer never hurt a situation. The baker knew kindness would never go out of style.

Kindness is pretty universal but one place you will find a great abundance of charity is in religions. Even though the Crusades were anything but kind, I can see an ancestor of mine fighting for the right to pray. I have held religion intensely in my life. My ancestor fought for what he believed in and realized that religion held a personal significance for him. While bludgeoning heads and severing limbs, my ancestor found religion within himself. This took on a whole new meaning in the way he saw the Crusades. He realized that he didn’t need the promised lands to pray, but only the ground on which he stood. Realizing the gravity of his situation, he probably knelt down in the middle of the battlefield and began to pray. One of two events probably took place. One, he lost his head to a Turkish blade or God stepped in a performed a miracle. Needless to say it was his last battle because he a conquered the battle within himself.

We proceed to around the fourteenth century where my ancestors of the enlightenment or the Renaissance lived. With contraptions clicking and spinning around him, my ancestor the engineer used science to solve problems and create apparatuses that made life easier for everyone. Although I’ve occasionally built a clever construct here and there, most have ended up in the circular file. His fascination with building gadgets that accomplish task drove him to the edge of the technological envelope and strange humor in jokes no one understood. Leonardo da Vinci, one of the great engineers of his time wrote all his ideas down backwards so they could only be read in a mirror. “A person with big dreams and visions is more powerful than one with all the facts.” Someone once told me this and I thought of engineers who don’t always have all the facts, but always have big visions of what to do with them.

With big visions, an ancestor of mine composed symphonic pieces with the virtuosos of the time. Flutes, strings and drums moving with rhythm, obey the composer as he takes each on an expedition of feelings and expression. Music has been an extensive part of my life. Over centuries of practice my ancestors learned all the various instruments that have allowed me to pick each one up and learn it like a fish learns to swim. The composer revealed his unspoken thoughts and feelings as he performed each piece for the audiences he drew.

Dramatizing around on a stage, my other ancestor spoke his feelings and thoughts as a performer in a theater. As a talented actor that could take the feeling of anyone without words but just by the tilt of his head or the expression in his eyes, he told everyone whom he portrayed. An incredible romantic that took movie level romances to new heights. From them I learned to express my feeling though music and expression. It lets me be who I want to be and if need be, a person I am not.

A patron of slavery, that is something I have never been. Even though the South has held a strong sense of home and haven, I severely disapprove of the rebel view. Ashamed of the states he loved, an ancestor of mine probably felt the same sneaking slaves to the North. The people of the Georgian plains, or the South Carolina beaches loved dearly by my ancestor, became monsters in front of his eyes. Through my travels I have believe I belong in the South. I seem to be naturally at ease with southern people and conversations flowed from my tongue like sweet white wine. My ancestor surely returned to the South after the Civil War and lived his life gleefully and with joy. His hospitality, a feeling of being free and yet swaddled in a blanket of warmth, showed every time I passed through.

Soaring around through the cotton mounds of white my ancestor, the World War I pilot, spirited the skies like a feather on a bird's wing. The open blue, light and calling from every direction, beckoned one to sail into every volume of space. Gravity’s fingers seem to trail behind as the plane would flip and twirl like a parade baton. I could live in the clouds just as easily as people tell me my head is in them. I have always envied birds and their limitless palate in which to travel. I only wish I could paint the skies as gracefully and easily as they do. This is where my ancestor felt free and alive.

My ancestor during the Depression didn’t need much. He did not own much. My grandfather, born on a small homestead, lived with what little he had, but needed no more. The little he had he cherished and enjoyed. The few marbles and bottle caps he saved were treasures only he could understand. But children only need the odds and ends that they call treasures to host a show and tell to explain who they are.

From all of them I have been give a little piece of history. Millions of years needed to evolve into me has not turned out that bad. I have been able to assemble the large puzzle of who I am from the fusion of my ancestor’s traits. From the cunning Velociraptor to my immaterial grandfather each has determined the final structure of me with their building blocks of humanity. I can proudly claim credit of me, as an expansive collection of the best history has to offer. I am Erich David Claxton. But more importantly, I am history.

Comments

[snappea.livejournal.com]

quite a composition =)