The Tall Man

Doing the right thing

This just came up.  And I figured I'll take the keypad to it … as it unfolds in my insights. Its not quite picture and then the words … the way I used to do it in my teens. Its a bit of passions … and then my view of what that is … representing in some way … a Rorschach test … of silhouettes against the light of enthusiasm within. And then I made contact with his presence after all these years. Its the tall man … that I've always known in some way but was never formally introduced to.

 

I seem to remember how … in the early years of my study … in my enthusiasm for the vibrant awakening of the mind … I had fancied him to be the Christ. And then on another occasion … he was Albert Schweitzer in dark Africa. And then again … lying down  on the bed in the hospital … he was the doctor with that impeccable bedside manner. I used to remember that his arm was slender … with veins raised … and the fair complexion of the Caucasian.

 

On many other occasions … I had him mixed with my favorite heroes on the screen … including of course John Wayne … and Roger Moore. But I was surprised that in the American experience he had grown so completely weather beaten and hard … making for the proverbial pioneer and frontiersman … bound for new directions … never before witnessed in the world's experience. And then one day … while watching the Robert Redford movie … ' Three Days of the Condor ' … I came to shock … that changed my impression of him forever.  He was that man … with the shotgun over his arm … walking his dog … who killed all the people … in the Historical society covering for the CIA station.

 

I did my best to dismiss the memory. But then again … on another day … I saw the visual impact of an atomic bomb … the roar that seemed to be every where … the fire storm … that razed everything in its path … and then looming above it all … the tall cloud like a mushroom … that declared itself born of the mind of man. I was at that time … at a certain achievement in my learning … otherwise … in respect of my relations with him …  I would have feared for my mortality.

 

It was the tall man … and I think for a while I felt that … I despised all men. But what it caused was … a loss of hope in the dreams … that the tall man had brought to my child in our dreams.  I scrambled to find a new footing … and like the son who climbed over the top of his father … I was keen to seek knowledge on my own … and not rely on anyone … certainly not the tall man … to bring it to me.  It was the beginning of my madness … to push myself beyond all limits that I have ever known.

 

I had thereafter formed a curious habit of staring into the faces of my Caucasian friends. This includes my brothers-in-law … in Australia … Germany … and the US. I couldn't of course be sure what it was. But at the circus … I was staring into the face of the lion trainer … or in videos of bull-fights … the face and eyes of the matador. I had missed something about the tall man … in my acquaintance … and was trying to find what it is.  It occurred to me later … that the tall man was in many ways … synonymous with my experience of father.

 

It was about this time that I broke with Vishnu … the Indic God of preservation … and the subject of many legends about heroes. It left me empty of any experience of faith.  I began a trek into the thoughts of the early Indic seers … who looked into the face of reality … and made stories of heroes and villains … with no indication of who they are … or where they're at. What's their racial profile … or nationality … or did that matter? The Indic devotee it seems had accepted it all … without question … and then opened his eyes to a world of divisions … genders … and racial profiles … and the enigma of the tall man.

 

' I'm going to kill you Nat!' … called the Marshall from his horse … as he faced four gun men on the open range. And Nat replies … ' I call that big talk for a one-eyed fat man.' It was a scene from the movie … ' True Grit ' … and it followed a series of episodes … that persuaded me to restore my relations with the tall man. … by the persuasion that he himself has been shoving great initiatives to live the promise.  It was obvious to me by then … that it wasn't simply the Caucasian reference. It was a reference to anyone who stood for the right thing … and was prepared to make things work. My child needed assurance on that.

 

The expression … ' walking the talk ' … is a significant part of our experiences … and has helped to encourage a greater effort … at doing and to aim for physical achievement. But so is doing things right the first time … or if that has fallen by the way … to raise it up … and learn to do it again. In the trek we undertake for thought management … we come to be presented with new alternatives … in comparison with the old. And in the manner of the frontiersman … we can learn again to keep … the blade on the Bowie sharp.

 

Its not about … screwing it to the sticking point … but to know that when the situation so demands it … we will do the right thing. I tell the child in me … that I've come to understand the tall man better … and in the process … my father … and I'm not going to insist that he convince me.  But the nature of children grows restless … and the tall man … must surely realize his need to respond to it. In that he may be faced with … the need to kneel in front of the bull … before the spectators in the ring … and call on providence to decide who lives or dies. And let the children of the world know … that providence continues to store the magic of life with him.

 

A belief in invisibility can come from the fields of combat … or the immortality notion from the hallowed halls of faith … but its also the stuff of fancies that children get into. The tall man will no doubt realize … that what he represents to people every where … is the stuff of magic … combined with the will to achieve it in reality. He is the custodian of such a belief … and it forms the heritage of the world. In the expression of it … he must realize that the world depends on him for it.

 

Beyond the mere realization of his role in the life of the world … I've no doubt that he is trained for a greater specialization in the universe. That may be a feature of our future specie life. Its for him to relate to that … and to come to understand that better. Its no mean phenomenon that he is associated with. Its the genus and potency of creation … brought into the dawn of the world's existence. He must perchance rise to meet it.