Frontiersman, December 2024

The Mattel Scenario
Sam Aurelius Milam III

I’ve watched anthropologists, archaeologists, and other such people present their discoveries. They proudly present the exquisite religious icons and sacred objects that they’ve excavated from ancient sanctuaries of religious worship. They never hint that the places that they discovered could just as well have been a little girl’s bedroom, and that the things recovered could just as well have been toys and dolls. That’s because careers aren’t built, and funding isn’t granted, based on the excavation of a Barbie Doll.

Silence is Golden
Sam Aurelius Milam III

Listening to the ramblings of nitwits and the ravings of evangelists is a waste of my time and might also be an insult to my intelligence. I’m willing to teach, but not to debate. In a debate, I can’t penetrate the brainwashing. Consequently, I learned long ago to avoid debates. More recently, I tend to avoid conversations of any kind. I’m not particularly interested in hearing what most people have to say.

Insecurity as Job Security
Sam Aurelius Milam III

There are many people in the world who have real problems, people starving because there isn’t enough food, people drinking from rivers that are being used as sewers, people trying to pull other people from under the rubble of destroyed structures, people living on the streets or in refugee camps that are as big as towns, adolescents who’ve spent so much of their lives in refugee camps that they don’t know any other way to live, people who can’t plow their fields because of unexploded munitions, and more.

In spite of all of those real problems, alleged “professionals” are still expending a lot of time and resources coddling befuddled people who don’t “identify” with their gender. Maybe those befuddled people should just check between their legs, accept whatever they find there, get over themselves, and get on with their lives. The “professionals”, who claim to be helping them and who, it seems to me, are merely enabling the commotion, should find something that’s actually useful to do with their expertise, and do it.

Desprair
from the weird stuff collection, by Sam Aurelius Milam III
Written sometime during the 1970s.

Now is the time to try to remember what it was that I was thinking the last time I went out for a while. I had a chance to fly away with a very dear friend who used to know all things that were within the realm of time and space, except for those few articles of faith that are reserved for the lofty of heart and mind. Those were the days. I would rise early, feed the lizard, and march into the marsh amid the hooting and calling of the millions. The days were long then, and cool, with the fragrance of jasmine and wild spices which abounded among the rocks. Gypsies would sing, and I would smile as I climbed the rocks, frisking with the clouds. I could be lost for days and never know it, or be missed. People expected me to disappear and some were of mixed feelings on the effect it might have on the river, which was my responsibility. I kept the river. I preserved it. I loved it. Without the river, my people would have had no place to swim. We were different people then, alive and filled with the peace of our chosen place. We knew our land and ourselves, and we were satisfied. That was before I came upon the new things of today. After that we pursued other goals, and sought other pleasures. Now, we hardly remember the old things, and our lives do not flow from here to there as they did before, but run in random channels which are all at cross purposes with the world. Now, if I leave for a moment, the world collapses around my absence. I am needed, but not for myself. I am needed because I do things. My people have scattered around the world and made great names and reputations for themselves, because no others can do what we can do. That is because no others have had what we have had, and lost. We have the wisdom of despair. We work within the world to hide the things which are no more and could be again if we would allow it. Others call us great. Men see our works and have no notion of the value of play. Since the elder days, I have seen many changes in the world, and have watched the magic, and the warlocks, and the demons vanish. I could imagine them again, but what’s the use? I could never keep them to myself, and others would hate them, fear them, seek them out, and destroy them. Why should I create a wonder for others to destroy? I will keep the knowledge to myself and cherish it. Beyond all else, I must remember myself, and hold myself true to all those old and dear values that I learned in my youth. The things my father knew. Then I can tell my children of the wonders that I saw and loved. They can tell their children, and they theirs. Thus the useless progression of wasted knowledge can travel throughout all the ages of the world, even to the end of time.

—Amen