The Tralfamadorians (standard:drama, 2334 words)
Author: Anonymous	Added: Mar 31 2003	Views/Reads: 3573/2240	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A short story written in letter-form. It's about individualality

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

Starry-night black is the color of my hair. It's a black that holds a
blue tint in the light. So, perhaps I'm not different from all of these 
other followers with their hair dyed unnatural, diverse colors and 
spikes on their belts. 

Stereotyping is a generaliz- 

. . . “The three-axis of evil: Iraq, North Korea, and Iran,” a panelist
is talking about the war, “reminds me of Marijuana, Alcohol, and 
Tobacco. We have to get rid of one of the three, and somehow we have to 
get rid of marijuana, the least dangerous.” He's apparently against the 
war and the decision of the government. . .I concur with him. . . The 
television has caught my attention. Some panel of so-called “qualified” 
people are obviously arguing about the war. 

The war frightens many other people, and me, which goes without saying.
I think back on a book I just read. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by 
Tom Wolfe. Although I am high, I remember this one passage: 

"A person has all sorts of lags built into him. One, the most basic, is
the sensory lag, the lag between the time your senses receive something 
and you are able to react. One-thirtieth of a second is the time it 
takes, if you're the most alert person alive, and most people are a lot 
slower than that. Now, Cassady is right up against that 1/30th of a 
second barrier. He is going as fast as a human can go, but even he 
can't overcome it. He is a living example of how close you can come, 
but it can't be done. You can't go any faster than that. You can't 
through sheer speed overcome the lag. We are all of us doomed to spend 
our lives watching a movie of our lives- we are always acting on what 
had just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second 
ago. We think we're in the present, but we aren't. The present we know 
is only a movie of the past, and we will really never be able to 
control the present through ordinary means. The lag has to be overcome 
some other way, through some kind of total breakthrough. But he's still 
going to be up against one of the worst lags of all, the psychological. 
Your emotions remains behind because of training, education, the way 
you were brought up, blocks, hang-ups and stuff like that, and as a 
result your mind wants to go one way but your emotions don't-"(Tom 
Wolfe) 

At this particular moment, this is how I feel, confused. People always
ask if your scared and a lot of times we answer yes. 

I consume the drug. 

People either live totally in the past or in terms of what they expect
in the future, which amounts to fear generally. So, your taught that 
the key is to live in the Now moment, the Present, sort of speak. But 
since it's impossible to live in the present (due to lags and such) we 
are programmed to live in a lie. 

. . .Hmm. . . 

. . .There was an abduction. . . 

At this particular moment the green ‘89 Honda Accord was screaming West
down I-70 at 88 miles per hour. The stretch of Rocky Mountains was a 
black silhouette against the dark blue sky. I was blatantly grasping 
the pipe and lighter when a small red sports car, directly in front of 
me, slows down quickly- 

I go for the steering wheel and I obviously drop the drugs all over the
car. I try to steer right, but of course, something horrible happens- I 
clip a huge, steaming semi. A heinous crunch of metal and broken glass, 
the car gets completely stifled. The burning smell of rubber arises and 
the car jolts and starts to spin. I hit my fucking ear on the broken 
window next to me and I feel warm blood begin to ooze out. The backside 
of the semi curves to the right, while the front goes left. It creates 
a hellish cage for the defenseless car to slide in to, where the final 
impact occurs as the car flips over. Robin's (my passenger) seatbelt is 
jeered loose easily, since it was already broken. His entire bodyweight 
multiplied with the speed and strength of the impact pushes his 
helpless head towards the windshield, he breaks his neck and dies on 
this impact and I go down with a headache and two broken legs. Bones 
protruding out of the skin, blood everywhere, screams, broken glass, 
horns, screeching brakes. 

. . .But no, I make a swift maneuver and barely avoid collision,
possible death. We pass the red sports car and Robin gives him the 
middle finger. We drive away unscathed, with no body on our hands. Even 
the marijuana was rescued- no spillage at all. . . 

At this moment, the most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was
that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much 
alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his 
funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, 
always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different 
moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, 
for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they 
can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we 
have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a 
string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. 

When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead
person is in bad condition in that particular- 

. . .There was actually no abduction at all. . . 

. . .I read it from a book I read, Slaughterhouse Five. . . 

. . .At this particular moment, I'm typing: stereotyping is a
generalization, an identification of the entire group with a few chosen 
characteristics. What is wrong with that? Well, the most important and 
most dangerous thing is that stereotypes wipe out the uniqueness and 
originality of Individuality. They erase the differences between 
people, differences, which give the value and meaning to our existence. 


According to the Webster's dictionary the word poseur means “an affected
or insincere person.” 

Well, who hasn't been affected during their life? That's what makes each
of us so incredibly unique, we all experience different things. We're 
influenced by different feelings and events: drugs, movies, music, 
marriage, pop rocks, books, love, divorce, hate, betrayal, 
helplessness, shyness, fatherhood, brotherhood, etc.  These are all 
choices that have been sculpted to our names, choices that are 
half-chance. 

At this moment, the drug seems to be floating through my veins: nirvana,
paradise, heaven, fantastic. One with the world. 

“Poseur!” Someone yells. 

“Fag!” Someone presumes. 

“Punk!” Another presumes. 

“Hippie!” “Jock!” “Prep!” “Skater!” “Nerd!” 

The dilemma with individualism is that people ascertain others on
pre-existing stereotypes, which diminishes the chances for many of us 
to get to know each other, thus, we are forced to be judged and “rated” 
as an individual through superficial objects like the clothes we wear 
and the music we listen to. We're oblivious to everything important. 
This obliviousness usually is overcame only when it's too late. . . 

Sadly, as we grow up, we are actually taught to be unhappy. We are shown
what we do not have; we learn that society places value on accumulating 
material possessions, and we found out that success means winning an 
award. Our entire existence is spent yearning for what we don't have, 
and we're convinced that whatever it is we're missing is the one thing 
keeping us from perfect bliss. This is why we become oblivious to the 
things we do have; the things that genuinely make us happy. . . 

. . .The things that genuinely make us happy are the idiosyncrasies in
our lives. The way someone walks, laughs, talks, etc. Things that only 
certain people know about, things that make you who you are. . . 

. . .The key is to look past these pre-existing assumptions before you
judge someone. There are things you can only discover about someone if 
you get to know him or her; these “things” are called idiosyncrasies. 
This is important, because it is observing the little things, the 
idiosyncrasies- the way you laugh or walk- that makes you happy; that 
makes you an individual. 

. . .But we're afraid of something. . . 

. . .You see, we all like happy endings, but we chicken out, sabotage
our chances and have to settle for something like a desk job that makes 
us contemplate swerving into a tree on the way home every night. 

At this particular moment and 1/30th of a second ago, my stomach begins
to feel sick. I'm beginning to overdose on the drug. I'm obviously 
going to die, but I don't know this. 

At this moment I'm having a total breakthrough, sort of speak. And the
questions, 

What happens after death? 

Is there a heaven? 

Is there a hell? 

Does it hurt? 

Why? How? Who? What? Where? When?, these, the questions that can only be
answered in one way, seem to make sense now. 

. . .Perhaps the purpose of philosophy is not to help men find the
meaning of life, but to prove to them that there isn't any. The duty of 
thinkers is not to explain, but to demonstrate that nothing can be 
explained. The purpose of philosophy is not to seek knowledge, but to 
prove that knowledge is impossible to man. . . 

. . .It is this insistence of man upon meaning that makes him so
difficult. He is of no importance whatever in the vast scheme of the 
universe, there is no possible significance that can be attached to his 
activities; it does not matter whether he lives or dies. 

. . .So, what is the real essence of life? Suffering! Defeat and
suffering. 

. . .If I was on Tralfamadore, at this particular moment, I'd be
considered a person in “bad condition.” 

At this particular moment I'm dying happily ever after, AdrianMcIntyre


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