I have begun to tire of the mask I have created myself. I have been posting as Treban Lukes, the protagonist in a short story I wrote many years ago. I have done this because I am job seeking and was afraid my occasional radical rants might infringe on my job hunt. I am done with my mask. I have yet to find steady employment - I am no longer concerned that this, my special space, will keep me from a job.
My name is DuWayne Brayton. There I have said it and I feel good for it. I have come to hate what I have come to feel is a deception of sorts. I think most who read here have learned that Treban is a pseudonym - I haven't hidden it - but I still feel its not quite honest. I have in the past tried to be what I am not. A few years ago I realized that I am a man of many experiences and that the reality is plenty exciting enough that the fantasy was really just so much bullshit. I have come lately to feel that the mask I have worn as Treban is a similar construct. A shield to keep people from knowing me. No more.
I am a good man. Not great - but good. I seek to be the reflection of the man I would be proud of my son becoming. I will not hide my candle as it were. I am a radical and I am angry. I am tired of this country representing power more than people. I will not induce change in any reasonable fashion by hiding myself. My name is DuWayne Elvin Brayton and I am angry. My shell has been discarded and I am awake now.
Treban was/is a great man. A man I strive to be. Treban was imprisoned because he felt that the "Utopian" society he resided in was peopled by nothing more than automatons. He felt there had to be more than meaningless work, meaningless recreation, meaningless procreation. He was a deviant and as such was taken apart from society to be "re-educated" - he would not be broken. He was then invited to be a part of the powers that be - he could not help maintain the status quo. He was then killed - he died, a free man. Treban fought to change a system inherently designed to function like a machine. He was a flawed part of the machine - flawed because he felt life was/should be more. He followed the heroes journey and died a martyr. He affected/infected enough cogs in that great social machine that the destruction of them all would destroy the machine.
It is my sincere hope that we all can "awaken." The machine that is America is broken - yet functions on some level. It is time to bring that machine to halt. We need to rebuild the machine. Equality, freedom, liberty are not just clever catchwords. They are the bedrock upon which this republic stands. It is time to repair that foundation before it crumbles to nothing and America becomes an unfortunate footnote in history. We were a great nation - we will be again.
DuWayne E. Brayton
I will post the story in it's entirety if I can find a copy. I wrote it for a class project in the seventh grade and havn't seen it for years. It may in fact be lost. If so I will try to reconstruct it as accurately as possible.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
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1 comment:
DuWayne, I hope you can find your story, I would be very interested in reading it!
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