I have, in the last, sent Achlleas the responses to his emails by email or skype, as they do not appear for so long and he has been nice enough to do critical reading for me. But skype says I am not me and emails are beyond me until mid April. So it goes up now, out of turn.

When I was severely injured, Achilleas sent me cheering emails, and when I could talk, we skyped. He is a stout man that would serve well in a shield-roller and has been involved in combat sports, to include a Dog Brothers gathering in Greece. He is very concerned about the direction of his nation, his people and his gender. Below is an outtake from his email from some months ago that I promised to address when I could get my head screwed on straight for a conclusion of this section of the Sons of Arуas project.

Achilleas wrote an introduction to Sons of Arуas, which I am going to use as the introduction to Shrouds of Arуas, for the simple reason that I cannot edit these histories as I wanted, because I am too techtarded to use old texts with residual macroshaft formatting. I will edit Shrouds as I did Songs, with it slated for publication on this site this spring. But Beasts and Sons must remain the error-pocked drafts they are.

Also, in a completely unrelated note, you should check out two reddit groups. One is the "martialarts" reddit group and the other the "fightporn" one. I don't know if you should write an article about these two groups on reddit (we all talk of "redditors" or "reddit brain takes" already, so you would be punching down talking negatevily about these desperate souls), but nonetheless, please do find the groups and read what they write.

The "martial arts" one is full of people who train in martial arts but when you see their posts you would think that you are reading the rumblings of persons who are either insane or have some case of severe OCD. Even martial artists have ended up being nutcases in 2023. The other group (the /fightporn one) shows some pretty horrific fighting videos (some of the people getting hit get severely brain damaged) but the guy (?) that runs it, doesn't let anyone make off-color remarks. Because, you know, you can always watch a guy get his life changed forever by getting beaten, close, to death but don't you dare make a trans joke. This world is mad Mr. LaFond. And thank God for me always going back to the books of Tolkien, Howard and Gemmell to find solace. Take care. Until next time.

-Achilleas

…

I have never been on that site. I don’t go to sites. I just write. I do recall that when our Baltimore Travel Guide was reposted on that site that “it sank like a stone” according to my editor, because we marked off Perkins Homes as a red zone. [0]

One of the site moderators had attended a university in Baltimore, had driven through there, claimed it was paradise and implied that we were racist. We were “fact checked.” I and numerous friends have dealt with violence at Perkins Homes. It was the base of operations for two different burning of East Baltimore in 1968 and 2015.

So, I understand from that, that such readers and online discourse, will be mainstream modern, in other words, absolutely averse to REALITY. Keep in mind that I will always be regarded as a poor historian (inquirer into the past) not just because of my complete lack of education, but more importantly, because I have pursued combat arts for self-improvement and recreation, fighting for money and/or fame, being the only modern rationale for such activity, which means that I am INSANE.

We read mythic fantasies by storytellers such as Howard and Tolkien, to remain sane in a mad world. In traditional times story telling had the central focus of the community, who often awaited a visiting story teller, either of fable or of distant events—probably of both: long truth and short truth. This had the effect of giving the usually physically isolated community a rudder of sorts, imagining their village, their mead hall, originally their camp, as a vessel sailing and roaring upon the sea of fate. [1]

Stories and news reaffirmed their navigation of the stormy ocean of competing human societies and overarching calamities. [2]

Note that in the Odyssey, Odysseus was granted hospitality as an impoverished and unarmed wanderer. His grim fate was a cautionary tale, and so tossed him upon the weaving loom of the fates [3] that he made an excellent news bringer to men of the class which he had formerly occupied. If he had sought protection and residency, he would have been enslaved, like Patroclus by Achilleas, like the errand runner he boxed in the doorway.

This is the second eldest, Omega man strand, the first being the Shaman, the Weird One, the Outcast. The wanderer is the primitive news bringer. That thirst of people stuck in a situation for news is primal and has been fully weaponized by our media age rulers. Marno, from Melville’s Typee is a classic example. [4]

Here I relate a less well known example.

William Morely, in 1730s England, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Ireland, escaped perpetual bondage round about ten times, having been owned by as many masters. He was literate and had been a legal and mechanical apprentice. As he wandered along escaping various civilized malefactors, being helped by at least 7 by name, with gifts to aid him on his way, he walked by the dwelling of “an Indian King” somewhere near Elizabethtown, NJ.

A Negro slave working in the garden told Moraley that his Master, an Indian King, wished to see him, Moraley was not armed. The Indian King owned three Negro slaves and three European slaves. He had the power to hold Morely. But what was far more important, was a story, news of the world, afar and in the past:

“How are other Kings, my unknown counterparts, faring across the world?”

“Had your people any storied kings? What were their stories?”

Above I suppose some curiosity on the part of the minor King who had mutton brought for his guest. That man was curious of places far away across time and space. For his time and space was being assailed by madness: a collective English drive to destroy the very rivers and forests that sustained life, for one. For another, the replacement of the sustaining voluntary bonds of honor, with the fleeting bondage of paper and coin…

For we few sane souls cast overboard in this seething sea of insanity, a story from out of a less mad past, might provide for us that buoyancy that a coffin bobbing up from a sunken ship offered a drowning sailor.

As for the very nerdish, OCD “martial arts” search for perfection, and the parochial debates over the best punch, best knife, ultimate gun, perfect “art,” all of this to me screams Plato up from the well of souls. The search for perfection of form is where Arуan conquest and dominance eventually takes its descendants. This alchemical search for perfection in form, Bruce Lee’s “straight blast” Brazilian Jujitsu, the Colt 0.45 APC, this is the dungeon of souls that fills up with the desire to dominate still straining from within the fraying psychic bloodline. But this drive is trapped within the slave pen civilization that in the long ago the undiluted actors originally conquered, cursing their sons to quarter slavery, then half, then most, then full…

Those martial arts ethereals you speak of, to me, on my last leg, serve like the murmur of some alchemists in their study trying to design the perfect weapon while Dog Soldier, my Cheyenne roommate, chants in the next room, both of us, in our own way, getting ready to walk to the park, put on our gloves, and box.

Barely able to walk, boxing is about all I have left. It isn’t much, won’t save the world and not even me—but it is at least real, a salve fort he soul assailed from every jabbering quarter by its opposite.

…

Notes

-0. Those projects have since been condemned, though murders, rapes and robberies, car jacking uppermost, still occur there.

-1. The small ship of sail is the dominant narrative motiffs in The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Argonautica, The Aenied, Beowulf and the equally mythic Voyage of The Mayflower, and the Pequod of Moby Dick. Tolkien, a superior genius, uses the winged ships as epilogue biers, rather than as prologue vectors like the rest.

-2. The importance of cataclysm and natural calamity in social origins and tribal generation myths, brings the shallow draft “wave rider” “swan” or “sea hawk,” upon the poet as the introductory device, so that the listener recalls within that we all journey, especially when bound in place.

-3. I do think that Penelope, weaving upon her loom for 20 years as Odysseus sought with her to reunite, served the poet as an internal metaphor for Fate, weaving with a heavenly cord, earthly discord.

-4. Inspiration for my book Taboo You.