I am a fraud. From the time my Italian mother nudged, pushed and cajoled me from her comforting sanctuary, while I, filled with the new, warm blood of men who breathed the air of Sardinia, cast their shadows in the olive groves of Calabria, fled the shores of Naples to die for Rome, touched and consumed the unspeakable beauty of the greatest...
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I am a fraud. From the time my Italian mother nudged, pushed and cajoled me from her comforting sanctuary, while I, filled with the new, warm blood of men who breathed the air of Sardinia, cast their shadows in the olive groves of Calabria, fled the shores of Naples to die for Rome, touched and consumed the unspeakable beauty of the greatest artists of our species, a blood mixed so thoroughly and intricately with the blood of men who walked with Adams, sailed vast, dangerous oceans to start anew with men who had nothing, understood and revered Washington, Montesquieu, Cicero, the concept of Natural Law and gave every privilege to this rite that it might occur confined only in its scope by the physical and boundless in its scope of the social that I might be born free, I have been a fraud.
Now, this declaration is in no way meant to disparage the Creator since He produces frauds with the same ease and grace as He might expel when producing a genius or even the everyday, genuine-article human being, those who do most of the working, the fighting, and the dying, all for causes laid out so eloquently and capriciously by the frauds and geniuses alike. No, this declaration, that of my fraudulence, is meant as a primer, precursor, to the thoughts and ideas I might lay before you, exposed for your consumption, that you might know of their source, clear, honest, and regardless of an admiration for the flourished, completely humble.
Whatever graces, talents, benefits, I have encountered along the way from that ordinarily biological moment have been cast upon me not without contingences but with the strong (however unheard and unseen for the majority of my life) obligation that they must be used, used in anyway if not to further, benefit those other than myself, but to be used at all and in particular, used other than by myself. My only obligation is to vocalize with deep gratitude my understanding it is there.
It is with that, after many years of failed allegiances, improper alliances that I sit before you writing a treatise with “a pen warmed in hell” as Twain might put it, in a complete state of humility. I am nothing other than a fraud, one of so many out there that has a story to tell. I have no credibility in a particular science, no list of letters after my name and no one, other than my children, seeks my advice. However, through the Laws of Nature, I am equal before the law, to you as you to I, and thus have a right to speak. It is not that this writing comes from prophecy but comes from the complete inheritance of so much that has come before us, filtered and channeled through a pen, on loan that I might use it and use it I shall.
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