Home and Other Strangeness

‘Home.’

The word sounds almost alien. It is a fantasy word, a concept at best meaning nothing at all. It is an abstract construct much like ‘god,’ ‘family, ‘and ‘love.’ Words forged generations upon generations ago out of some sort of communal weakness when the man-children lived in a land that was wrought with danger and from a time where camaraderie was needed in order for the clan to survive. People need to be together so the hunt may go on, so that the gatherers have someplace to put their shit.

For them, ‘home’ acted as the protector from the denizens of the darkness. ‘Home’ keeps the beasties with the glowing eyes out of bounds. It holds the old fears at bay and creates new ones that are spawned from that quasi-dimensional space that only exists at the very instant between wake and sleep.

It is during the early years of the man-child that ‘home’ has the perverse oddity of being the entire world. Nothing exists beyond it. It’s just ‘home,’ and it is everything. It’s where Mommy and Daddy live, or maybe one or the other, sometimes neither. It’s where brother and sister play, if siblings are involved. ‘Home’ is the Alpha and Omega of happiness and security. It’s where the food comes from. It’s where the warmth comes from. ‘Home’ is where the toys are.

Instinctively, the man-child knows when they satisfied and satiated with their vision of ‘home.’ Their brains engage and they learn the language to ‘home.’ It is the beginning of a sublime culture whose seeds are dormant within each man-child that has been or will ever be.

The man-child will also know when that place called ‘home’ does not match that vision encoded into their racial memory. ‘Home’ may not be the end-all and be-all of security or happiness. It may be the antithesis. Food and warmth could be scarce. In these cases, ‘home’ is where the man-child wishes to be. Unconsciously, they will begin to mold their vision of what ‘home’ should be and start to pour energy into bringing that faint fantasy into some semblance of reality.

Younger man-children may hear words like ‘zoo,’ ‘office,’ or even ‘grocery store,’ but they are places that are not ‘home.’ They know this through sheer instinct and rudimentary understanding of both verbal and nonverbal communication. They often don’t want to go to these places. They want to either stay ‘home.’ They are ill-prepared for such a culture shock at a tender age. It is strange and frightening and the young man-children will often bring about events to acquire attention so that someone will take them ‘home.’

There is not necessarily any kind of loyalty that his keeping them tied to a particular geographic location. It’s that they do not want to leave their ‘home’ because they know it’s not safe outside. Outside is where the monsters with the glowing eyes live. Outside is not ‘home.’

It’s amazing how these primal instincts are lost as the man-child matures.

The metamorphosis to adolescence is a difficult process for the man-child. This pupal man-child rages against all that it had held in a reverent place. It is usually not an intended reaction, but instead it is more of an internal struggle trying to shed the tropes and traditions of their prior stage of life.

Books and toys are changed to more age-appropriate conventions as deemed by the changing man-child. They may still be books and toys, but they are now oft overpriced causing the parents some disdain and difficulty as they want to provide a better ‘home’ for their offspring than what they themselves had.

In most cases during this insane time of change, the world of the man-child expands exponentially. The offspring begins to keep secrets from the parents and other agents of authority. The offspring will push on previously established boundaries in order to test the resolve of their parents and agent provocateurs in order to find out a new definition of ‘home.’ Power struggles take place, but the man-child now has new tactics.

Hurtful words and actions spew forth from the pupae in rebellion to what they once were and in consternation of the change that they are undergoing. They see themselves caught between two cycles. They are a part of both, yet not completely. The pupae has no other tool but to be caustic to it’s surroundings. In a myriad of insane actions, it tries to destroy its ‘home.’

The offspring learns how to tap into that primal darkness. The shadowy seed that they were so afraid of, maybe mere months prior, fuels them into new places and extremes. Anger, fear and anxiety feed the man-child during this stage of their metamorphosis. As innocent as the younger man-child used to be, the adolescent is as dark. A bleak expanse is explored and developed. Tools are created in order to survive the monochromatic landscape that the man-child now sees.

Lines of communication cease between the adolescent man-child in their pupal stage and their parental figures. If conversation is to take place, it is often minimal and as monosyllabic as possible. More often than not, the responses from the offspring consist of a series of noncommittal grunts, gestures or silence.

Thus, the dance begins.

The offspring spends more and more time in that forgotten darkness that was so frightening during their earlier stage of growth. The seduction from this shadow calls to them and they listen because they are too much alike. That shadow caresses their wounded feelings, expanding and contracting like a darkened heartbeat that pumps life into new fears that have come to surface from that primal shadow.

The intensity of emotional turmoil at this stage is nearly incomprehensible for offspring and parent alike. It is always a personal battle against one’s own darkness that is taking place within the adolescent man-child. Parents can rarely help except to wait as the man-child goes through their painful metamorphosis in order to break through the chrysalis that they have wrapped around their psyche.

Sometimes, as in life, the offspring never mature out of this particular stage. They are stunted and lost in the darkness. They react, they run to just run. The destination rarely matters because the offspring is searching for something that they have inherently destroyed as they are struggling with their emotional chrysalis. They are running for safety from the darkness. They’re running ‘home.’

Pain and anguish course through the still developing mind of the pupal man-child. They know no other skill other than to rebel for the sake of rebellion. They often cruise through a world that is malnourished, malcontented and maladjusted, much like their primordial ancestors. Daily tasks seem to be an impossible task. Kindness is warped around a new vision and skill set that is being developed – abuse.

The darkened man-child now suffers from acute retardation as they hold onto that chrysalis that was designed to be disposed after morphogenesis. Development is at a standstill as ignorance reigns supreme. Everything is static at this point. There is no longer a dynamic learning as the man-child is set into a belief that they are now imago. Sadly, they are just stunted and not emotionally ready for such things as the imago deals with in their daily life.

Often, the kindest action towards one of these retarded man-children will result in an expectation of more and a clinginess that is difficult to sever. Once the kindness is refused, the malicious man-child will see the owner of that hand as an enemy. Retribution in those cases is egregious and swift on the part of the retarded man-child. Deep emotions run towards an antithesis of what is universally perceived as ‘love.’ It fills the same void and sprouts even more darkness.

This confused adolescent sees plots and scandals against them where none exist. Their vision is clouded and mind muddled because of the remaining ebbs of ebon tentacles that have an established stranglehold upon them. In an effort to escape from the darkness that holds them fast, they inadvertently rush further into the massive void, further away from true help and true light. They run headlong from what they could have become. They are not imago even if the man-child reaches sexual maturity.

The lost man-children are not alone on the path that they have chosen. If you ask them, they will say that the choice was forced upon them. They will often find others along the way much like themselves. These others have not yet broken through their own emotional shells as well. Kindred spirits in darkness, they begin to form bonds. These emotionally stunted band together in some mutated semblance of a ‘home’ as seen through scarred and tainted eyes. They will attempt to rebuild a ‘family’ that will be a dark mirror of what should have been.

This compulsion to return to a safe place within the vast and surrounding darkness is symbolic of the sanity that was once had striking out against the alien and barren environment. It is a response mechanism hardwired into the man-child. It is the last remnant, the last chance to be imago. The newly formed ‘home’ is not built on the things that one would call ‘love’ or ‘family.’ It is more a den of predators.

Animal hierarchy reigns in these hovels of humanity. It is not at all like a hive mind. It is less organized towards the prosperity of the collective. It is mammalian in nature. The goal is the advancement of the Alpha. There is a pecking order and harsh retribution for falling out of line. The relationships are abusive and severe. This is that ancient and racial memory surfacing to manifest into the physical world to attack the light. It fights and struggles within the human hosts, spreading like a virus infecting neighboring enclaves with a scant touch of an infected hand.

It is aberration incarnate.

Society as a whole breaks down with the onset of the darkness rising within their community, within what they consider their ‘homes.’ They want to run, but the infected are what they consider, ‘family.’ They want to rebel and defend themselves against the mentally immature yet fully grown man-children, but they feel a perverse form of what they call, ‘love.’ They are hopeless and pray to their omnisciently and omnipotently silent ‘god’ for guidance.

As the darkened individuals move about their misbegotten communes, their disease and entropy spread creating gaping holes in what was a once wholesome community. The ancient seeds of darkness and fear within these vessels plant themselves and grow to new heights as the light withers, shrinks and dies from the presence of the newly created shadows.

Voids are filled with the entropic visions of those malformed man-children. Decay flourishes within those existing shadows pushing on the boundaries of the light. The war is fought mostly in silence as those who were imago scatter from those who are not leaving more voids for the dark man-children to fill with their caustic cancers.

The feral mammalian beasts who live in the shadows replicate, generation after generation unable to find the security and safety that they crave. ‘Home’ is a lost and twisted concept at this point. They have been running and fighting for so long that this is what they see as the norm.

They know war and violence in defense of their ‘family.’ They know no tolerance towards their fellow man-children. They bear them no ‘love.’ They only wish to increase their own powerbase because it distances everyone else away from tender and shredded hearts and minds. The chrysalis remains attached to them, shattered and ugly. The sad little beings cannot fly.

Yet, they are still drawn a memory of the light.

They crave the warmth that they fought so hard to extinguish during their great rages. Deep within their broken and warped shells these grown man-children want to feel the ‘love’ that they had dreamt about. They want to have the company and passion that only an imagined ‘family’ of imago can provide. Sadly, they still defend their darkened territories and hearts with a fierce determination that is reminiscent of starving animal defending a fresh kill.

For fear of losing everything, these emotionally immature man-children follow the same patterns and lines that have been established by others that have gone before them. They cannot change because that change may be detected as a weakness. In their strangely lit world, weakness means death.

The cycles perpetuate themselves within the new ‘family’ until the fear has been forgotten or there is no fear to be had. This is usually when these stunted and retarded man-children finally slough off the remaining chrysalis to see the beautiful creature that they are. They have finally become the imago.

With tearful eyes, the newly created imago of man looks back upon the wretched path of darkness and often plays a game of ‘what-if’ with their memories. Some of the imago will immediately skitter back to the darkness because the revelation that it was their own choices that put them into that black and terrible space is too much for them. Fear still holds them. They are forever lost and now become the creatures with the glowing eyes that we are trained to avoid.

Those finally coming through the transition are never as bright as the imago that didn’t walk that dark and lonely path of destruction, but they have a radiance that cannot be denied. These imagines have power that is just as potent as their brethren, but are still looked down upon from society as a whole.

New trials begin for these man-children. They understand that they cannot go skittering back into the dank dark from which they came, so they have to learn to cope in a different way. The battle tactics are slightly different in the lit world where they have chosen to build their ‘home.’

The chrysalis that once warped their viewpoint and caused them to react is no longer in place. The new imagines can see the attacks for what they are. It is the fear from their more allegedly ‘pure’ brethren and those that they have left behind in the darkness. Even though the taint is no longer residing within these newly formed man-children, they are still seen with that stigma by the others.

They are truly bridging the two worlds at this point. Belonging to neither light nor darkness, these man-children are viewed as some sort of mutant half-breed belonging to both but accepted by neither.

The advantage that these imagines have though is the fact that they chose to change. They chose to become who and what they were instead of following the dictions or rules of society. Through brutal battles against their brethren, parents and themselves, they found a place where they felt comfortable. They found safety and camaraderie. They found that they had the power all along and needed to run nowhere. ‘Home’ was with them all along.