and love the apple of discord.
(note on the digital version: Like the Principia I'm afraid this loses a bit in the conversion, the original is much more collage like. Someday if I have lots of time I'll convert it to hypertext.)
The Life of Karl Musser
or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Apple of Discord
This story is brought to you by the page of cups.
I am not sure at all that I exist. Nonetheless I shall tell you the tale of my life so far. This story is true in some sense, false in some sense and meaningless in some sense. I shall tell you now that I have freely taken words and ideas from other sources without even giving you a clue as to what they are. A list of works that are not cited will be included in the appendix.
Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. - Emerson
This work is fiction, the people and places and events within are real. Any work claiming not to be fiction is lying.
If you practice being fictional for awhile, you will understand that fictional
characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. -Messiah's Handbook
If organized religion is the opiate of the masses, disorganized religion is the marijuana of the lunatic fringe.
K89GFE
ODD# 3w57t34
The beginning, brought to you by the sun
The time has come to speak of many things, of magic and Goddesses, of cabbages and popes. I shall tell you of my journey that has led me to Eris. Any Discordian is going to have a somewhat convoluted mind, but I shall try to straighten out my thoughts. Perhaps, so as to not confuse my readers utterly I should start n the beginning. The beginning and even the concept of time itself is currently under debate but my personal beginning clearly began with my birth. Or perhaps my parents births as they certainly had an important role in my life and in bringing about my own birth. I depend completely on them for any information about my earliest years. My parents were both born in Ohio, met in college, fell in love, married, moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan and then I was born. My father was (and still is) a newspaper editor, my mother was finishing up college. Soon thereafter we moved to Milwaukee. My memories of Milwaukee are rather vague and jumbled so I shall move right along the conventional space-time continuum to when we moved to Oak Park, a quaint Chicago suburb, three years later. This brings us to the year 3144 (or 1978 by the Gregorian calendar).
I lived in Oak Park for 13 years, this being the bulk of my life so far I shall spend a bit of time on it. Someone in the 1800's once said you can tell when you've reached Oak Park when the bars stopped and the churches started. Hemingway called it a town of broad lawns and narrow minds. I call it home. If you are in downtown Chicago and take the now non-existent "L" straight west, the first suburb you reach will be Oak Park. Get off at Ridgeland and walk south and you're on your way to my childhood home. The Oak Park of today has about 54,000 middle-class people calling it home and is one of the half dozen racially integrated communities in Chicagoland and it was named Tree City USA in 1988. I grew up with block parties and ice cream trucks, skateboards and Michael Jackson. I must say that despite the idyllic setting, my childhood sucked. The reasons I was unhappy are shared by children across the world. I was unpopular, I was picked on, I could count my friends using the fingers on one hand (no using your thumb or tentacles, they don't count). Suffice it to say I was rather lonely. With this rather large void in my life I think it s fairly natural that I tried to find things to fill it.
I have spent much of my life searching for some meaning or purpose in life because it seemed so empty so often. In my childhood I found two main distractions. The first was reading. I was and still am an avid consumer of books. My father read me the Hobbit and Through the Looking Glass to me when I was still too young to read for myself. I have always loved fantasy. I knew all about Middle-Earth, Sherwood Forest, Camelot, Oz, Lilliput, Faerie, Prydain and many other fantastic places as well as the myths of Greece and the Tales of Aesop and the brothers Grimm before reaching the 6th grade. My other hobby that I began rather early was gaming. This is that oddity among hobbies that Dungeons and Dragons belongs to and attracts and accepts social misfits everywhere. It includes much more than just D&D though, there are literally thousands of games out there and my father introduced me to many. Mostly I play board games which don't require as many people or as much of an out-going personality as role-playing does. When one of my few friends wasn't around to play I resorted to solitaire games or making up my own. I've recreated thousands of hypothetical battles in my spare time. Along with this came a fascination with maps, both real and fictional. Creating my own world in fantasy and games helped relieve the isolation I felt from what many people call the real world.
Eris is the Greek Goddess of Chaos
Whom the Romans call Discordia
Childhood is a kingdom where no one dies. Nobody that matters, that is.
Year of Plenty
The 1983/84 school year is brought to you by the queen of pentacles.
I want to talk about my year in sixth grade as it was absolutely critical in my own development of a self identity. Before then I was nothing, I was merely existing without really living. In the 6th grade I suddenly had friends, although I'm still not quite sure where they came from. My ego was born. The most important factor in this awakening was the two teachers I had that year. They had an enthusiasm which is largely absent in elementary school teachers. They didn't follow the textbooks and dared to treat their students as real people rather than targets for their lectures. We learned Swahili, recreated nuclear arms disarmaments talks, held our own presidential debate (Mondale won of course), had trivia contests (in which my geographical knowledge paid off) and a host of other fun activities. That learning could be fun, I think, was a revelation to many of their students, myself included. Two thing in particular stand out.
First, was the reading of The Bridge to Terabithia. With this book I felt much less alone in the world, I could relate better to Jess and Leslie than any 'real' people. Here were two people who found the fantasy world empowering, who didn't follow the stereotypes. My own unconventional interests were somehow validated. It may also have been the first evidence that magic and spirits are real (i.e. not relegated only to fantasy worlds but also present in this one). I shall return to the matter of magic later. The other life shaking happening was my introduction to theatre. The 6th grade produced two plays, the first was And Yet We Survived, a kind of documentary/musical about the role of African-Americans in our history. The other was a stage version of The Hobbit. Both were presented as professional theatre, not as cute kid's plays. We put far more work into these plays than is typical of an elementary school. I enjoyed both being on stage and the work that goes on behind the scenes. My introduction is important because it is the theatre that helped me survive the following two years.
Enough of this white paper and conforming to traditions
(note: after this point the original was written on
a variety of papers and backgrounds and had
symbols instead of page numbers)
My parents have always been a source of support for me. My mom especially has been one of the few constants in my life. She has loved me and encouraged me in everything I do. She also cultivated in me a love for nature. Every summer we went on several camping trips which are my happiest memories from childhood. My love affair with the outdoors has continually been strengthened throughout my life until it came to play the central role it does today. My father was a different matter, to be honest I think I may have given him more support than I've received. His life has been far from stable. I am thankful for the introduction he gave me to fantasy and gaming, but I consider him more like a close friend than a parent. It was when I was in 6th grade that they got divorced.
My mother had me baptized into the Roman Catholic Church when I was born. Since 1st grade I went to the Catholic equivalent to Sunday school, the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. They made a noble attempt at brainwashing which either didn't work or worked too well. Fairly early on I recognized the hypocrisy which is an ailment common to most of Christianity. I understood the principles of the Church and saw that they were not being followed. People don't love their neighbors, forgive those who trespass against them or follow many of the Churches teachings. Catholicism
further reading
http://www.fantasymaps.com/stuff/karl.html
mfg