A Highlight Piece We Recently Used:

THE STAGE

by: Edmund Buck

On the day I woke and truly opened my eyes for the first time and beheld the real world I saw: Behind me, the tribulations that caused this trauma became transparent. Before me, this tremendously treacherous trek with the treasure of enlightenment at its end.

I traveled many trails and trudged along through the thickets of my trials until I reached the stage where this was to all unfold.

I am a man that tends to be more temperate by nature, so naturally I was a little tentative as I approached this overtly turgid theater. There was this mounting trepidation that seemed to tempt my tepid temperament.

Something was definitely different here. There was turmoil in my mind. It felt like a storm was raging, twisting and turning my thoughts. Rationalism and emotion became entangled and this confliction caused me to thrust myself through that threshold which made my tabernacle tremble with a seemingly tactile temerity as I raced, terrified, toward the top of what turned out to be a towering inferno.

It’s at troubling times such as these that I tend to consider this theory of how the tactless tactics employed by a truculent father, during my formative years, must have tainted and tarnished the tenet that was etched into the tablet of my being, and how the resulting tension may have tempered the template of my tendencies.

I had reached the top. At the apex I stood alone. Although tacit and tetched from a tapering tailspin I smiled. Because in that moment I realized the realness of my reality, and that clarity of mind comforted me. I tilted my head toward the sky and the sun warmed my face just as I stepped off the ledge.

In that instant I understood. And just before hitting rock bottom I think: How true it is that taedium vitae is truly tantamount to total tarnation.