Call Me Benjamin Button

“It is a pity that the best part of life comes at the beginning, and the worst part at the end.” — Mark Twain

Some many years ago — never mind how long exactly — a great and mysterious drama played out on the stage of our mind. In the mind of our stage, it is uncertain if it was the first or the second of the seven stages to achieve eternal bliss. It is the folly of most men to seek answers in the external trappings of recognized achievement, but I found my light under a bushel of denial. Was I only dreaming? Or is this burning an internal flame?

I, Peter, have remembered and relived that drama ever since in recurrent cycles of alternating light and darkness, absence and knowledge. I made a promise to the Peter of that time that there would come a day of understanding and remembrance. We are on the threshold of that new age. Let the shadow of the past be erased by the light of today.

Whatever innocence there may have been in my heart at the time was blasted away. In explosive ritual sacrifice, I became, like you, mortal and vain. My mistakes and transgressions are remembered well by me and by those whom I have harmed. Those whose pain may be your own. I acknowledge, recognize, and accept my duplicity as a creature complicit in the cycles of earth and flesh since that dark curtain came down.