R1 of RR Debate Tourney: USM vs MiG

Without further ado, I will make my story. :-)The evening remained in procession and was calm, as silent with a few rushes of wind under a generally unobstructed sky, and the darkness provided a somewhat solitary prospective here—for a Nathaniel who, awoke at the very hour, appeared to be in the moment of contemplation. It was unusual that, in an unprofitable world long dispossessed of meaning, a thought would come where a vacuous contentment would suffice; the waking man finds himself aspiring, having felt so deeply the grains of time in his bare hands,--lightly and with the buoyancy of a bird to some dimension posited by his thought. He would, as if dogged by the resonance of such words, simply recall those words-- “Seize the day, but remember the time. . .Seize the day, but remember the time”. Every day seemed all more of a confirmation that he was held captive in a world promenaded, a remotely living figure in a structure of color and absolute tonalities; there was no moderation, no simple undulation to provide a sharp contrast, nor any true texture in his world. There were reds and blues, matted together to form geometric shapes, ragged edges of the knolls; the color had assumed a meaning. Nate could only articulate—at the very beginning of his debilitation, that he was—perhaps jokingly, a man with only color and structure as his periphery—the savior of the color field, and a living incarnate. The color was all-pervasive—a smoke that consumed everything else to make life a drama of stocks and absolutes. Indeed, time had deprived him of whatever life that would, in emancipation, unleash him—like a bird freed of the little pebbles and stones on his back, and whatever eyes to gaze into the periphery of the world. There was no life in him now, nor in the periphery; he could not suddenly liberate him self—cast off the stones and little pebbles off his back as if he were a stork, nor muster strength to newer heights, and was—inert, incapable of agency. He was loose from the earth—struck from his roots that had pinned him to the very ground, but without any momentum to propel. It thus seemed fitting for him; there was no other venture to exploit, but time and he deigned to simply rest and pass the dream on. …. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .…. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . It did not help him as his degeneration proceeded without further ado, and he soon weakened further, becoming closer to death's door. A memory would indeed only dog him in his recollections. .. It was, as a custom for the merchant community, a celebration for a departing vessel; the sea, which parted into a set of tributaries and was locked by a set of rifts in the promontory it, was a vestige of romantic fury in all its form. There was a romantic fervor in the air, one that Nate did not participate, but one that he regularly attended for the sheer festivity—the open pub, little flags and ships, picnics near the ledges under the foot of the great oak adorning the upper shaft of the land, and so forth. Fascinated by it, he had scrambled to approach the promontory that juts out into the open sea, when he came upon a curious sight: One little, petite girl was playing near a certain quarter, strewn with plankton and tall timbers thrown astride, with the little flowers she had pruned from the adjacent stretch of grassland on the higher pier. The water rushed, incessantly, with a few medleys in the air—the calls of sea-gulls, a few breaths from the impatient sea, and it seemed to produce a coalition—a marriage for her. There was a certain mildness to the scene: nature did not commend her with absolutes, for it did not complement her. One can only think how to stare into the gossamer-like sea would be to confront an inner mirror of ourselves, risk the lifting of a veil or the dissolution of some dream. He would begin to recall her more vividly, rambling about her and other children he had met in his life. “As his condition has deteriorated, he has nevertheless displayed some curious traits that I was not aware of”, Dr. Sorenson, with her usual pedestrian manner, wrote in a letter to the DuBois family. “He had requested, at one of our conferences, to be able to retain a set of writing scrolls and even a few easels, and had, since then, continued to paint and write. And although, by no means, he has not relented his introverted character—indeed, he continues to uphold the same inner world with which he defends so stalwartly--, it appears he has opened himself. I have sometimes myself asked to see these paintings and although he outright refused to consent, some incessant prodding—and a few tricks of my own—won the deed. He gave me a set of stenciled drawings and paintings, as well as a few of his writings in his journal. A few of these writings were dedicated to children: the child was to him as a symbol of innocence; he had been consigned, by some higher power, to a life now involuntarily ending, and thus could not help but to envy the child, who possesses such raw power—to free himself, to surge like some tide, and to suddenly calm. My adjutants have told me that he is fond of telling stories of them, with which they regard with a mild enthusiasm to listen; the vigor that is embedded within him is a profound light that illumines the very foundation and spirit here, though it is punctuated by a rather irregular, daily routine. One such story that I heard, and was accompanied by a drawing on a rough palette, fully epitomized what he valued the most from the child: it was an illusory dream, one that may be said to ascend to the level of high art, and it most certainly fit that of a child's imagination. In the wide berth of a sky, and sea, he said that he saw a great bird, once fully animate but now, due to some unknown cause, was flat and in the shape of a kite. It was of a lucent, snowy whiteness, the whiteness that which only a certain lily was said to entertain in its resurgence--and was shaped like a hawk, and it fluttered in the hurly-burly of a petulant sky. He told me that he 'saw' a child playing with it--running around and frolicking across the wooded plain, with a face as white as the kite itself. I inquired him as to why he had drawn the bird with a red hue, as opposed to this distilled and crystal-like whiteness. He responded, plainly, and simply, 'I saw a red slayer in that bird, but confined, in action, to no more than itself'. .. ." I now await my opponent's response. I should note that I have set the story on a darker course. .. and ask my opponent to continue it there. :-)