Tales of the long fall from grace; resume to a Stigmatism in an eye kept, too long, on the prize.

Part four; connections between the then and the now…

a montage of the author; driving and observing at night; riding a bike against a self-imposed deadline; a bull, presumably in a china shop; intellectual judging themself by an impossible standard; and looking at it all; still not knowing what is right or wrong.

By Thomas Krawford Jr.

“Don’t be afraid to speak better of yourself to others,” her eyes softened themselves to him as the two embraced in front of his downtown Ann Arbor apartment in the waning light of that late Easter afternoon in 2021. “Even if no one else has the guts to say it, I believe in you. You are not alone, my love, my friend.

This is how the long journey to now originally began so many years before…

In the here and now of 2021, co-workers will undoubtedly talk about their fellow employees. Indeed, speculative gossip is the manna of all such water-cooler détentes, no matter where one finds themself, on whichever side of just such a question.

“Is so-and-so really gay? Are they potentially dangerous to themself or others?” one well-meaning co-worker may posit, for example.

“I think so; I mean, they act like it,” another one may respond, of course, in hushed tones.

That sort of thing.

Inevitably then, what if there is always an expert that appears from the regular rank and file; one who believes they Know that whatever their suspicions, or their opinions; they are, at the end of the day, beyond any shadow of doubt right in their conclusions; as of right as rain, to coin a phrase; regardless of whether they had accessed enough of the possible sources of pertinent information, or not.

Yet, let us set all that cautionary and predictable; but entirely useless; albeit ill-researched; nosiness aside for a moment; and get back to the narrative at hand; namely: what are the probable connections from the past to the present; that if we understood them better in the now; the immediate future would become much more predictable than it currently is; especially concerning Our Guy of the past; Our Narrator of the present moment; and Our Custodian II in the Ann Arbor Michigan Spring of 2021; in the now and foreseeable future of Our Custodian II.

What we have is, this Writer feels, is the question as to the mindset of Our Guy of the past and how that mindset has or has not changed or…