The book is small, leather, and a thousand pages long. It's my favorite book, and holds everything I hate. It's full of truth and overflowing with lies. It is the only book that matters and yet, I'm terrified to read it. It is my Desiderata, my Verom, my oath to Eden, and the lens through which I see the world.
     The first time those pages fell open it was as blank as God's first canvas. Page by page, word by word, I built the mountain in its text. I lit a fire with those words and made a world out of my ink. Now I sit and read that book. And every page a memory. It's cast in twin shades of gray. One so stark and clear, it is a movie memory of things recalled. The other is the shade of smoke, a misting mirror of the world. It is the mountain.
     And it is in these colors that the book is writ, and in these colors I recall, what fills the pages from here on. So listen close to hear the color of my tone. For men grow in, as much as up. And an old man remembers fondly, the youth that he has lost. But I've grown old before my time.

     My name comes with no special significance. There is no antiquated story or interesting anecdote that prefaces my naming. My parents simply liked the name and thought it becoming of my looks to name me as they did. Yet the name I bear is special, it means, "God Saves." A most illustrious calling that is. That from the very start I was meant to be the hand of God in other people's lives. A mighty task to instill in one so young.
     Every name has a meaning, a story, I can't say if another name might suit me better. I have always wondered if the person grows into the mold of their name, or their name grows up around the person they become. In my case the answer will take more time to tell. Yet, this is the name I have; there is no changing it, just as there is no changing who I am. These are set things, things to fill a slab of stone to write me into history.
     In the end names have power, they call up the memory of those who bore them. So I suppose to like or dislike ones name, is to love or hate one’s self. When all is said and done I only wish to be remembered kindly. That when it’s all over, one person can come to that memorial and read the name inscribed and think, "He saved me." Then I can be proud of my name, for it will truly be an honorable one that it could fulfill such a mighty calling.

     My house was alone for a long time. It stood at the end of a very short road that ended abruptly. There was nothing across the street but an old orange field and dirt. I would have liked to see that, but by the time I was born the street went a mile further and the houses grew thick as weeds over the whole base of the mountain. So now there is a forest of houses, all more or less the same, just like the people living in them. I don't get to live at the end of a street, nor the beginning, just the middle that makes up a long history of averages.
     Perhaps that's why I don't have a great love for my house, anyone could live there really and I wouldn't care too much. There is exactly one interesting thing about it. My neighborhood is made of eight different models of houses. The west-side uses four and the east-side uses four others. Through some strange mistake or paroxysm of fate, my house, which is on the east side, was built using a model from the west side. It took me many many years to realize that fact, until then I could not understand why so many other houses were the same except for mine. It's all alone but you wouldn't notice until you took a closer look.

    "The speardanes in days gone by, and the kings who ruled them, had courage and greatness." Eric would always get mad if I forgot the "and the kings who ruled them...." line. He fell in love with an old cassette tape reading of Beowulf when he was four years old. Being three years my senior and a very enthusiastic young boy he played it until the tape fell apart. And as the years crawled by we threw away the old cassette player and got a newer CD of Beowulf, but it wasn't the same.
     It's a strange thing; they say if a baby listens to classical music when they sleep it makes them smarter, I wonder what effect Beowulf has. Perhaps it makes a child just very slightly... odd. Strange enough that the other kids at school won't like him. Maybe it will make him smarter, but curse him to speak in a language that died out with the Vikings. Or perhaps, it did nothing at all.

     Old Man Hand Syndrome, a perfectly preposterous disease you might think. Maybe you’re right, but that doesn't change the fact that I have it. In fifth grade my hands cracked, bleed from the knuckles, and aged sixty years overnight. The skin dried up into a kind of scales and deep lines wove a spider web of wrinkles across the back of each hand. Long drives with my dad and his stress clamp made my hands large and strong as vices. The palms had a layer of calluses that was unheard of in a young city kid.
     As the cruelty of fate would have it, I also had an allergy to dairy, which manifested itself in a rash that ravaged my legs and back. My body seemed to belong to someone else, someone crueler, harder, tougher, or maybe just older. At ten years old I had the skin of a leper, the knuckles of a fighter, and the personality of a cornered bear.
     Around this time I went to my first acting school, I learned the art of lying. The laugh and the frown of theater became my mask, and it fit most excellently. So my face was happy and since no one looked in my eyes, no one was the wiser. I vowed to only ever wear pants at school, so my legs were no longer an issue. I wore a shirt swimming so my back was hidden. But, my hands, there was no covering them.

    The first one was eight years ago. I remember it being long and arduous at the time, but looking back it seems like child's play, which I suppose it was.
    Mount Santiago peak lies fifteen miles and three thousand feet from the trail head, difficult by most people's standards but nye on impossible by those of a ten year old. The woods around me seemed a whole new world. It's not that I had never been hiking, or even that I had never been on a mountain, but this would be the first mountain that I would summit. And every step I left behind, was one more challenge I was leaving in the past.
    You see the thing about mountain tops is they are all alone, they are the solitary points set apart from all the rest, because they are so far above all else. To climb a mountain is to be as far away as you can from the world. So at ten years old, to stand upon the edge of the sky and see my school so many miles away and know I was in a whole different world, that was a refuge. Perhaps it's cowardice to run from your problems. Perhaps. Yet mountains are more a test than a refuge, each step uphill is dozen on the flat ground of school. Every mile uphill, is a life time worth of cruelty, and I have walked hundreds of them.

     My middle school had brick walls, as white and identical as the uniforms that separated us from the walls by only the narrowest of shades. My high school walls were a thoroughly uninteresting mix of brick and plaster that more or less exactly failed to please the eye. The walls of my house are painted in one of those made up colors that would require a computer and several books to find on a color wheel. I suppose someone would correct me if I deigned to call them simply, white.
     Yet the colors themselves are far less important that the texture of them. Some overzealous designer decided to cover the interior of my house in something called spakle. Imagine that someone sneezed out little bits of clay and it sprayed all over the walls, that is basically what spakle looks like. The end result of this being a not unpleasant house, covered in little random blobs, which from a distance are not even noticeable. But, if one gets closer, they come into focus, and if you know how, you can start to see patterns, faces, stories.
     On rainy weekends I lay on my back and look up at the wayward wanderers as they waltzed their way across my walls. These were the first of many stories, and as the weight of time pressed down on me those men and monsters on the walls dripped down into inky words upon a page.

    His mouth opened and his tongue started to form the word again when my knuckles slammed into his throat. His breath caught and my other hand came up into his stomach and I brought his head down into my elbow.
   Or at least, I thought about doing that.
   A lot of adults come up with various cute ways of dealing with bullying; the vast majority of these are simply an amalgamation of so called "therapists" lip flappings. I used several methods. First, the whole turn the other cheek thing ran its gauntlet in fourth grade, but such philosophical arguments don't make much of an impression on a ten year old. Instead I found a much more creative solution, which I like to think is my specialty. So when which ever punk decided to barrette me that day would open his mouth, I would simply imagine how I would beat him into a quivering pulp. I suppose a psychiatrist would say that's probably unhealthy, and they would probably be right. But I wouldn't suggest tell that to the boy I was.

    A Catholic Mass is not particularly engaging for a child, and I think even the most devote would agree with me there. Make no mistake, God is a major part of the story these pages seek to tell, but perhaps too major, another book and then some would be needed for that tale. Yet, the story I seek to tell you in these pages does require one in particular.
     I, like most every other truly human individual who is being entirely honest, doubted God at times. A good friend of mine once told me she was doubting him, she wanted to know if it was a sin. I smiled and said, “To doubt is human, to give up on doubt alone is weak, but to seek an answer to your question is true strength. Only after the seeking should you decide.”
     I too, once asked if God did indeed have a plan for me. I, like you, cried out one despairing night and plead that God show me a sign.
     I had so many paths that I could take and so many lives that I could choose. I spent a long time waiting for the voice of thunder, waiting for a light to blind me, or a bible passage to inspire him. But there was no trumpet blast, no words at all, yet I somehow knew, that God said, “Go.”
     So I did, and now I simply trust that He will point the way without me needing to ask. It is very important for a man to be at peace with God. I am a maker of many things, but I still must pay credence to He that made me, and thus all that I have made. This is a taste of wisdom I think, like God's trail of breadcrumbs to lead me home.

    It is a gradual progression. In fact most claim it has reached its end long before it has. And for some it is still in progress when they are six feet underground. It would seem such predictions are dangerous, so I long ago made a habit of avoiding them. A younger more foolish version of myself, once claimed it was done several years ago, but I don't look fondly on the hubris that governed me in those days.
    It comes in phases, each one a gradual change of body, but the important ones grow deep within the soul. You see, I was bullied for the typical reasons of being smart, bad at sports, and generally lacking in the social tenacity which lent my tormentors power over me. So you can imagine my surprise when my arms began to thicken and muscles slowly grew. After half a decade I was comfortable in my role on the periphery, but now my body was tall and strong, my voice deep and sure, and suddenly I found myself being referred to by the word I once used as a curse, popular.
    It's a funny thing to suddenly have what you spent so much time envying, and suddenly wish you never had it. Everyone seemed to think I was a man, and thus entitled to respect, a place at the table, maybe even the eye of a girl or too. It's all quite humorous to me now, but hindsight is deceptive that way. In those days it was only by the grace of a book that I learned the wisdom of conviction. In fact, it has been books that taught me most of life's little lessons. But I'm still looking for a book to answer one final query that I have. Am I a man, or still a boy? I don't think any book can tell me that. But perhaps, if I cannot find a book to read it in, I'll simply have to write the answer in for myself.

    And upon the mountains northern shore there lies an ocean waging war upon the base of that mighty monolith. A boy once watched them crashing there and even used to try his luck upon their crests to learn their ways of war. They crashed and broke and threw the boy back upon the stony shore. Nearly drowned and bleeding from the crags of the mountain he had made, he built for himself a ship to sail with, into the unknown of the oceans stormy heart. Of every manner of material he made himself a mighty vessel for the waves. With sail out and tiller strait he cast away from that stoic mountain he had made. He fought so hard against the tide and broke through the sea's blockade, and to the open ocean. He left the isle of the castaways to find another place to lay his head and heart.
     Then in the waves he found the wills and worries of the world he had forsook, and so the mountain once again was refuge from the myriad. Yet, too far from home to know the way. Still the stars betray the knowledge of the path back home. Many months or maybe millennia it took, but finally the mountain made the horizon melt away.  
     So now the man sits upon the rocky shore, and when the surf does rise upon the banks, he charges down and pushes back with a titanic will, so that the ocean falls back upon itself and leaves alone that speck of earth it can never ever claim.

     There stood a man upon a hill who bore an iron shield...
     Beyond that lie a thousand lines, different every time I speak their like. The first came like a dream at the break of noon, a thunder clap of words that broke the silence of my thou— "Josh will you please read under 'The Boston Tea Party' that's on page 234—" and back into the breach again came, he stood and wrought the foe of life, the storm from whence he came— "Josh why don't you step outside for a moment, I need to talk to you.—" And before his eyes came all the world, crashing down as he tore an age’ed Atlas from his throne. —"Joshua why aren't you listening to me in class I am trying—" and so he fell onto his knees and took the weight of all there was, a final pledge to hold it high and— "Joshua!"
     No use, as you can see, I can never remember the correct lines and I have tried, even these are not correct, I have lost the truth of what I once imagined so vividly, and all in the sake of interest to the unimportant.

    His name means thunder, and is made of you and me. He walks alongside all of us, though some choose never to look and see his burning eyes. And God himself would let him pass into paradise or even thence into perdition's lowest pit. His voice is truth, which perhaps is why he rarely speaks. Yet, when he does it can change the life of all his kin. He was for me a giant standing high above all that might seek to tear him into the ground. His hands are made of penciled lines and inken words. Yet, for all I know, for you he may be nothing more than I quiet voice within your head. For me he is ten thousand things that God has given me, and all that I have made of me. And if you look into the depths of his eyes, you will miss what I can see, the reflection of a mountain there, and an ocean slowly breaking on the banks. But for you, he is only mystery to me.
     He is that which rests in all of us, for me, a He, for you, I cannot tell. Yet through all of us there lies a common theme. A test perhaps, of who can hold his gaze. For to see his eyes, is to look into the truest mirror of this world. Some have never sought him out, but for me, he is the one that I call friend.

    Fires rose and smote away an iron will, from which the ore of every black and evil thought smelted a metal made from madness. There it lies, ready for the forging fire, and out of it there came the chains that bound the world and tied every man and woman down. Still, there are some whose will was just enough to tear the chains from the foundations of perdition's gates. Yet, the simple weight of all the tearing, clawing masses of the world did pull them back so every step a battlefield. And they made war against the world and fought up until their bitter end. Yet, with everyone who gained the strength to break their bonds they gave that will to ten thousand more until there was an army standing there to fight their way onto the mountain that stood to be a sanctuary to all around. And the mountain maker pulled them from the clawing hoards and ushered them into the smoke that hid the mountain from the cruel intentions of the outside world.
     As every pilgrim climbs the mount, they carry with them a single stone that stores their hopes and dreams and fears. These are the things that see them through the climb and once completed they will set it to rest upon the mound that marks the tomb of the first mountain maker. So that everyone who climbs unto the peak will stack the stones that grow the crest and stretch it high into the sky. But these are future things, which still must stand the test of time. Perhaps this legacy can never be, perhaps the shield shatters, and the man dies. Perhaps. Or even with all the world resting there upon his back he will forget to look and see what beauty he is holding there.
     Yesterday is clad in secrecy and tomorrow is a mystery, yet through all this world's misery I still will seek this great legacy. To light a beacon in the dark, a single flame that sparks ten thousand fires, one voice of hope within a mob. To be, a great man.