Foreword
To Anyone with Eyes to Read,
Through the duration of writing this work, I cannot count the number of times my qualifications have come into question. My qualifications, therefore, will be the first matter covered.
I have never written a book before. My articulation leaves something to be desired. My vocabulary is bleak. Speaking of my abilities, I present no case against my accusers. I simply am not qualified to write. Nevertheless, I proceed. My hopes reside in the excellency of the story, the greatness of the lives it details, the compelling people who changed history. My ambitions are grounded in the story not the author.
Although I was of little significance in the majority of the events before you, I was closely caught up in them. The storyline and my life were like two vines that had grown together. Each twisting and turning in and around each other as they grew. Where the story turned, I invariably turned and followed, I its shadow. I am not in the business of misleading so some clarification is in order. If the vine analogy is to be truly considered, I should note the story is more a tree’s trunk, and I the unnoticeable shoot of a vine struggling to climb its side, clinging for stability, incapable of fully understanding what has grown before me which I tried to scale. As often the case is, the magnitude of what lie before me was intangible with a perspective so close. With all this said, I was little more than a leaf caught in the wind, as unable to change the events as the shoot was unable to change the tree. Even if I had been granted a thousand years to toil on this effort, the tree would remain unchanged, the story was set. Knowing this now, I reside humbly to my task as a chronicler, a record keeper, a historian.
With a complete record of the truth as my goal, I regretfully write. You the reader proceed into a story separated far from you and the comfort from which you read. The people and places you most likely will never see. The events carry no memory for you, you have no personal ties. However, I write in the wake of these events that changed my life and the people I knew. Things are still settling from the upheaval. When something life changing happens many times it does not seem real until a span of time has passed. I write within that span, still slightly shocked that what I have seen and experienced is real. I suppose part of this writing is to prove to myself that it is real, so that I may look back and read my words and remember all that transpired. Perhaps it is too soon to write the history book, but my memory is fresh now and I dare not postpone my duty. This however, does not address why I would write regretfully, if anything this would merely serve as no more than a chore to aid my memory. While it will serve this purpose, at its very nature is something more dreadful to me. In an effort to be wholly truthful, and to tell a story in which I was directly involved, I must be wholly truthful about my own actions. This story will remind me of many things, many things I’d rather forget. My work now is to record what I have done and seen, and tell you of what has happened, in hopes that you will avoid my sins and follow my successes; I owe it to the people.
For the people,
Demos