{"id":17203,"date":"2009-08-19T06:44:28","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T11:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=17203"},"modified":"2009-08-20T04:58:36","modified_gmt":"2009-08-20T09:58:36","slug":"the-twin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/the-twin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Twin"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Carol van Strum and Jordan Merrell<\/strong><\/p>\n

As famous and at times as notorious as I have been my whole life long, I am the great unknown. And these are the times when mankind thinks there are no secrets. \u0432\u0402\u045aTechnologies have seen to that,\u0432\u0402\u045c they say. For the common folk, perhaps. But me? When I want to be known, I am the Talk of the Town. When I want to feed my ego in the eyes of those who \u0432\u0402\u045alove\u0432\u0402\u045c me, I go that route. I\u0432\u0402\u2122m only human.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Secrets? I\u0432\u0402\u2122ve got plenty. That\u0432\u0402\u2122s why I laugh at everyone but myself. Nearly everyone \u0432\u0402\u045aknows who I am\u0432\u0402\u045c or thinks they know. The fools! They know nothing, I tell you, nothing at all.<\/p>\n

Do they know where I come from? Do they know the burdens and scars a soul can bear from knowing you were to be taken out under a desert moon to be murdered at birth? A sacrifice!<\/p>\n

Yes, a sacrifice. My parents were in a new cult and \u0432\u0402\u045agod spoke to the followers.\u0432\u0402\u045c That\u0432\u0402\u2122s one of my secrets. I don\u0432\u0402\u2122t speak of my \u0432\u0402\u045abirth\u0432\u0402\u045c family, or of the fact that I\u0432\u0402\u2122m a mirror twin.<\/p>\n

\u0432\u0402\u045aYou must pick only one.\u0432\u0402\u045c Their God commanded them to send some old man out into the night with me, \u0432\u0402\u045athe different one,\u0432\u0402\u045c to spill my blood to please God. Christ on a crutch! How am I supposed to feel about that? I had to go to therapy!<\/p>\n

Were it today, would I have been left in one of the plastic bins, shoved into the warmth of one of the \u0432\u0402\u045aBaby Drop Slots\u0432\u0402\u045c we see everywhere? I doubt it. And with my emerald green eyes, milky skin, hair in curls the color of cornsilk, I\u0432\u0402\u2122d be chosen now over my brother \u0432\u0402\u201c his eyes black as olives, skin the color of a walnut roasted next to the hearth. More the pity, I have my \u0432\u0402\u045acurses,\u0432\u0402\u045c my own Cross to Bear.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Maybe it was just the shock to see the two of us. God knows people tend to fear what they don\u0432\u0402\u2122t know, what they have never seen, what they do not understand. I know it\u0432\u0402\u2122s true, unfortunately. I reveal to you one of the curses cast upon me: total recall of every sleeping and waking moment of my existence. I\u0432\u0402\u2122m an anomaly, no question about that. There I go again, getting ahead of myself. But it is how I know what happened, this curse of not one moment lost from my memory.<\/p>\n

The old man, he and no other took me quickly. And my mother? She never even knew I\u0432\u0402\u2122d been born to her, for it was a long and difficult birth. Why wouldn\u0432\u0402\u2122t it be? No midwife was called. Men are far from the most sensitive of creatures on the planet. I know. I am one. I will never believe she would have allowed me to be taken from her.<\/p>\n

What if she had known, had held me, not let them take me? What then? Would they have killed the both of us and raised the boy themselves? No. They needed Our Mother to do what they could not for my brother, the Chosen One. So I was wrapped in felt cloth and sheep\u0432\u0402\u2122s wool. Perhaps were my bones found they were to look like that of a lamb. How does one explain the horrors done to the innocent and savvy alike \u0432\u0402\u045ain God\u0432\u0402\u2122s Name?\u0432\u0402\u045c<\/p>\n

The old man took me what must have been miles into the desert. He muttered that I was as pale as the milk of a goat. He didn\u0432\u0402\u2122t want to stop walking, for where he stopped was to be the place he would have to set me on the earth beneath his feet and slash my throat like a newborn lamb. But I was not a lamb. I was a human child and it unnerved him greatly.<\/p>\n

When he could not take another step, he laid me down and his breath came in a shallow rattle. He took his knife and began to pray to God. Then he fell at my feet, able only to moan and utter sounds of what I know now to be the sounds of a man dying in the midst of a great battle. He was only a man, and as such, they say, he died as a man. There I was, helpless, face to the stars.<\/p>\n

Lucky for me, the old man died near the place where half a dozen sheep had strayed from a flock being watched over by a Shepherd and his sons. He was said to have the best dogs known in the desert lands this moon hung over, in that time on the earth. That may be giving too much praise, but the mother dog sniffed me out. She picked me up like a lamb too tiny to walk, picked me up by my bunting and carried and dragged me to the shepherd man. I must have been a sight, a squirming bundle dangling from the mouth of a herd dog.<\/p>\n

As dusty as I was, one peek under the tatters of cloth and puffs of sheep\u0432\u0402\u2122s wool, and the man was taken aback. My skin, he saw, was the color of the Moon. Now this shepherd had many wives and a strong flock, but his first wife, Myrna, was barren and bitterly resented the number of sons his other four wives had borne him. Myrna, his wife of many years and the girl he married for sheer love, was in a state of perpetual sorrow. She had prayed to the gods, goddesses, trees, earth and water and the heavens and the Moon to let her bear a son.<\/p>\n

\u0432\u0402\u045aJust one,\u0432\u0402\u045c she prayed. \u0432\u0402\u045aJust one.\u0432\u0402\u045c<\/p>\n

And that is how I came from a stranger\u0432\u0402\u2122s womb, out of the mouth of a brown-eyed dog, into my father\u0432\u0402\u2122s strong arms, and then to Myrna, my beautiful, tearful, loving mother. She had lain sick with grief for many months. Father entered our tent of saffron yellow, carrying me to her, and he told her \u0432\u0402\u201c told Myrna, now my mother \u0432\u0402\u201c that I had fallen from the sky and he had caught me. No one could know, he said.<\/p>\n

No one, ever, could know. The superstitions in third world countries can be \u0432\u0402\u201c and are \u0432\u0402\u201c the swift end to many. A child, born of the Moon, who fell from the sky \u0432\u0402\u201c such a child might be feared, and to be born the color of a high cloud in a pale sky, in a remote land where people were the color of the earth, was enough to bring a whole tribe\u0432\u0402\u2122s wrath upon a tiny babe.<\/p>\n

Myrna could not take her arms from me. My new mother\u0432\u0402\u2122s eyes met mine and I pulled her deep into my spirit where what love I had was kept, and we were in that instant Mother and Son. Father brought bloody rags and they carried out the act perfectly, the charade of birth. My father was the herder of sheep and the trainer of dogs. He was very smart and as calculating as the wild dogs he killed with stones and spears and arrows. He slaughtered a goat and brought my mother sheep\u0432\u0402\u2122s wool dipped in its blood. This was more than convincing.<\/p>\n

\u0432\u0402\u045aThere has been a great miracle!\u0432\u0402\u045c my mother cried out. She pinched me softly and we cried together. And miracle of miracles, her breasts swelled with milk. Who would take the strange pale baby with eyes of emeralds from this mother\u0432\u0402\u2122s arms? No one. No one dared even think it! For one thing, my father was too important. If he moved and took away with him the sheep and lambs and dogs, the rest of the tribe would hardly survive. Besides, women were drawn to me, the strange pale baby. They would reach out and touch my sun-bleached hair in wonder. Mother carefully browned up my skin in the sun until I was as earthen as the others.<\/p>\n

Our tribe was nomadic, and we traveled far from the place I was found. My early years were good to me, especially since barren women who touched my cornsilk hair in wonder then bore their husbands children. Word spread, and soon those desperate to have babies came bearing gifts. They brought gifts before and after the births. My parents became wealthy.<\/p>\n

In time I grew to be a man, and my many travels began. Who would not want to escape a place like that? Wealthy, in a third world country, usually means living far away from it. I am wealthy beyond measure. Today I\u0432\u0402\u2122ve got it all, and if I don\u0432\u0402\u2122t have it, it\u0432\u0402\u2122s because I have no want of it in the first place.<\/p>\n

Before I made my way to Europe, I learned that my birth parents were still alive. The cult that ordered my death was still their life, and my brother\u0432\u0402\u2122s. They adored him. And I felt a sadness when a different cult murdered him. When your twin is hurt or lost or dies, you know, you feel it as if it\u0432\u0402\u2122s happening to you. It\u0432\u0402\u2122s scientifically proven: the Other Twin, like me, feels and knows these events to the core of their being. Even if it is a hated thing, feeling it is all you have ever known. And you feel that Other Part of you when it is torn from you, making the sound a cloth makes as it is abruptly pulled in two directions at once. Yes. It was quite like that, only it\u0432\u0402\u2122s the duality of the Soul that is torn away.<\/p>\n

I worked a lot of this through when I moved to California in the United States of America. God, I love this place. America, I mean. America land of therapists. My therapist, a great guy by the way, was on the cutting edge of things. Techniques to deal with grief and stress management were all the rage back at the turn of what people called The New Millennium.<\/p>\n

Maybe you are old enough to remember all the fear a new century brought about. Between the New Millennium and the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012 the human race lived in fear and famine. The polar caps disappeared but the Earth has not flipped over upside down. It keeps turning. But you\u0432\u0402\u2122d\u0432\u0402\u2122ve thought it was the end of the world. Fairy tales, I tell you.<\/p>\n

\u0432\u0402\u045aArmageddon?\u0432\u0402\u045c In the realm of anything-is-possible, some sort of Armageddon could be occurring; Armageddons have always happened. \u0432\u0402\u045aHolocaust? Which one?\u0432\u0402\u045c my therapist used to say. Indeed, the one that matters most is the one that affects you and yours.<\/p>\n

We are self-centered things, aren\u0432\u0402\u2122t we. I can at least admit to my feelings. I\u0432\u0402\u2122m entitled to them. Do people care that I, too, feel sorrow? My clothes are fine; I hide my wealth for the most part. I have made a shrine to my mothers: to Myrna and a brown-eyed dog. I had parents who loved me enough to lie, to keep me their son. And here I am now, my life so truthfully a lie. All is carefully crafted to meet my needs and hide my curses. This is why I have to move to a new place every seven to 10 years, sometimes less. But never more.<\/p>\n

When my brother was murdered by a mob of religious freaks and the unseen fabric between us became a memory of the sound of a rag torn in half, something happened to me. When I cut myself, I did not bleed. And from that time to this I have not changed, have not aged. So I have become a changeling. I shall not forget the way my journey across the earth began and that it has not ended. I have often wondered, what were the gods thinking, and are they laughing? What is the point of my life? What good are these miracles and magic, and why have I been left behind?<\/p>\n

Do you fools believe I know everything? I do not! Am I to blame for all the wrongs and horrors on this planet? Hardly! Few need my help in those realms. Indeed, humanity does just fine in the horror department without my assistance. Yes, I\u0432\u0402\u2122ve planted seeds along the way. That\u0432\u0402\u2122s all it takes to grow discord, distrust and great grief and sorrows. Division is one of my personal favorites.<\/p>\n

My brother\u0432\u0402\u2122s life story is full of fairy tales and contradictions that only add fuel to my fire! But again I\u0432\u0402\u2122m thought to be to blame for every damn thing that goes wrong. Well, I\u0432\u0402\u2122m not in this gig alone, and I think you and I know that. Is it my fault I ever was born? No. Who on earth picks their parents or chooses their own genetics? I just wish you people could understand: none of us had a choice. So why am I held to a higher standard?<\/p>\n

A snake crawls on its belly because it has no legs or arms. Is it cursed? Is it the snake\u0432\u0402\u2122s own fault to be born as it is? No! Yet it is often misunderstood and feared.<\/p>\n

People make me laugh. Hey, you know the greatest salesmen are children? They want something \u0432\u0402\u201c a toy or a candy or a ripe pomegranate from a tree in the grove \u0432\u0402\u201c and the child does not try just one thing. Ask, it does not work. So cry. It does not work. So try a whine, a temper fit, a pathetic droop \u0432\u0402\u201c so many ways to go at an issue. Sometimes I like to beat people down like that, especially when I feel relentless and bored. I\u0432\u0402\u2122m not so bad as I once was. My therapist, he helped me be a little better to myself, to understand that that\u0432\u0402\u2122s okay.<\/p>\n

I\u0432\u0402\u2122ve pretty much retired now, and travel to places I\u0432\u0402\u2122ve never been or haven\u0432\u0402\u2122t seen for ages. Perhaps to places my brother would have enjoyed. That cult kept him in that one small area of the world his whole life. They believed it was the whole world.<\/p>\n

From that to this? Remember when girls would just say, \u0432\u0402\u045aWhatever!\u0432\u0402\u045c and put their little hands out at you? And they wouldn\u0432\u0402\u2122t let the other person talk? I almost enjoyed that concept of total rejection. But I quit messing in other people\u0432\u0402\u2122s shit. Lesson: you should watch a few episodes of the Maury Show from the \u0432\u0402\u045aTurn of the Millennium Archives.\u0432\u0402\u045c It\u0432\u0402\u2122s a lot of trashy, flashy people being people. And there it was, right in front of my face. \u0432\u0402\u045aFuck it!\u0432\u0402\u045c (That will be the bleeping sounds. It\u0432\u0402\u2122s how they did television back then.) Right there I thought, that\u0432\u0402\u2122s it! I\u0432\u0402\u2122m done! I\u0432\u0402\u2122m out of this picture!<\/p>\n

So I quit. And since then \u0432\u0402\u201c without me adding fuel to the fire \u0432\u0402\u201d what have you done? Is your world all better now? No. Of course not. You can\u0432\u0402\u2122t just stop and say \u0432\u0402\u045awhatever\u0432\u0402\u045c or \u0432\u0402\u045aoh, fuck this negativity.\u0432\u0402\u045c You carry on and on with things and you don\u0432\u0402\u2122t even know how any of it started. I started some of it, okay? Maybe sometimes most of it. So I was suffering from depression. What, you think I\u0432\u0402\u2122ve always been a happy-go-lucky spirit? But it\u0432\u0402\u2122s not my fault you won\u0432\u0402\u2122t stop.<\/p>\n

Most people are, in fact, not as smart as I am. Maybe not even as smart as yourself. Expect people to be stupid and rude and you will not be disappointed. \u0432\u0402\u045aLow Expectations Bring High Results.\u0432\u0402\u045c Remember it? I wrote that best seller. Have you read it? It was some while ago. But it was nearly as popular as \u0432\u0402\u045aI\u0432\u0402\u2122m Okay, You\u0432\u0402\u2122re Okay\u0432\u0402\u045c in the smoke-weed-free-love era. You still didn\u0432\u0402\u2122t get it, did you?<\/p>\n

Things were going pretty well then \u0432\u0402\u201c a couple years of thinking about Peace, because you all didn\u0432\u0402\u2122t want to get blown up in Vietnam. I did like the Owlsley Acid, had a little \u0432\u0402\u045akeep on truckin\u0432\u0402\u2122\u0432\u0402\u045c furry freak brother on this little piece of paper. I got tired of seeing the same old world, and I was trippin\u0432\u0402\u2122 on acid at my beach house in Malibu and I had this incredible breakthrough. That\u0432\u0402\u2122s when I started thinking about quitting work. God knows money was never the issue. It was pure ego. I was a power-tripper Type-A personality, that\u0432\u0402\u2122s what my therapist told me. So I didn\u0432\u0402\u2122t have to fit other people\u0432\u0402\u2122s stereotypes of me. I had to believe that.<\/p>\n

Did I make a mess of things along the way? Yes.<\/p>\n

Do I regret it? I regret nothing.<\/p>\n

My life was thrust upon me, just as my twin\u0432\u0402\u2122s life was thrust upon him. I\u0432\u0402\u2122m not the one who wrote the Rules here. It\u0432\u0402\u2122s lonely at the top, people. Get it through your heads, it really IS all about me. Jesus \u0432\u0402\u201c did he die for your sins? Well, he absolutely died because you were sinners, I would say the facts speak for themselves. Greed? Power? I have so much power I don\u0432\u0402\u2122t need greed, so what do you think of that?<\/p>\n

Maybe I would rather have had a different fate \u0432\u0402\u201c anybody ever think of that? Anybody ever think of me? How I feel, being the \u0432\u0402\u045adifferent one\u0432\u0402\u045c? You don\u0432\u0402\u2122t ever get it, you turn the truth into what you want it to be.<\/p>\n

Well, think what you want. My brother was murdered for your sins? Hell, no. He died so I could have everlasting life, whether I wanted it or not. I don\u0432\u0402\u2122t care about your souls\u0432\u0402\u2122 eternal life \u0432\u0402\u201c so why do you live your lives wondering about mine?<\/p>\n

Like, whatever, I\u0432\u0402\u2122m only human.<\/p>\n

(from MySpace entry: Lucifer)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Carol van Strum and Jordan Merrell As famous and at times as notorious as I have been my whole life long, I am the great unknown. And these are the times when mankind thinks there are no secrets. \u0432\u0402\u045aTechnologies have seen to that,\u0432\u0402\u045c they say. For the common folk, perhaps. But me? When I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1794],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}