A third expression of freedom is responsibility. This is the obligation of the person to respond if he is questioned about his decisions. No one else can respond for him. He alone must respond, for his acts are determined by the totality of his being.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
INTRODUCTION
The very thought of starting this dissertation fills me with dread. No, it’s not the “how-to-begin?” dread. It’s not about style, or about setting up expectations either. If it were, I’d have already sweated the triteness of the phrase about the dread, and rued the pomposity of the claim to dissertation. But bah to all that! So much self-consciousness could only arrest my very mission. Such intrusions would only waylay my trenchant message. So it isn’t a writer’s block, or a lack of focus, or an insecurity at work here. Nor is this account intended as a warning. It’s really just a grappling– a clumsy effort at conversation, after a lengthy quiescence: a new attempt at sociability, wrung from the self-absorption that has too long kept my mind aloof from meaningful exchanges with my peers. I celebrate the closure of this era too, for lately I have feared that any prolongation of that aloofness even threatens me with the loss of peerage itself. Yes, I used the word peerage. Sorry- from here on out I’ll endeavor to disembark from my pedantic perch and talk to you with far less ornament. I mean, I’ll climb down now- from my linguistic high-horse!
Having done that, I sit, at last, on my well-calloused butt, and dig in for a project that’s sure to test my very capacity for stress. A long siege, no doubt. And this test comes on the heels of an ordeal just passed. That ordeal was the legal hurdle, with which this account deals: the endless, convoluted, corrupt, and inhuman circus that very nearly destroyed everything in my life– and whose backward stretching tentacles still have some mischievous design to them. It is that story I here endeavor to tell…And not merely to tell it, either, but to render it so powerfully that the currents I stir by doing that feed the tidal surge that will wash the bullshit away. Sure: like that’s gonna’ happen…
The first round I did not choose: I merely endured it. I say I endured it because through it, I suffered an enormous disempowerment imposed from without, from which I almost did not emerge. But now we move to part two, and THIS engagement– the relating of the tale– is one that I am choosing. I resolve to make it through this part too.
This brings us back to the stress I mentioned. There will be lots more of it here- and largely in the form of rage– and of rage revisited– at a time when it might behoove me to give it all a rest. But I can’t rest, because that would be to betray my anointed purpose, and to cop out on the talent I flatter myself to say that I’ve been given to deal with it all. And besides, my friends, that course would be the course of the man that these diseased bastards counted on my being. They thought I’d take it all lying down, you see– and thus facilitate their designs. But I refuse to do that. I refused and I still refuse, that is, since it’s still far from over. I will not be their weakling Enabler– by being silent when and where they thought they could count on that!
You will see what I am jabbering about forthwith. Meanwhile I must finish this introductory lament– in which I see that I waylaid myself before saying that it is not the longevity of the project, nor the required research, nor the necessary personal disclosures of this undertaking which frighten me– but rather it is the circling cloud of rage which frightens me, and which councils me to recoil from this chore. But I cannot do that. Instead, (and alas) I must embrace it anew, and transform it, hoping that through it– or in spite of it– I will vindicate myself, and my reputation as well (on the one hand), while also vindicating whatever long dormant talent I may in fact have (on the other). Perhaps in the end I will decide that this was all God’s way of provoking me to write– at long last, and after years of just talking about being a writer. Yes, perhaps all this happened because God grew weary…Or perhaps it was all for something else.
You see, there is a lingering sense here that all this happened for a reason, and that to not see it all the way through to some uncertain end would score as yet another failure for me– a failure of yet-to-be-revealed consequences, and on a cosmic scale. It is a sense that I fell into this situation as an ordained mission even– or as a test, you see: one that carries implications far beyond the milieu into which it might be folded… Oh, I don’t know exactly– not yet– and I know that I’m beating it to death. So I’ll say it one other way and then be done with it: I believe that there were metaphysics afoot, here- with concatenations well beyond the limits of myself: that this was not just about me– even though the “trial” itself appeared to be.
Did I really use the word “milieu” now? How pretentious- I hate that word.
Yes, our acts truly do spring from the “totality of our being”, as you have seen expressed in my introductory citation. I suspect that claim will jar many of my readers into recognition– and into head-noddings of assent. Okay then: the totality of MY being includes not just the motives and impulse that led me to get into the situation that this “apology” is about in the first place, but my ability to evaluate and communicate my impressions about it too. It includes not only my capacity for feeling both sensitivity and outrage, for example, but also my capacity to express those feelings– and, hopefully, to persuade you to share those feelings with me. I want to stir your strong emotions. My motives though, I must confess, are mixed here, for they are in equal measures lofty but also vindictive, such that aside from the fear of being consumed by my own rage before I can finish this dissertation, there lurks the menacing concern that the oozings out of my unalloyed hatred will leech the mettle from the rightness of my cause.
A final word on my intentions before we leave this brief Foreword, in which you may note that I have not forgotten to declare that this treatment aims to be so much more than an “apology”. I am using apology in the classical sense here, as meaning a defense, or an explanation, rather than a mea culpa. But much more than this– as I’ve already suggested– is that I intend this also to be a treatise, a tract, an exercise, and a manifesto– perhaps one which will transcend even my own avowed intents, and motivate others to more decisive political involvements which I could not have dreamed of. Well perhaps that is an outcome too potent to expect, but one never knows. In any event, should that come to pass, and presumably not in a way at odds to my desires, (that is to say, if it does not somehow backfire) then I invite any such would-be activist to embrace the idea that in order to perceive injustice here, and to vow to do something about it, that that righteous course in no way requires that you care at all for me, nor implies that you are sanctioning either anything that I have done, or that you believe I may have done. It is the egregious violation of proportion I urge you to combat here- the oppressive pathology of “law and order” at the expense of fluidity, artistry, fairness, and the free exchange of ideas which I am asking you to oppose; the “ends-justifies-any-means-since-we-alone-know-the-greater- good” tyranny that I urge you to identify, oppose, and eradicate, wherever possible. That attitude is evil incarnate– and the fates of many good people hang in the balance.
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All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
PROLOGUE
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Allow me to introduce myself. I am Royce. Royce Burton. Actually Royce is my middle name, but I prefer it to my given name of John for several reasons. One is that every other guy was named John when I was growing up, and so the novelty of Royce was reason enough for me to have preferred it. Nobody ever has to say “Which Royce?”, or “Royce who?”. There are other reasons too, though- which you will understand in time.
I was born in Redwood City, California, in 1958. I was the youngest of three children. When I was still a tot, my parents moved us to nearby Belmont, which was a sleepy little town on the San Francisco Peninsula. My father was a Car Salesman, then became a Stockbroker. My mother was a Secretary. I grew up sheltered and good-natured, and always did well in school.
I did not play any sports as a boy, but I sorely wish I had. Nevertheless, I have been physically fit since I can remember- though I had frequent bouts of Bronchitis early on, which eventually led to my having my tonsils removed. The only other physical limitation worth noting is the fact that I am deaf in my left ear. I have been so since birth.
I went to High School there in Belmont, to Junior College in next door San Mateo, and to College in San Jose. After an unfocused and frustrated tenure there, however, during which I dropped out three times, I finally stayed out, only to go back and finish my education at San Francisco State after a ten-year hiatus. After twenty years I finally got a college degree: a Bachelor of Arts in English, with a minor in Creative Writing.
I have never been married, and I have no children. That’s funny too, because when I was much younger, and looked forward to my life, I always imagined that by this time I would have had not just a family, but a career and a house as well. My life didn’t turn out the way I had envisioned. Nor has life been the way I thought it would be. Nevertheless, my life still had a great deal of joy.
My life has been relatively free from honors, though the accomplishments I am still proudest of are that degree that I finally earned– to finally put to rest that nagging sense of incompletion– and the fact that I was an Eagle Scout by the time I was 14. Aside from those, I must confess that my life has been a paean to unrealized potential, and to unfulfilled expectations. I have traveled extensively, however– both domestically and internationally– and those travels are the greatest thing that I ever did for myself. They broadened my horizons, as they say, and awakened me to new senses of possibilities.
I do like to write, and I have spent substantial blocks of time writing my autobiography: an arduous though sustained effort that yielded several hundred pages. I never tried to publish it however, as I saw no reason the world would want to read about me.
I love to read, too, and before the events which I am about to tell transpired, I devoured about 50 books each year– almost all of that non-fiction. Those were later developments in my life, however. I started those international travels only after I turned 30, and as a kid, I didn’t like to read at all.
But I have loved the great outdoors ever since my father took us on family vacations to Yosemite, starting when I was ten. Scouting exacerbated that attraction, and I remain an enthusiast of backpacking and assorted outdoor activities even as I write these words. And it was that love– that unquenchable draw to nature- which is the salient feature here, as I begin my narrative.
