(2 of 4) The Brothers

A Deep Contemplation.

Conversation was light over the first two glasses of whiskey. Ivan, speaking just enough to compel his brother to speech, was likely exerting as much willpower in his silence as his brother was in thinking up new things to say. Mostly the pair spoke about family and friends and where they all are and what they are all doing. They reminisced about their childhood together. The eye of a child is predisposed to take in only the happiest of memories, as happiness is itself a virtue, perhaps chief among them, and none are more virtuous than children.

Ivan leaned back in his sturdy wooden chair and, expanding himself, cocked out both elbows as if stretching. Despite his slighter frame, his presence could be felt at once. There was a sort of power in him that extended past the physical body. If his frame was slight, his spirit was rotund.

He tilted his glass toward his gaze and eyed the final gulp of brown liquor remaining. In one motion, he shot the whiskey down his gullet and smacked his lips with satisfaction as if to mark the completion of a prelude to some business of which Dimitry was still unaware.

"You're wondering why I am here. Why I've come back and why I called upon you. There isn't much to a thing like that. I am here because in a sense, I never left. And in another sense, all together, home never left me. But how can I expect you to understand a thing like that? Not from the outset of course, because I have spent no time explaining context."

"And context is important here?" Dimitry responded in earnest.

"Of course, context is important here! Context is important in all things. In the proper context, all things are permissible. Truly, all things. Context is everything."

"OK, then what is the context?" Dimitry leaned forward.

"You remember when I left? You remember the day?" Ivan asked.

"No, I can't say I do. I heard a thing about your being commissioned by the army, but I did not know what to think of it then, and I suppose we've never addressed it between us," Dimitry said.

"No, of course not, of course not. We never address anything. We are men - brothers. And brothers do not waste time in trivialities such as this. Women, maybe. Two sisters, yes, I can see that. I can see that very clearly. But two men, two brothers? No, it should never come to pass. And on the other hand, exactly why should it not? Why should it not come to pass? Are you not worthy of the truth and am I worthy of your concern, or your time. Of course, you should know. We should know all there is between us, for we are brothers. And I do not speak merely in the familial sense.

"You are a dear and treasured part of my childhood and my life to this day, too. More than even that, more than the blood we share, you are my brother because you are brother to all, and I am brother to all. All men are brothers and all life an expanding circle of filial interconnectedness. Don't you see, we are all, of this world, brothers to one another. All life is a brotherhood. That is why I called upon you.

"To discuss brotherhood?" Dimitry completed his brother's thought with incredulity.

"See there, your eyes. Your eyes betray you, brother. Dear, Dimitry, my brother. You look that way, and why? Are you thinking to leave because I am drunk, or else mad? I am not mad, brother. I am well. Though it is fair to say I am drunk - not drunk, per say, but certainly under the influence.

"What a wonderful phrase, 'under the influence'. We are all under the influence in one way or another, are we not, dear Dimitry? We are, each of us, under the influence."

Dimitry started in response, but Ivan did not relinquish.

"It wasn't that I never learned to manage my base instincts," Ivan said. "I hadn't, but it lay deeper than that. I lived a long time by my nature. I embraced that part of me.

"Can you understand what I mean by those words, that part of me. I embraced a part of self not because I did not know better, but precisely because I did know better and chose to live contrarily. It is a sort of experiment, if you can come to see it that way. 'If I do this, then that,' and that was the start of it. I embraced all that is the basest in man. I thought the army might claw me out of the moral hole I had dug myself. We had not spoken for many years, you and I. Those were dark years for me. The army brought about even more brutishness in my heart, and my hole sunk deeper still.

"Do not misunderstand me, brother. I have not, and I do not now, repent for these things I have done and for the condition of my heart. Through the virtue of my baseness, I may come to you today and say these words I have been waiting to say for a long time - a very long time, brother.

"Do not discount my words on account of my appearance now, or the slur in this utterance or that one. For, my condition, my drunkenness if you'll have me come right out and say it, is not the driver of my words, though it may be the vehicle. Without a drink or two, I am not sure I could expel all that stirs my heart at night, in the moments before sleep steals me away. And yet, I know these things I am about to say; I know them intrinsically. That is to say, I have meditated on these things some years now, and I know what it is I am to say. So, you will pardon me if I speak myself in circles once or twice and mince this word or that, because at the end of it all, like the end of an apple tree, is a sugary-sweet morsel for you and me both. I will begin my contemplation with man as an animal of the Earth. From there we can explore much more deeply these things I keep in my heart.

"In many individual instances of this creature called man, we find a sort of ignorance which manifests in a brutish sort of fellow. He is like a horse, each is taught what is required of him by society by the carrot and the stick. He is rewarded with the carrot and punished by the stick.

"The temperament, that is what's in the heart of each man, fills a range as natural as that of all the other creatures of a certain evolutionary stature. Mammals are the most fully developed, by way of the species known as man. And man has developed incredible complexity - dexterity of body and mind. Yet, within each individual presentation of the species as a whole, within each man, there is a second sort of evolution which may take place. This is the evolution which occurs within the mind. This is important, listen carefully, brother. A distinct delineation lies between the evolution of the mind and, as I have said, the evolution within the mind, you see.

"Evolution within the mind is a rare milestone marking an acceleration in the progress of aggregate Life. It is a shift from the biological wildcard of mutation. Like a Las Vegas casino dealing cards from an automatic shuffler, perfectly random mutations in the smallest pieces of our tangible self are dealt into being at a pace no quicker than the generational width of a given species. Conversely, evolution of the mind is spry and lively. It has not the same limitations of biological evolution.

"We've not so much reached the limits of biological evolution - certainly life exists all around us that has come to harness functionalities with which the human biology cannot compete. Rather, it may be said man is something of a runt of the evolutionary family. Ay, Dimitry, a true runt of the litter, and yet has broken free of the shackles of his own physical limitations of body and mind."

Ivan chortled. "I have not come to my own defense on the matter of my sanity, have I? You think me no more than a lunatic."

"No, Ivan. I do not take you for a lunatic," Dimitry said warmly. "I think you eccentric and a bit grandiose, but I'll admit you might be sane, yet."

"Well now, then that is good! I knew I did well to call on you, brother. Here, here, have more drink," Ivan splashed a pour over the glasses, spilling the majority along the table between the two.

Dimitry sopped up the pooling whiskey with napkins. Ivan continued as if in recitation, "Biological evolution, you see, never set flight as the desired result. In biological evolution, the only desired result is continuation of life. That is assuming one could expand the mind to encompass a concept such as desire in the context of evolution - in the process of aggregate life. Is it not the shared attribute of all successful life, to move toward the continuation of life? As a whole that is, as a whole does life move toward a continuation of the phenomenon? Now, the phenomenon, as I have just called it, of life in this context can mean more than one thing. It is not necessarily life in the aggregate, but this will add to the complexity of the argument without adding value much, and so can be put aside. Rather, I mean only to look to flight as a proxy for the efficiency of evolutionary modalities.

"It was approximately 350 million years ago that insects first took the skies. In the last third of an Aeon, insects have truly mastered the craft. Among them are evolutionary artists in the butterfly's enchanting wing. Insects such as ants and crickets grow wings only temporarily which they shed after use. And have you ever tried to swat at a housefly who seemed to anticipate your every move with grace and ease? Insects are truly marvels of flight, and it only took them 350 million years to hone the craft.

"Ancient birds were famously sprouting functional avian appendages a mere 150 million years during the Jurassic period when we called them dinosaurs. Modern birds, in that time have spread across the world and accomplish outstanding feats of migration. The Arctic tern can fly from right here in Boston - this very spot," Ivan's finger jammed forcefully on the table, "to the Arctic circle and back in one migration cycle, which is a truly incredible distance for a creature to move under its own locomotion. But no bird can hold a candle to the feats of the mammalian branch of the family tree of Life.

"On team mammal, bats have finally come to eke out an evolutionary win only within the last 50 million years. They have not had much time to diversify in the ways insects and birds have, but still cover virtually all the planet, save for some islands, and fill a variety of ecological niches. This is all relatively impressive considering the short amount of time in which the mammal has worked it all out. Quite impressive, indeed. Then we have humans.

"Humans are the first form of life to fly independent of biological evolution. In humans we find an extremely active evolution within the mind. We will not delve into the details of the Montgolfier brothers or of their more famous counterparts, the Wrights. Man achieved flight in one regard or another within a mere few hundred years. A blip of a blip in the journey of life. In that blip of a blip, man has constructed craft larger than any biologically flying lifeform. We fly faster and farther as we extend our reach past our little speck, our home planet, into the vast Universe. Man has accomplished so much so quickly to the credit of the heightened capability within the mind."