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The Journals of Raymond Brooks 95
“You must, for life goes on no matter what. Either you go on
with it or you wither and die. There’s plenty of guilt in my life

too, but I don’t let it rule over me,” he said.
“You make it sound so easy,” I replied.
“Never said it was, you just don’t have any other choice,” he
replied, and I stared at the fire silently, trying to sort out a lot of
blackness and some scrambled images running across my mind.
“It’s rather simple, boyo. You’re handed out what you’re
handed out. We’re not all born equal, so there’s no use resenting
fate,” he said.
“But it’s not fair!” I protested, feeling an old anger stir to life,

and an image of blond hair blowing in the spring wind.
“No, it’s not, but you have a choice, and it’s a simple one,
really. You do what you want to do, go your own way, carve
your own fate,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” I replied.
“I’ll explain, then,” he said, grabbing a twig and drawing in the
sand.

“There are three kinds of fates,” he explained. “The first is the
fate of being born,” he said as he drew the word ‘vitae’, which
is Latin for life. He was highly educated for a wood-chopping-
hermit-in-the-woods.
“You can’t change the circumstances of your birth, can’t
choose your folks, can’t choose your gender, can’t choose your
race. Do you know what I’m saying?” He asked, hinting at a
deeper meaning I could not yet see.
“Yes,” I replied, as so far it was clear as I took his words literally

for what they were.
“On the other side we have death,” he said, and drew the
word ‘Morte’, the Latin word for death. “You can sometimes
choose the way you die, but you can’t stop death. That’s the