Jean-Thomas Cullen writing as John Argo
Being & Becoming: a man with a gun on the run. This is fiction based on a true story. If you have lived this story, you'll know. If you haven't, you are lucky.
Sometimes, the past is too painful to take with you into the future. Sometimes, you leave half of yourself behind and travel into the future as half man, half shadow.
There are a lot of men and women driving around our highways and our cities, with stories like his, or worse.
This is what happened to a guy named Tom. He left his family name behind with the family he lost. All he remembers is fire--when he remembers anything.
At some point, he gives a cop his name as Tom Smith. It's so generic. Or Tom Jones.
Tom is the first piece of Tomorrow. But the last part of that rhymes with Sorrow.
At some point, you run out of highway. All there is ahead is beach, and ocean, and a small town. That is the kind of place Tom knew, deep down, was calling him.
In that small town, he found solace amid gray light slanting down in a free public library. In that library was the most precious and costly prize in the universe--a woman named Eve. The spark between them was love, not fire. It made Tom want to run again, but this time his shadow was driving, and Tom made him stop the car. It was time to stop running and hold Eve.
She was a widow, and had her own sorrows. They understood each other in a way that wanted to make the sun rise again, for the first time in a long time. Tom wanted to run, but a town full of caring people made him stay by the sea, where the tide rolls in and out like the rhythms of night and day, and the promise is that everything will finally be right again.
Becoming can take forever. Time to let go, move on, stop becoming, and start being.
Becoming is a long, painful ride into nowhere. Being is where you want to be.
You start from scratch, having lost everything, and the miracle is that there is a woman who also lost everything, who wants you more than anything in the world.
All you've got to do is stay--and be.
Stop becoming, and start being.
Tom's search is over. There is a lesson in there for all of us.
Tom is the start of Tomorrow.
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