Irreversible (Post #5)

"Devin, I've led a soldier's life, and I've never seen anything as brutally clear as this. It's as if I can actually see the blue troops in one long, bloody moment, goin' up the long slope to the stony top. As if it were already done... already a memory. An odd... set... stony quality to it. As if tomorrow has already happened and there's nothin' you can do about it. The way you sometimes feel before an ill-considered attack, knowin' it'll fail, but you cannot stop it. You must even take part, and help it fail." - General Buford, "Gettysburg" (1993)

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I am terribly sorry for the delayed blog post for this month and the shortness at that! In brief, since the middle of November of 2023, my wife and I have been doing necessary maintenance on our house. Not improvements, but the necessary nuts & bolts that keep the roof over our head, the heat on, and the water running. The joys of home ownership. With that said, we are just coming out of the cycle of repairs and my time will be more flexible henceforth going forward.

In that vein of discussion, the irreversible course of repairs in home ownership brings me to an interesting question. Why?

At the end of A Story of the Beginning (Revised Edition), we find the young Giovanni Salzano stripped of everything: his family, his home, his friends, and his wealth. Now a hunted man in an ever increasingly smaller world, the Italian was alone. As much as he could have run to Venice or to anyone of his uncle's wealthy connections, instead, he chose to fight. He became a mercenary. But instead of simply learning the "skills" he needed to find revenge against Father Saul, the Venetian seemingly threw his whole lot behind the identity, culture, and actions of a mercenary. What was Giovanni's end goal? To get his revenge and ride off into the sunset? To marry Felicia Vitali, his childhood romance, and live a life happily ever after as if nothing had happened? Live a life assuming nothing more would come of his actions once Father Saul was dead? In an isolated review of Giovanni's actions, the younger Salzano's end would be as miserable and daunting as the fate of Father Saul, no matter if Giovanni Salzano survived his fateful mission or not.

The above quote from the movie Gettysburg (1993) has always been one of my favorite quotes in any movie or book. To me, as Giovanni took that first step into the life of a mercenary in Chapter 11 (Origin) of A Story of the Beginning (Revised Edition), he felt that there was no going back and no way to fix anything. Not only that and even moreover, he felt that everything that had happened previously to him had set him on a path that there was no deviation from, that in a way he had now started down a course of action that he must see the conclusion to, good or bad. In short, he saw the irreversible context of the moment and the destiny therewithin and he kept to the course, assuming there was no alternative.

And maybe it was that sense of irreversible and destiny that will, in time, either vindicate or damn Giovanni Salzano.

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“You are a mercenary, Giovanni Salzano! It is in your blood! In your last name! You have more than vengeance left!”

Marcus Felix Brutus
pg. 167; A Story of the Beginning (Revised Edition)