This second book of a series describes events that happened to the author after returning from Vietnam a decorated Marine. This book of revelation begins a new direction and greater comprehension of what it means to be.
There is special satisfaction of completion in writing a personal memoir unlike any other genre. In one sense, it represents the opportunity to set the record straight, a first person narrative perspective on time and events experienced through a generation. Also, it is to be exposed, like striping away ones clothing piece by piece and making bare the pretense of self-importance. To tell one's own story is as much embarrassing, as it is cathartic, a confessional made public for all to judge. Sometimes the hero of a challenge-- sometimes the villain-- but always made humble by trials and elations based on conditions altogether human within context. Times when heaven brought down to earth through hunger of diminished appetite; and times fulfilled by heavenly blessing. Often an experience humbling when confronted by human weakness, human compassion, and the measure of divine grace. Herein lies the corundum of mortal existence: remove indoctrination of socialization, definitions of gender, context of cultural values, then what is left?
Are we only the sum of our experiences during this short sojourn? Are we merely the handful of earth and thimble of water that makes our biological whole in a fleetingly vast recyclable ocean recorded through a calculated number of lunar cycles? It is the chameleon visage of this familiar moonscape witnessed above, both lovely and frighteningly mysterious, which most haunts the living through constant passage.
Mountains and valleys of changing contour, faces remembered, some present, some gone, captured in imaginings of light and shadow subliminal, all Reflections in a Paper Moon.
Nurtured in the foothills of rural South Carolina of the 1950s and raised Agnostic, the author had to overcome many personal challenges of identity, all serving as directional conduits. In course, the author eventually joins the United States Marine Corps, and later promoted to Sergeant while serving combat duty in Vietnam, Southeast Asia. It seemed likely that a military career certain. Through an event of supernatural intervention, author is born again in the knowledge of God's chosen Messiah, Jesus Christ. This is not a religious experience, but an awakening. Able to think and truly choose for the first time, author is led into a secular education at University of Los Angeles (UCLA), where principals of universal rational and accumulated understanding taught as the norm in the theater of academia. This only increased the author's desire to know more, considering the stark contrast between existentially defined reality, and what the author now knows. Eventually graduating with a degree in Creative Writing, author has continued the pursuit of knowledge and definition of what is truth. Ultimately, it all comes down to faith in a deterministic set of theorems based on premises of limited data that everything is because it is; or faith in premise of intellectual design. The content of author's many works do not attempt to rationalize debate in justification of either position; rather are narratives of potential possibilities presented through source of elevated observation. It is author's hope that the books presented are thought provoking, allowing the reader the same gravity of thought experienced by this author through course of measured existence.
Cendi Baugus is a local artist engaged in commercial, as well as personal artistic expression
