Every Man Jack of Us!

By j. samuel taylor jr.

Every man jack of us experiences all that life offers, whether we ask of it or not. Although we would like to think that our past, present and future is by our design, it is by the grace of God that we are taken on life’s roller coaster from our birth to our passing. We ride it upwardly, anticipating the exhilaration of heights we will achieve; downwardly, anticipating the rush to comfort that surviving the fall will bring us; and quickly around its twists, curves and loops, anticipating the self-actualisation that we have “been there, done that” by which we gauge our lives against that of others’. Every man jack of us experiences the others, who around us become them, and within us become those, while all along becoming we. What we see outside of us is but a window into what we can learn about ourselves if only we take the time to open the blinds to those things that we may not be comfortable accepting about ourselves. Every man jack of us is defined not by who, what or why we are – only that we are. And that we are is what is relevant to this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528983259

j. samuel taylor jr.

Mr. Taylor is an educator, writer of short stories/novellas, husband and father, avid reader (nonfiction), "wannabe" vocalist, failed guitar player, and student of human nature.

Book preview

Quietus

About the Author

He sees the little things in people and nature in order to evaluate and understand those things in large.

He is an avid tourist of world geographic cultures and societal so-called peccadillos.

He is a purveyor of uncommon truths made common by everyday people.

Every Man Jack of Us is the second in a series of three books that feature selected verses about j. samuel taylor jr.’s observations and synthesis of people and systems, personal and public, that inhabit what we so freely―and all too often incorrectly―refer to as only human and the nature of nature.

The publication of this book is preceded by the first title in this series, Bitter Wears a Smile: Of Nature and of Man, and will be closely followed by his third, Tinder (a book delving into the relationships of people and things in nature).

Taylor is an educator and family man.

Dedication

This work is dedicated to my sons, James Anthony, Quincy, and Whitney, and their beautiful children!

Copyright Information ©

j. samuel taylor jr. (2020)

The right of j. samuel taylor jr. to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528983235 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528983242 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781528983259 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2020)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgement

Thank you to my family, friends, colleagues and students for providing me with the love of life and duty in preparation for writing this book.

Author’s Prologue

It is not easy to distance our behaviors, or our thinking, our contemplation of difference from the virtues and peccadilloes of others. En route to our definition of living upright and well, we are bound to one another by our yin-and-yang design. We are indelibly stamped with the mark of ‘beauty’ or ‘beast’, ‘benevolent’ or ‘malevolent’, ‘triumphant’ or ‘despondent’, ‘perspicacious’ or ‘witless’, et al., and we are quick to judge each other’s wares accordingly.

So, too, do we offer up ourselves to each other in our customs and mores, our social and economic stature, our geopolitics, and, above all, that which we find most sacrosanct―what we want for ourselves above all others.

Every man jack of us roams this earth feeding off what it has given us, manufacturing what it does not, and cultivating our personal and societal defenses that none can put asunder.

Being Madelyn!

No illusions has she

About where the sun goes when darkness visits.

Where once there was the light, comes the heavy.

Where once was the unswerving water’s ways,

Safe from commotion, now zigs and zags

Where drought curls the sediments

Of intimacy’s dry rivers and dead seas,

Those chapped beds

Awaiting rain clouds’ precip

Re-entry into the cycles

Her womanhood.

Broken loves,

Broken lives,

Broken glass beneath her feet

Informs her what cut deeply her thin skin,

Her frail bones, her fragile means

Always one step ahead of penury actual,

Accused of lesser pedigree when foraging

Those intimacies―their gossamer safety netting

So easily through which to fall.

Contrite, she is not, that heavenward

She has prevailed beyond the hoi polloi

Who ushered her toward the scruples the great unwashed.

That preponderate are her blessings,

And she is soaked with magnanimity the dirt,

The stink, the jaundiced eye her intermittent blindness.

Under Construction

Hammer-driven, my life