Out of the flames

While checking my email and going through the posts on the herbal medicine tribe I found myself mentioned and not politely. I was being flamed. Since I get digest emails instead of the usual clutter of almost hourly messages sent from that very busy tribe I didn't realize this had been going on. Someone I've never met attacked me openly and very rudely and asked that someone use his flames for a haiku. Someone jumped in and did. I thanked them for their creativity and asked the flamer why he found the need to attack me. I then went to his profile on tribe.net, as he obviously had read my profile (he could've gotten the information he used in no other way) and sent him an email asking why he felt the need to attack me since I had no knowledge of him, had never written anything to or about him and hadn't posted anything other than a little information about a rude and crude individual who finds it necessary to attack people looking for information and asking questions about colloidal silver, something about which he is strong and rudely vocal. I wait for his answer.

This situation reminds of situations in the past when I have offered information and mediation only to be attacked. I went back to those posts and found that although my conciliatory words were still there, as were my responses to the flaming attacks, the attacks had been deleted. I'm certain the same will happen with the herbal medicine flamer. From what I know and from what I've read about the peacemakers, those who offer mediation and a chance to find some common ground in the midst of war and personal attacks, the peacemakers are usually cut down by those who do not wish to find an amicable settlement and do not want to listen to reason or find common ground. Seldom do the peacemakers die a peaceful death. Those who do not want peace and who are totally invested in their anger and need to demonize someone, anyone, find ways of creating chaos and strife no matter where they go or what they do. They are the drama queens who delight in feeding off negative and heightened emotions like vampires.

Vampires are seen nowadays as romantic figures doomed to walk the earth without a soul, victims of predators who made them the unwilling recipients of a dark gift, demon lovers who stalk the night and offer their bloody kiss, but vampires are predators who feed off the light and the energy of the living.

Vampires were unholy creatures of the night, fetid carrion eaters who stank of the grave until Dark Shadows gave us Barnabas Collins, the victim of a scorned witch who cursed him with eternal life and an overwhelming thirst for blood. Then came Lestat and Louis and a host of other vampires who offered romance for their pint of blood and suffered the torments of the damned, making us forget they are still predators who would rather drink the last drops of our blood than surrender to Death. Some preyed on rats or only on criminals, thus making them a little less repulsive as they wooed us with their grace and strength and marble carved beauty. Some vampires fed on the blood of cattle while we fed on cattle's milk and meat, making us civilized predators, but predators all the same.

Romance can be found in the strangest places and faces and people tend to romanticize everything and everyone at one point or another, turning the world upside down and seeing everything through rose-colored glasses. We fail to see the friend or lover who uses and abuses us, making us the butt of their thinly veiled jokes, as vampires feeding off our energy and light and intelligence like ticks and fleas and mosquitoes -- or larger more seductive predators. But we are all predators. Whether we feed off animals or vegetables or the bright energy of a peaceful soul, we are first, last and always predators standing on some rung of the food chain waiting to eat or be eaten with or without the flames.