You know, this is somewhat off-topic here--but hey, it's a lazy summer Saturday afternoon--but anyway, I've been having to re-think Atman; it's wholly possible the evil twin isn't all I've ever made him out to be.
But damn, he's such a hedonist, such a materialist, always going on luxury trips to Thailand and spending winters in five-star ski resorts and flying down to Florida about every other week, one gets the impression he's loaded.
And his attitude's exactly that of a spoiled rich kid.
<<<and so can't be blamed for having a possibly-wrong impression of Atman.
However, this revelation that he was once so poor he had to stash his stuff in a rented storage unit, and then was a week late in paying the bill there, caused the brain to hit a speed-bump.
Now, primitives lie; primitives lie all the time, it's second nature to them. But if one watches them long enough and often enough, one develops a sense for when they're lying, and when they're accidentally telling the truth.
It sounds credible; Atman was once that poor, and perhaps even today isn't that well off.
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Actually, the discombobulation began when conservativecave was down, and needing something to do, I spent time checking some things out.
On the walls of Atman's--or his son's--house, there's some picture-frames with family photographs in them; the sorts of frames one picks up at Dollar General or Hobby Lobby or Wal-Mart, with little oval, square, and rectangular openings behind which one puts wallet-sized photographs of parents, spouse, children, grandchildren, whatnot.
Such frames are ubiquitous in many homes; they cost a buck, two bucks, apiece.
<<<doesn't care much for them.
Now, being a professional caricaturist, an artist, one would normally think that the evil twin uses care and discretion--and big bucks--in his selection of picture-frames.
I mean, I'm not an artist myself, but
all pictures in this place are custom-framed, many times gotten when I was living on the edge, from paycheck to paycheck, with a gap between them.
<<<likes nice, professional picture frames.
But here, he's using picture frames more commonly found in cluttered congested trailer homes.
Not exactly a sign of promiscuous affluence there.
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I also then re-looked at self-posted photographs of the evil twin, and saw something I'd never seen before.
Things may be going okay for Atman right now, but what I was seeing in his face in those pictures was the drawn, anxious, harried face of a man who's had to deal with a $100 electric bill with only $70 in his checking account. (Not recently, but in the long-ago past.) Or, again a long time ago, a father with a hungry infant, and there's only half a pint of milk in the refrigerator.....
It's blowing me away, that I'm having to re-think Atman.
