Metamorphosos: A Proposed Path to Independent Living (Revised)

Eston Eugene Roberts was born in New Orleans, LA, on April 12, 1932, to Arthurlene

Sutt on and Carl Daniel Roberts. His mother worked as a hotel maid and his father,

some years older than his wife, was a traveling magazine salesman who abandoned

his wife and two children in 1936. The family of three then relocated to Damascus,

GA, where they lived for a time with a great-uncle named Gary.

Within a year, Eston's mother re-married, and the family moved to a large log

home on the edge of Hilburn Hammock in an adjoining county. In addition to his

stepfather's parents, the house was already home to four siblings, and the addition

of three new family members made, understandably, a stressful situation. His

mother, essentially a city girl, was shown no sympathy for her lack of agricultural

competence, and the two older girls banded in tandem, forcing her to do their laundry.

It was no coincidence, given these pressures, that his mother began to suffer foaming-

at-the-mouth seizures, and he remembers retreating to the north end of the long

front porch and screaming "Help! Help! Help!" at the top of his lungs. Over time,

escaping that feeling of helplessness became the lodestone of his life.

Eston's stepfather was a hard taskmaster--opening often that he was doing a man

day's work at nine years of age-and was quick to point out Eston's failures to measure

up, occasioning the defensive remonstrance: "I don't care, I'm not going to be a

farmer anyway!"-a vow he was able to keep, having spent most of his working

years as a college administrator and teacher of English.

Eston and his late wife, Dorothy, brought into the

world five children, all of whom have showered

his life with blessings.

Metamorposos seeks to re-defi ne meta-phor as the

source of everything on the planet, providing, in

the process, a rationale for independent living, a

suggested path for liberation from the hypocrisy of

religions and reflexive living, and the wherewithal

to assume responsibility for a self-directed existence

based on the concept of grounded integrity.

The author is pleased to acknowledge his

indebtedness to the metaphor that is quantum

mechanics.