{"id":31,"date":"2015-02-03T03:47:15","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T03:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patrickcarpen.com\/the-silfians\/?page_id=31"},"modified":"2015-07-08T23:07:04","modified_gmt":"2015-07-08T23:07:04","slug":"my-first-encounter-with-the-silfian","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/patrickcarpen.com\/books-written\/the-silfians\/my-first-encounter-with-the-silfian\/","title":{"rendered":"My First Encounter With The Silfian"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was last updated on the 2 February, 2015 by Patrick Carpen.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

I can remember the evening of November 4, 2014 like it were yesterday. After all, how could I forget? The events of that night were so extraordinary, and they impressed themselves upon my memory with such an unmatched frequency of vibration, that they will\u00a0always lie at the very top of my consciousness.<\/p>\n

I had just turned off the television filled with anger, despair and frustration. I was watching the BBC World News. Some\u00a0officials had just confirmed that the video depicting the beheading of the American<\/a> journalist was authentic. President Obama was about to address the nation. I just couldn’t look anymore.<\/p>\n

A part of me wanted to pack whatever little clothes I had, withdraw whatever little money<\/a> I had from the bank. Purchase some good rounds of ammunition and a few semi-automatic machine guns and head to the Middle East to fight ISIS. And I very well might have done so the next morning, had it not been for that fateful encounter with the SILFIAN.<\/p>\n

I threw myself down on my warm bed that night, looking through my open window, the gentle sea breeze gracefully touching my face, and the beautiful stars winking at me from above. Maybe just for one last night, I would savor this earthly yet divine pleasure of peaceful tranquility lying by my open window, because I’ve heard that in the hot arid war zones of the Middle East, things aren’t always this cozy.<\/p>\n

From tranquility to anger, from frustration to despair, my mind drifted from one extreme to the other. Why were humans<\/a> so stupid? After thousands of years of fighting each other, of empires swallowing up empires, of rebels overthrowing kings, haven’t we learnt enough to know that there are really no winners in a war? And if I understood this, why was I gearing up mentally to go to war? I had no choice? It would seem so.<\/p>\n

At that point the emotions in my mind reached a boiling point and I\u00a0wanted to scream at the top of my voice. And I very much would have, to the great astonishment of the neighbors next door, if an unearthly apparition hadn’t caught my eyes.<\/p>\n

Straight ahead of me, way up in the night sky, one of the stars seemed to leave its position and started to shoot in my direction apparently at a speed faster than I could imagine. By the time the object shot between the coconut branches in my back yard, I thought for sure that it would hit my house and break it to pieces.<\/p>\n

My heart beat violently, fit to burst as the object stopped dead right outside my window. What on earth could this be? It appeared like a giant bubble made of completely transparent glass, about six feet in diameter, with two seats in the middle capable of holding one person each, and a set of buttons and control sticks suspended in midair.<\/p>\n

Inside of the object was what looked like a human being<\/a>, but as long as my senses were with me, I could have sworn that whatever thing was in that machine could not have been human.<\/a><\/p>\n

My excitement went through the roof and I fainted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was last updated on the 2 February, 2015 by Patrick Carpen. I can remember the evening of November 4, 2014 like it were yesterday. After all, how could Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":330,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nMy First Encounter With The Silfian - Books Written<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Patrick Carpen writes of his first encounter with the SILFIAN.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/patrickcarpen.com\/books-written\/the-silfians\/my-first-encounter-with-the-silfian\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My First Encounter With The Silfian - Books Written\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Patrick Carpen writes of his first encounter with the SILFIAN.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/patrickcarpen.com\/books-written\/the-silfians\/my-first-encounter-with-the-silfian\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Books Written\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-07-08T23:07:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/patrickcarpen.com\\\/books-written\\\/the-silfians\\\/my-first-encounter-with-the-silfian\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/patrickcarpen.com\\\/books-written\\\/the-silfians\\\/my-first-encounter-with-the-silfian\\\/\",\"name\":\"My First Encounter With The Silfian - 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