Thursday, October 16, 2014

Rouse the King, the Jesters are Dying

Foolish

When I was a child, I reasoned that the world would become what I could imagine. I believed that the push of a thought, the strength of a few words, could alter reality. After all, I used my words to make people laugh, make them cry, and make them wonder. Through my lenses the world revolved at exactly the pace I expected.

This was not arrogance, nor narcissism. It was perception. I had always wondered if the people I encountered were really there or if they were merely my interpretation of people; that perhaps they were who they were only relative to our interactions. How could anyone really know anyone else? People never ceased to transform, to evolve, sometimes right in front of me.

My memory builds monuments to the strangest things: granite faces protruding from the mushy walls of mind, endowed with feeling in place of name. Their plaques list longing, distrust, love, and shame where identity once was etched, the names long since evaporated by the heat of emotion's furnace, melted away as so much wax. But I remember you, the essence of you, that which identifies you as the person I once knew; you are fixed there, static. Your actions are meaningless, I only know your essence is pure or polluted, clear or muddied; that is all I need to know.

I will give you love and laughter, forgiveness and kindness,  if you are hanging in that bright gallery, the one that I wish was the only great hall in this weathered, broken castle. You are among the unsullied and illuminated.

The other, darker, dank repository is for the rest. I cannot enter that place too often or my calm will vanish and I will be devoured by the rages and fears.