Sir Kalen

Once there is, once there was, a room. Nay, a hall, a broad and illustriously dismal court. It occupied not space of length, but of width. It was cold in this broad hall, and against the front hall, occupying the median, was an imposed tiered court. A strange assortment of motley, gregarious, yet interminable and formidable characters occupied this multi-leveled and courtly tier. Grim and imposing, they conversed among themselves, with hissing reedy voices, dripping with satire and sadism. The walls bristled with a plague of shrines, entreaties, and memoirs to roles, models, ideals, thoughts, transactions, ruthless ideologies, crushed beauties, and dreams, crushed. A thin smoke of the Vulcan's rafted among the rafters eternally.

Faces, and maps of the world milled about floor, in blissful denial of the jury that observed them with scorn, as they idly ridiculed the lives below them. An empty podium stood before the jury, a bleak portrayal of the cowardly travesties that reigned.

And about this day, as heinous normality presided, his clerk of redundancy flirting with the harlot of procrastination in a shameless matter, almost flamboyantly. Disgustingly revolting was the envy which permeated the room. Furtive glances cast in their direction, envying not the one, or the other, but the pair, the couple, the lurid sentimentally that was communed betwixt the two. Enviously they were whispered of, for surely, they were destined to join the enshrined walls, to be timeless.

A vast gate stood portly, across the tiered court, permitting the entrance, and kicking out of those who milled about. And in one entered. A young lad, a grim lad, a venerable dictation of youth. A laughable walking curiosity. He gazed upon the room, as he walked in, wowed by the spectacle, but not wooed but the impositions. Amazed by the shrines, yet not amused by the whoring. Piqued by the empty podium. With a seeming carelessness he meandered to the podium, betaking a modest observance and survey of the empty spectacle.

Cruel, demeaning, and sadistic as the courtly jury may be, they were not naïve, or obtuse, with wary satire they observed the venerable curiosity, feeding an insatiable appetite of inquiry.

As our peerless hero stood within a short distance of said podium, a member of the courtly jury broke his hushed silence, calling down to the lad, "Well? Are you going to gawk there, or approach the stand, and speak?"

Our learless hero was not phased, but calmly stood his ground, observing the stretched face of the speaker. "You? You're the spokesman of determinism aye? That would be your face. The scorned lover of fate, half-kin to destiny. Yes, that is you." And with this, he strode forward to take the podium. Almost coincidently, as if the regrettable recognition of the apparition secure the choice in his mind.

A slothful loathing took the room. No one had dared take the podium in centuries. No one had dared stand before the mortal gods of the tier. No one had braved or accepted the inquisition of the podium. But now, a young vulnerable life stood in the twixt, of life and reality, a facet in the grips of ideologies, lurid sentimentalities, and contorted rationality. A stately figure, near the pinnacle of the tier observed him through un-need spectacles, as the milling mob below formed around him, giving him the centric.

"You sire, young lad, cheap life, senseless and irrational inamorata, you, you, you... you are charged with treason. Treason against credulity, mutiny against mediocrity, and a disgrace to normality. By these charges, how do you stand and plea?" Each word was twisted vilely, and so acerbic you could taste it. A piercing bitter barb to the tongue, a revolting burn to the senses.

"By what court, right, decree or whim, am I tried?" Queried our undaunted peer.

"By what does it matter?" bellowed a bulbous oafish man, "What does it matter? What will it matter? You've come here, you've stood in the place, by law you will face an inquisition!"

"Your lurid ignorance is nauseating! Your contempt is pathetic, your mockery is vitriolic." Was the acrimonious reply from our young soul. "I know why I stand here, I know how I stand here, I cannot fathom why you disgustingly waste the putrid air in this room. Miserably serving out your life as a foul pollutant. Leeching life from everything around you, you hideous parasite. You bed-ridden disease, plague and scourge, you life-less comedy!" Our young hero seethed now. A ferocious passion consumed him, disregarding sentiment. "Oh yes, I know why I was summoned. To be crushed. To be scorned and spited, mocked and marauded, plagiarized and placated. Why? Because I want something, I am full of something. Life. I have a passion for this life, and a love of this life! I want to live and dream. I yearn to hope and sweat. I love to weep and dance, rage and love. To breathe, the sweet airs of aspiration! I am here, on a dare, because I dared. I am a fancy of the fauns, A hope of the heavens, a life.

Yes you fools, in all your wisdom. You derision of wit and wisdom. I don't want something from this life, but something for this life. I simply wanted to live."

The whitened hush that followed was the song of the fables. The horror of decency, a draught of discretion. And from the top of the tier, came a low sound, in mistakably was this soft laugh. The cruel laugh of irony. Disbelief, incredulity and bewilderment where but a byword now, yet irony laughed on. She railed on the hapless hero,

"Oh foolish boy. You are something to behold. You are a comedy of errors! An Opera of lampoons. You silly mortal... You walking contradiction, you problematic paradox, you derisive dichotomy. You amuse me. So bodly striding in, so readily recognizing the face of fate, the facts of the future, you have keen eyes, but a confused heart. Have you not repeatedly cursed and damned the life you claim you live so fully? Have you not cowardly failed in ending it? Please, this is a procedure of propriety, not a promenading pantomime."

He pondered for a moment, "As I have dared to live, I once dared to die. Could you not still let me be? What twisted vice do you ascribe to? What treachery posses you, to hurdle barbs down my path? What have I wanted that I must pay this price?!? What bitterness poisons your soul, that will not permit me to simply live. What great and preposterous goal have I envied? What have I sought and fought for, that permits and authorizes you all, to levy such a tax on me? This is no court of justice, no procedure of propriety. Shakespeare! He spoke truly! All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players. Are the charges then thrown at me, that I have failed to follow the script? That I will not prance about, in a blasphemous mimicry? That I have aired the dirty laundry of fate? Derided her scorned lovers of determinism and destiny? Is this why you have challenged me?"

And then, from the corner, came a shriek, that blossomed into a bellow. "ENOUGH!!" And tottering forward, frail and acrimoniously, came an encroached soul. His life all but spent, spent into dying flame inside him, burning painfully, bringing a searing roar to his voice. "ENOUGH! I'll tell you why you were summoned, you miserable pompous imp! Look before you! I've told you once previously, you are summoned, to be the judge and jury. Behold the wizened, contorted and archaic faces before you, towering above you! They are heralds, as you are. You and your divisive rationality, your rancorous logic, your seething virility, wildly and chaotically un-tempered, you will one day preside over this very court. Your life spent, your mind bloated, your rationality and logic so obtuse, you will be the envy of the world! The obsessions of your minds, are but games for life. You! You were summoned to be pardoned! To be spared! But as perfidious judge and jury, you placed yourself on trial, you condemned yourself, soon, you'll be a one man lynching party in your flagrant ardor! We were to be gawked at, hastily whispered warnings from a loving mother to child's indiscriminate ear. We were spectacles to avoid, shrines abdicate, a fixation to figure! But no, You and your promenading mind. You problematic paradox! A mind rampantly unchecked, brilliant, genius, obsessive, overtly rationale, and discontent! You cursed the clichés, and we dared to furtively breath 'bravo!'. Yes, you've dared to live, as we all once did. But we lived with our mind! The hunchbacked god of science, logic and rationality! We sacrificed our souls, our interminable consciousness, to such gods. And they are not but tools, playthings, drugs for the geniuses! Among the Hawkins, Dawkins, Nietzsches, You will stand, not among them, but amidst in them, between them, setting them apart. Oh yes lad, You'll stand, not in voice with them, but against them. You'll live! But how?"

Our lad neither pondered nor floundered, but gazed raptly, poised and waiting, perceptive. When the encroached soul finished his tirade, then our lad stepped forward, speaking reservedly, "But above all, I was summoned, for hope. Because as you all near your own deaths, which you fear not, you realize, that the end of fate does signify something more tragic, the death of hope. No, I am not a hope for you all, not a savior or redeemer, but a symbol. A hope, for you, a hope for me, a hope for innocence. The rocks rained down on my path, which I so obtusely clamber over, are cleverly disguised guideposts, intended to spare me the pains of regret? To pardon me a presiding?

You are all scared, and you know that I am, scared that in this day and age, a murderer stands by, intent on killing hope. And so we hide hope in our hearts and lives, as I have. Lived and hoped, you have called me in to check the rampant hope inside me. So often do I let it free, to breathe the sweet ardor of aspiration. But you my friends, you are squelching hope. Let life become infatuated with her beauty, simplicity, pleasantries. And no murderer's blade will ever touch her. That is why I've come here. To be hoped."

And so, the court was adjourned.