Sir Kalen

I offer a pathetic remedy.

Moo!

What Sort of Moo!(tm) are you?

What is a poet? A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music. His fate is like that of the unfortunate victims whom the tyrant Phalaris imprisoned in a brazen bull and slowly tortured over a steady fire; their cries could not reach the tyrant's ears so as to strike terror into his heart; when they reached his ears they sounded like sweet music. And men crowd about the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again"; that is as much as to say: "may new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be formed as before; for the cries would only frighten us, but the music is delicious." And the critics come, too, and say: "quite correct, and so it ought to be according to the rules of aesthetics." Now it is understood that a critic resembles a poet to a hair; he only lacks the suffering in his heart and the music upon his lips. Lo, therefore, I would rather be a swineherd from Amager, and be understood by the swine, then be a poet and be misunderstood by men.

I won't make it...

You're a coward.

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.

bad walt, Bad! You broke the e-mail alerts for new comments... Again :)

For you, my beleaguered, intelligent, competent, and misguided friend: I write this, out of sympathetic and empathetic charity. I arrogantly presuppose and write this for your own good and well being. I have not much to say here, but a few questions, that I pray will linger.

Permit me first, to outlay and paint through, the recent circumstances in my life. Two weeks and two days ago, I stood somewhere. I stood beside some one. I stood with some ones. I observed something close and personal, I lost someone dear and precious. I held the hand of my grandmother as she passed away. I listened to her ragged breath slow down and cease, felt her struggling heart ease and rest. I kissed her forehead as she died and left this world.

I know I know, you'll languish with me, and regrettably point out my appeal to emotion and heart. If you do so, then I am comforted. Tis a sign, that my message is getting through. Because this is an appeal, not only to logic, but to the very naturalism that you believe in. To the conscience which you deny, yet incorrigibly live by. An appeal to the consciousness you seek for.

We share two dichotic lives and beliefs. Succinctly put, I believe in God, you do not. Of course such two paradoxical ideologies entail and curtail an innumerous tally of unresolved differences, clashes, and disputes.

This is written, not to address, but to ask, to question, to test our two lives and their structures. I've asked of you and your belief structure, what happens when we die. The answer I received was simple: we die. And cease to exist. Its an end. Nothing after.

Perhaps it is my upbringing. Most certainly it does have a huge influence on how I think and what I think. But I've not been brainwashed - so I cannot blame my upbringing. Not that I would. Yet when I hear those words, when I read them, when I observe your opinion on the matter, something recoils within me. Something inside shirks, as if in the face of horror. Something screams inside me, in denial, in rage. Something inside twists and contorts, as if stabbed, and it cries out in raging pity, "It is not so! Hear me now, I am alive!" As if lying incapacitated, immobile, and hearing the doctor say, "He's gone, we cannot help him." Yet you hear the doctor's words, and know, that you are still alive! You are pained and everything inside and alive in you screams, "Hear me now! Come back, I'm still alive!" yet strangely you are mute.

This is why I suspect my upbringing: It is that I cannot fathom how something inside of you, does not similarly scream in a raging hope. The recent events in my life, have re-awoken with in me that question, and I cannot fathom how or why you haven't asked it of yourself. I really cannot. It is so obvious in my eyes, that it nears being absurd and obnoxious. When you tell yourself that, is it in all honesty? Or is it some mantra you mindlessly reiterate, so as to rationalize your life with blatant and blaring redundancy?

I am not deluded. And as I observed my dear grandmother pass away, I felt within me, for reasons to numerous and lengthy to iterate here, that she had gone home. Her body, shell, chassis, had met its end. Yet what was inside that body, was still alive, and had moved on...

And now I reach the why of what is written: The question. Ask yourself, inside you, your mind, "Will you really just terminate? End? Fade to black? Cease to exist? The emotions and memories of a life be vanquished by entropy? Cease to exist? Disintegrate?" Ask yourself that. I feel you have not truly asked yourself that question, because you cannot hear your internal screams of "I'm ALIVE!!"

Are we gambling men? This game of life and universe we play, are we betting our lives, souls and consciousness?? Are the odds never more even? 50% I am no gambling man, I do not speculate from experience, or speculate from profession or vocation, I do not know if 50% are even odds. I do not gamble, I do not speculate. But you my friend, I feel you do. In the paraphrased words of the genius, "God does not play dice with the universe." He is correct, we are the ones throwing the dice. Hedonistically flirting with the stakes. I shall hold my cards, and play them in the end. The question once again, will only be answered in our deaths. You are a scientific man; will death be your final experiment and test? Life - this is a most dangerous game.