Post by Nate on May 3, 2011 12:52:49 GMT -8
I won't say a word. I can't. Never again.
Or so I thought. I had spent many years without a voice, traveled counties and countries trying to expunge a burden that I had no right to lay down. In the silence, I have heard many old sayings, some of them ringing true, some gilded in poetry and twisted into half-truths.
Beauty is life, it is said. I believe that they have that backwards. Life is the potential for the darkest hovel to be filled with the golden light of dawn. A beltane dance is not entrancing for the sake of movement, but the rebirth of spring felt by each living soul. The most realistic portrait or sculpture is not enthralling for all the skill involved, but for a single life encapsulated for all of eternity, and even then, it is but a pale reflection. Where there is true life, not something twisted and dwarfed under the chains of cold logic, there is joy. Where there is joy, there is beauty. Even thrill-seekers challenge Death not to beat the Pale Rider, but to immerse themselves in the brilliance of Life made all the more meaningful by comparison to the alternative.
I found the value of life the hard way. I had to end one, to learn it. Or so I thought.
Winter is coming. That is a truth, in every sense of the word. Wait long enough, and a storm will approach the horizon. Will the killing Winter be in this lifetime? Not if I can help it. But come it will, with all the old sprites of cold laughing the last. First will come the Killing Frost, called Jack Frost when the world was still young, before he became a Lord in the Winter's Court. Close on his heels will ride Old Man Winter himself, with beard white as frost and eyes colder then icicles hanging from a dead-man's house, with all of his entourage. And when this revelry is over, the world will shine as bright and cold as a diamond. Winter will come, that can not be argued, but how many will survive? As many as those who can are willing to save.
But not even winter can last forever, and life will spring again.
You can never return home. Mostly true. While physically home will never stray, to leave the confines of familiar walls is to grow apart from what you remember. Nothing stays static, everything changes, and no two roads carry the same lesson. But as I wander these black, gray, and white halls, I realize that sometimes, home returns to you. This house, though on a different shore, is where it all began for me. The hardest lessons learned, were taught here. I can still see that beautiful woman, pinned to the wall like a macabre butterfly. I can still hear the dripping of her blood like a demon's clock. Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of our past? I can see this play unfolding again. Another beauty, another realm, still the same hunger for a love long lost. This time, I will speak before it is too late, I will keep the mummers' sanity and soul in the air with all the skill I possess, I will not allow anyone else to die for a frivolous reason. I will dance with them, on this dark stage, and I will save as many lives as I can.
And there will be no clocks ticking away in the night.
Or so I thought. I had spent many years without a voice, traveled counties and countries trying to expunge a burden that I had no right to lay down. In the silence, I have heard many old sayings, some of them ringing true, some gilded in poetry and twisted into half-truths.
Beauty is life, it is said. I believe that they have that backwards. Life is the potential for the darkest hovel to be filled with the golden light of dawn. A beltane dance is not entrancing for the sake of movement, but the rebirth of spring felt by each living soul. The most realistic portrait or sculpture is not enthralling for all the skill involved, but for a single life encapsulated for all of eternity, and even then, it is but a pale reflection. Where there is true life, not something twisted and dwarfed under the chains of cold logic, there is joy. Where there is joy, there is beauty. Even thrill-seekers challenge Death not to beat the Pale Rider, but to immerse themselves in the brilliance of Life made all the more meaningful by comparison to the alternative.
I found the value of life the hard way. I had to end one, to learn it. Or so I thought.
Winter is coming. That is a truth, in every sense of the word. Wait long enough, and a storm will approach the horizon. Will the killing Winter be in this lifetime? Not if I can help it. But come it will, with all the old sprites of cold laughing the last. First will come the Killing Frost, called Jack Frost when the world was still young, before he became a Lord in the Winter's Court. Close on his heels will ride Old Man Winter himself, with beard white as frost and eyes colder then icicles hanging from a dead-man's house, with all of his entourage. And when this revelry is over, the world will shine as bright and cold as a diamond. Winter will come, that can not be argued, but how many will survive? As many as those who can are willing to save.
But not even winter can last forever, and life will spring again.
You can never return home. Mostly true. While physically home will never stray, to leave the confines of familiar walls is to grow apart from what you remember. Nothing stays static, everything changes, and no two roads carry the same lesson. But as I wander these black, gray, and white halls, I realize that sometimes, home returns to you. This house, though on a different shore, is where it all began for me. The hardest lessons learned, were taught here. I can still see that beautiful woman, pinned to the wall like a macabre butterfly. I can still hear the dripping of her blood like a demon's clock. Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of our past? I can see this play unfolding again. Another beauty, another realm, still the same hunger for a love long lost. This time, I will speak before it is too late, I will keep the mummers' sanity and soul in the air with all the skill I possess, I will not allow anyone else to die for a frivolous reason. I will dance with them, on this dark stage, and I will save as many lives as I can.
And there will be no clocks ticking away in the night.