Paper Mage

"What is it that the child has to teach? The child naively believes that everything should be fair and everyone should be honest, that only good should prevail, that everybody should have what they want and there should be no pain or sadness. The child believes the world should be perfect and is outraged to discover it is not. And the child is right." --Rabbi Tzvi Freeman When last I loved something like you, my outer world ended. I was not able to save it, and my inner world was cut off as the bridges burned, one after another. A firmer distrust of destructive men. It turns out, a chronic hesitance propagated toward any sense of Future is the most venemous spirit-killer. The resulting cacophany is one of just a little more despondence, detachment, dispassion. One watches as the remaining islands abandon each other as naturally as the dark-matter-driven cosmos for some lie of a greener pasture. When last I loved something like you, my patience was rewarded with Loss. Still, I also Found. I found you while I knelt reassembling the pieces of home and self to which I knew I could never fully return. You're part of the new me, and I intend to fiercely guard you. My prayer, to walk with you in the dark, to lead you to a place where you'll be safe: "How can I help you?" Skin, then fur, grows around that shard of your bone in my haunches. When I'm torn and ask you to set me free, remember I will carry you, anyway. Wherever you go, I'll fly with you on golden wings under the sun. When last I loved something like you, a chain grappled my soul and dragged me into the sea. But, for you, I won't bear the mantle of Shepherd of Fallen Heroes. Beloved, I would plunge myself head, hands, and feet back into those waters for the chance to save you, to tell you--even without words--how I feel. You're perfect.

At the edge of a promise stubbornly clings this throat-blazing devotion. Balancing self-respect against the waves of our social programming, dictating a base value of "wicked, incompetent," Old Scapegoat selflessly saddles the sins of her brother, Old Vulture dutifully picks over the bones of someone else's kill, and Old, Bad Omen may well descend to save the world. In another life, in another dream, by a different name, our job was to carve out the happiest possible ending for someone else. Even if we're just heroes for one day, even if we can't find heaven, these new worlds--new pieces of me, new experiences away from home, seeding life into the earth--imbued me with the hope and power to shake my fist at a deterministic narrative, to see cause connect to effect with my own hands. Maybe the price of that is invisibility to the those you've grown to love and desperately wish you could, just once, reach out and hug, yourself, but can't. Law of equivalent exchange and all. I don't know why I was invited if only to play the battery, the lantern… I only know I want to help. I fill with tears I cannot weep in your world, with hunger for connection I cannot give you, with the fear of your death while I remain immortal on your side of the Veil. Why would a star ever be afraid of the dark? I could count the tears I've cried, but my eyes still brim with those unshed. I can feel them behind my face, like the still waters of a raised, underground lake, whose motionless surface collects to the highest level of its caldera. Pacing like a wolfmum, helpless hands tied, anticipatory grief over endings and separation, an extra wheel. Hunger for a place, a role, is the hunger to make a contribution. I have to be a person, first--I have to be free--in order to help you. I want who I am to be useful, too. Loving someone creates an empty space, and madness. Souls are cleaved under this gravity, and we rarely have the hands, alone, to return our fallen minds. But, these same affections overpower hot sands of fear even as they fill my lungs--I bear them for the chance to hold you, or set you free. I'd even wish the world back from a single of their grains. But unity makes strong, and so the sensible hate goodbyes.

To kill cheaply takes a wave of the hand. To write this in stone takes the lifting of a finger. To provide an ending both meaningful and happy requires sweat and wisdom. They, themselves, cheapen death who deal it recklessly, not unlike slaying a unicorn for the measly reward of its horn. There's no need to rectify or avert a sacrifice not committed for cheaply reasons. If life weren't, by default, sacred enough to preserve, then neither should death be placed on that rotting pedestal. I don't consider the rule of permanent death to be a legitimate rule if it cannot also defend a death as being meaningful. Is it cheap in real life? Often. But with stories we have the ability to make exceptional the ordinary, and to remember the happy and meaningful are not mutually exclusive to a skilled storyteller. The right to call ugly situations "ugly," the right not to accept them, is what keeps our bar in the sky, what helps us remember we deserve more and can fight for it.

Chaidh mo bhaile suas ann an lasraichean, ach is mise eun Phàrrais an t-saoghail aige. Bidh mi a’ cur fhlùraichean fiadhaich as t-earrach agus ag èirigh a-rithist is a-rithist nuair a bhios iad briste. Is mise Boireannach agus Ruadh agus Cuideigin a tha Beò.