#kadaspala

I choose to paint death, yes, and you ask why – in horror and revulsion, you ask why? I choose to paint death, my friend, because life is too hard to bear. But it’s just a face, dead paints on dead surface, and it tells nothing of how the neck snapped, or the wrongness of that angle with the body. It is, in truth, a failure. And each time I paint this boy, I fail. I fail when you turn away. I fail when you walk past. I fail when you shout at me about the beautiful things of the world, and why I didn’t paint those? I fail when you cease to care, and when you cease to care, we all fail. I fail, then, in order to welcome you to what we share. This face? This failure? It is recognition.

Forge of Darkness: Three men and one truth.

Kadaspala spoke with utter honesty . 'Lord, pray we talk these candles down as the only measure of the evening's passage.' Urusander's eyes were narrow and thoughtful. 'I was warned to expect nothing but foul and bitter regard when in your company.' 'Only when I paint, Lord. Only when I paint. Now, if it pleases you, I am interested in hearing your thoughts on my work thus far.' 'My thoughts? I have but one, Kadaspala. I had no idea I was so transparent.' He nearly dropped the goblet. Only the quick intercession of a servant saved him.

[Kadaspala] despised the notion of betters. Station and wealth were flimsy props thrown up in front of people as flawed and as mortal as anyone else, and if it was their need to strut and prance behind them, it was proof of internal weakness and nothing else, and what could be more pathetic than that?

Yet it was the breadth of the contradiction that most disturbed him: that on the one hand he could adhere to the belief that every life was of equal value, a value that was immense, while at the same time despising everyone he knew.