Tao of Pauly

Mirth

Why is that the dismal clouds hang over me for eternity it seems? Why does it seem to be? Is that the quintessence of my nobility? I am not alone in standing at the mouth of a river, watching a mourning widow overwhelmed with sorrow and unmanly grief, my fortified heart shielded by her angelic apprehension. Sharing in her misery, the calamity looked us all in the eye. Those were moments when I found myself lost, my thoughts and weary emotions carelessly side stepped through an unweeded garden, where pricks of razor sharp thorns splattered trails onto my raw flesh, and the frailty of my defenses were exposed with the perfect droppings of my foul blood as my destiny cried out to me.

"My time is almost gone. I must render up the last serious statement I can utter," the spirit of my forefathers confided in me, although I was forbidden to share our conversation with anyone, but it stuck with me like two spears from the hands of a revengeful warrior. My humbled philosophy crumbled at the foot of our bustling society, trampled underfoot, like a piece of scrap paper stuck to the newly shined shoe of a Lower Manhattan businessman.

The beautified movements of her walk allowed butterflies to flutter inside my intestines. The long strides and the galloping bounce of her soothing hair lulled me out of the danger of inert fear when she walked in the maginficent sun in between high rises apartment buildings, where doormen with reserved voices wore pristine white gloves and starched pea-green uniforms and flashed false smiles. Drunk on her scent and intoxicated by the early morning air, I visited her face too roughly. She snickered and scratched my arm. Normally, I was opposed to the deceptive frailty of thy woman and I would hold my breath with the same stubbornness that I hold my silence. My actions lent significant burden to my mad outlook. True madness? Not anger, but a true wave of pity and insanity fueled me and I wondered what was the cause of my defect. My inner emotions often clouded morality and civility, were sometimes the substance that thrust me towards perfection and nirvana. My lunacy was my demise. My crafty madness was my key to opening the dozens of locked doors ahead of me.

I used to sleep in late on rainy afternoons, where the swift winds whipped raindrops onto the slick windows where I observed the world before me. My prison, my window. My world, my mind. All worlds are prisons, all minds are behind bars, and my soul sits on a damp prison floor, with narrow walls and infinite time to allow my bad dreams to haunt me. My conceit burnt my fingers. My motives dried up friendships. My wistful passion opposed many a man, without riches and wickless candles, those false entities dressed like middles class soldiers. Yet, I spilled out my thoughts on her gaudy apparel to anyone within earshot. Her aloof kiss distracted my melancholy for several months, while I wrapped up all of her wicked presents and hid them underneath my dirty socks. Her long letters on purple stationary were not enough to end the heartache, although her truthful and affectionate words tickled me with memories of touching moments. Alas, in due time I abused the beauty of our orchard, the one that we grew together and watched it flourish high up on a hill before I shuffled off into the dusk of another out of joint evening, returning eons later, like a prodigal son, nearly extinct to everyone except her, who silently prayed for me, the coward, out of respect. It was noble to suffer as a youngster, now it grinds my head to the pavement. My dignity no longer mattered to me, and I have let those moments slip away like a fading tourist attraction that no traveler ever returns to ever again. She spoke to me without a tongue, and I answered her without moving my lips or blinking my eyes. My enterprises were poisoned and the thick hue of my aura made little children fall asleep at first sight. My unhatched habits, once years away from forming into monkeys on my back, slowly sprouted among the urine of the fish mongers. My sins have cloned themsleves and I saw reminders everywhere.

The beauty of the world cannot make me answer questions about the Disease... about the resolution about the pleasing shape that it forms for some, and the dreadful messages it stirs up for others. All I wanted to do was to catch a fleeting glimpse at the conscience of our King, and somehow, someway, my message made her turn her head and walk away with the breaths of Hell pulling her away from me.

"What a piece of work," I muttered rubbing the sand out of my eyes.