Oslo Forest

Erlend walked out of the office and into the Phoenix light. It was October, and the sun was not quite so powerful now. Pear shaped women walked leisurely in groups of three, hoping that the afternoon jaunt and yogurt would do the trick. It probably wouldn’t. He sat at the bus stop watching buses pass the wrong way. The trees did a little praise dance as the wind passed through.

Erlend thought for a while, and about how things fall apart, and how he was never quite the person who was ready for disaster when it arrived, though he could always see it coming from miles away. It was vexing to see the swirl, and watch, with chin on hands on arms on elbows on windowsill, watching as it comes and lifts your house up and around. It was euphoric when caught up in the wind.

Then you land and walk through the wreckage, with no good witch for guidance, no path of direction, or friends with courage, heart, and brainy wisdom.

The bus arrived after fifty minutes and the driver asked how his day had gone. “Pretty good,” he lied, getting off about five minutes later to transfer to the next bus.

He thought about the people. That’s the thing that always gets you. How you are, in fact, truly invisible to most people, and when you are gone, you are gone. You are Chinese on the other side of the world. You are a planet up in the sky and nobody looks up. You are the wind in their day, and then, gone. And unlike most people, he was gone before he was gone. This is what he thought.

“Where is my Lischka?” he said to himself the next day. He was up at 2am watching Christmas in Connecticut, where a radiant Barbara Stanwyck falls in love with a soldier. Somewhere along the way, he calls her Lischka, endearingly.

Erlend’s Lischka, he had realized, was beyond mere woman. It was an idea in his head where every good thing resided and late at night he could travel there.

He sat up on his cot, back to the wall, blanket over head, and music in ears. Eyes closed, air conditioner humming. The chill could be felt at the edges trying to seep underneath the cover but it was okay.

Lischka was more visible now.

“Come with me,” she said. Her hair was long, and dark and reminded him of someone he worked with, or rather, used to work with before quitting.

They walked down the hill toward the shore and sat down and let their feet dangle in the river. Erlend leaned back and rested his head in her lap, looking up at her face and the sky behind it.

This wasn’t the desert anymore. He could smell water and dirt and grass and flowers and see the insects flying about and nearly taste the air, flavored with honey and the smell of some scent she was wearing, cinnamon.

“What is that you are wearing?” he asked her and she said, “Nothing. I work at Cinnabun” and it made him laugh, and wake up.

The room was still dark with the music still piping into his ears. “Take me to Lischka, dear God,” he said, before lying down on the floor and falling into a deeper sleep.

It was Olsen who sat there on this day of his disappointment, on the bus, damp, the sky hiking up it’s skirts to let water burst forth upon the people below.

Olsen hated the bus, and even more so when it rained. The smells that could hide in the dry of an Arizona day revealed themselves in the wetness. The bus was a kennel long before a cleaning.

He looked past the person in front of him, catching the Fry’s supermarket passing behind her head and off to the right. Sometimes he thought he might strike up a conversation with her, since she waited at the same bus stops, but in the end he asked himself why. What was the point? He couldn’t imagine hanging out with such a woman. She was large and wore pants of a stretchy blue material that bulged around her buttox and thighs. No ring on her finger, and deservedly so. And then he took that thought back. Nobody deserves to live without love.

The fifteenth of March fell upon him like a brute upon an unwary soul. You would think that one could learn the lessons of the past, and certainly YOU might. But Olsen never learned, and knew he never learned, which was all the more vexing.

This time it was a girl. Everyone whispered to him his folly. She is too young. She is too wayward. She is too far away.

He was for the longest time her ghost and genie. For over two years they talked for hours a day on the phone, and he lavished his attentions on her. It did not matter if Democrats were taking over Congress, or if Iran was in masturbation, stoking a nuclear missile and ready to come upon the earth at any moment, spraying destruction.

She presented herself to him, even as Olsen hid and held back. They laughed and cried and he promised things he never thought he would ever promise, and said things he never thought he would say. Foolish things, for what are words? Surely not love. And that too, he promised.

“I will love you like you’ve not been loved,” he said, and attempted to show it by action.

But she had needs greater than distance could accommodate, and he was merely the man in the bottle that she could pick up in a moment of need and use. “I want you inside of me,” she purred against the glass to which his ear was glued.

Earlier that morning when he got off the bus he saw a rainbow dipping its legs over Bell Road. It was a sign that God would never again destroy the earth by flood. That was what the Bible said, and what believers believed. But your heart is not the earth, and it seemed especially evil for God to have such a bright object piercing the clouds, while raining on your head, and destroying the center of your soul.

“Et Tu Brute,” he said, as the brute ripped a medallion off his neck and whispered, “It’s not you, it’s me” in his ear. Ah love. The love of friends, comrades, and family could so easily vanish with just the right inflection in life’s voice. Ah women too, they of the fickle hearts who want it all. The women want fire, and water, and carried in the palm of your hand, and not for warmth or to quench thirst, but to be sure that you can, or that they can prove you can.

Olsen stopped by the supermarket before catching that foul bus home. He picked up potatoes, mayonnaise and mustard. He paid one dollar for a nice green pepper, and half that for some scallions. He placed some sage filled sausage in his basket, next to some small ripe tomatoes and celery hearts. “Mushrooms” he said to himself, placing some in a plastic baggy.

“What will you do on your vacation?” someone had asked him. He was not so sure now. She was gone as quickly as she had come. She wanted him so small as to fit inside her imagination, to be pulled out when the reality of her life, across the country in New Jersey, proved difficult. Her genie, her monk, would be handy during tough moments.

He did things for her. He bought her medicine and helped her file applications. He helped her pay a bill here and there, and listened while she cried. He listened quietly when she shouted at her father on the other side of the door, who stood turning the knob during his drunken midnights. “It won’t always be this way,” he assured her. He told her she could make her own life, but that meant making choices distinctly different from the choices made by those around her. She agreed, as though caught between the frying pan and the mouth, and dangling with her future on a forked world.

But she could not resist her own impulses and her ghost was not enough. Olsen was not enough. “You know how I am, I want it all,” she said to him with a tone so light and genial that he cringed. “I want to come, but…” she said. But she would not come here, now. All that was necessary was a cock crowing, and he would be Jesus, rejected and denied.

Later that night he stood in the doorway as the rain came down hard and steady. He held a bowl of potato salad infused with sausage, scallion, tomato. It was warm and thickly filled his mouth. Shortly Satan would stop bye, and comfort this lesser demon, and urge him not to play at being good or search for things like love. “Oh Olsen, we ought not to want earthly things as keepsakes,” Satan would say, rolling his eyes to the whites, before adding, “Mmmm, is that saffron I taste in this salad?”

He stepped out into the night, sipping an orange juice, and headed toward the main street, and then north till he came to Talitha’s house.

“Come in,” she said.
“What took you so long? You said you would be over like four hours ago,” she said, eyebrow raised.
“I know. I know. Got sidetracked.”
“Uh huh,” she said, watching his face.
“So what’s up, what gives? I see you skipped work today,” said Talitha Kum, reading Oliver’s slack manner and mind.
“Yep. And no doubt when I return tomorrow, I will get my lecturing and firing, not necessarily in that order, since people like to release hot air after the farting, or firing.”
“Ha, funny. I don’t know if I would call out after being suspended, unless, you know, I just had something I needed to do.”
“I did. I needed to be away from there longer.”
Talitha got up and got some apple juice. She was wearing a pair of jeans and t-shirt, all casual looking with hair tailed.
“Are you worried? About being fired?” she asked.
“Oh about as much as I worry about anything, which is to say, not very much, and simultaneously, a whole lot. But, I’ve got a degree, a sub license, so I’m in a very screw you frame of mind, and am not necessarily inclined to worry.”
“That’s good. There are so many paths to take, ya know?”
“I know,” said Oliver, watching her lips on her glass.

Talitha was the only female monk he knew; in fact, the only monk he knew. He was inclined to think none existed at all in this day and age, though his father told him otherwise. He also thought they would be all men. Talitha Kum was no son of man.

She was the first person to explain to him the complexity of God, and while he was not totally sure he bought her explanation, it was the one he was going with until further evidence came along.

For the longest he had wondered how God could be omniscient, all knowing, and yet allow man to have freewill. If God knew everything and could see the future, how could man truly be free to make his own destiny. Further, what was the point of prayer if God had decided it all, or, if results in the future were so fixed as to be available to God’s eyes. Oliver wondered this for some time, until he met Talitha.

He and Talitha liked to go to the park at night and lay under the sky, feet pointing in opposite directions, heads side to side. Sometimes their ears touched. “Listen,” she would say to him, and he could hear all sorts of things he could not hear on his own.

He heard a baby in a womb kicking extremely hard and laughing with each kick until a voice said to the baby, “Stop that. I didn’t send you there to goof around,” to which the baby said, “Yes you did!”, resuming the kicks and laughing uncontrollably.

He heard one of his coworkers crying. She was alone in her room and tears were flowing as she lay face down on the bed. She was inclined not to get up and make the long drive into work, overcome as she was with a type of loneliness, where the crowds that often surrounded her reinforced an emptiness inside.

Oliver could not keep his ear close to Talitha’s for too long without starting to feel sorrow, and he wondered how she managed to have all these sounds floating around her consciousness without going mad. A stronger person, he thought. He admired Talitha greatly.

They would lay for maybe two hours watching the sky and talking. At the very end a quick kiss, before rising.

She explained God’s omniscience in the following manner:

“Okay, Oliver, Mr. I don’t understand anything. Listen up. It’s like this. You are a map maker, and create the entire road map of the United States. Got it?”
“Sure, I totally comprehend that.”
“Shut up. Now listen. You create every road, bridge, highway, side street, overpass, tunnel, detour, and so on. You know where every road goes, cause you built it all.”
“Yep. I am really grasping it Tali”
“Shut up Oliver. Now let me ask you something. Some Christal or Renee or Ruth gets in a car…
“Hey, I like how you incorporate hot chicks into the theory on God’s omniscience, nice touch.
“Oliver?”
“What?”
“Shush. So some girl gets into her car to take a trip and begins to drive. My question to you is, what city will she end up in? Where is she going? Do you know where she is going?”
“Well not exactly”.
“Will the roads take her to Russia, or Finland?”
“Nope”
“So you know where each road will take her then?”
“Yes, cause I built the roads, and know where every road ends up, all 2 million or more of them.”
“Exactly. So you know the possible destinations of that woman, every conceivable destination or result, and yet, you still don’t know, and can’t control which she will choose”.
“True.”
“And sometimes, Oliver, you will see one of your roads she is headed toward, and throw up a roadblock, or close the road, though, if she chooses, she can still take another path to the same destination if she insists. She can even probably go down the closed road and reap disaster”.
“That would be awful.”
“What would be awful?”
“Losing a hot chick in an road emergency”
“The point here, is that, you, as God, know the possible destination of every road, and yet, you don’t know where the person is going to go. You don’t know, necessarily which road they might take, and yet, you know what they will find when they get to where they are going. You have seen every possible result and every direction they can go in. Hence, you know where they will be, without, actually, knowing where they are going.”
“So you are saying that God knows all our theoretical outcomes based on the string of choices we can make, while not knowing exactly which series of choices we will make?”
“That’s it,” said Talitha. “So when we end up at a destination, God is not surprised, for he knew that was a possibility, and knew what was there before we got there, and knew we could end up there. He visualized us at every conceivable destination, and knows the result of every string of choices that we make”.
“Interesting Talitha. The magnitude of that kinda makes me feel awed, and like having sex, you too right?”
“Shut up!”

Oliver often wished he could find a woman just like Talitha, and sometimes Talitha wished she could find a guy just like Oliver, and despite his numerous flaws. Then again, she always felt like there was something important she should be doing, and something more important than doing Oliver.

Eventually it was about 2 A.M., and Oliver figured he better be heading back home and trying to catch some rest. On the way back home, and past the Circle K, the guy Oliver called “Johnny Guitar” was standing over near the fence inside the complex.

This fellow liked to walk about at all hours holding a guitar, even on the bus, though Oliver never actually heard him play anything beyond a few discordant plucks of the string. The guitar was all prop, it seemed. He looked like the type of character who, if this were a western, would get gunned down with the townspeople saying, “Ah shucks, you didn’t have to kill ole Johnny, that’s Johnny Guitar you done dere shot Mister”.

And if Oliver was the gunman, he would have riddled Johnny’s dead body with a couple more bullets. “I know that’s Johnny, that’s why I shot him. He’s annoying” pumping in another for good measure.

That Oliver did know any other monks was evident in his inability to recognize them.

Sometimes the king called him to the castle and handed him documents that needed to get from here to there, and unseen by prying eyes. “You are a handy one,” the king often said, as he sent him on his secret way. Sometimes people would detain him and try to take the documents, but they could never be found: if anything, just blank pages.

Mostly though, the monk went to work like the others, then came home and read, or wrote, or slept.

One evening the monk sat down and began to write a letter that he knew its recipient would never read, but no matter. It was therapy:

“I started with three you know. I don’t believe in putting my faith in any one thing, aside from God, and is he not a trinity? So I believed in all three, yet hoping for one.

The second one, I’ve lost. The Marauder rode in with the wind at his back, and blew through her mind, whispering words of wonder and confusion, and her heart hardened to me, and then she was gone.

The third, I remain unsure of because of her ways and I know not that she can actually love me alone. I might not be enough for her, or offer the right balance of thunder and lightening. She does not know this, but I know, because I have listened to her well and see the signs. She is not wise enough, I don’t think, to see the love she needs, because she is dazzled by the strings and ribbons that the world is wrapped in. She wants the idea of me, and dreams vanishing dreams. I fear that once she has me, she will lose me like a wedding band down a well, realizing the value of what she has lost only after I am off the finger.

But you, the first of my godhead. I never had you, and now you have found what you are looking for. I’ve known monks and kings and lords who have walked and wandered forever, never finding one true thing, OR, sometimes they do find that one true thing, but by then they are blind or hardened, and know not what they have found. You wanted love, and have found it.

You took a long path, led by that treacherous one, he who liked to go to the far lands, and slay the dragons breathing fire, and make rest in houses of ill reputation. He led you down a long way, only to abandon you, and briefly I thought to say to you, “Here, hand me thy heart and I will hold it safe for you.” Then a true lord came to you, and you knew that He was what you had hoped for, and my heart lept for joy at your discovery, but tripped with every leap, bruising itself upon landing.

You read my words sometimes and you know how I am, and my delusions:

One day a king will summon me, and pay me immense amounts for my poetry, and I shall be famous, and you shall say, “Oh I knew him when he was but a scrivener.” You will remember the flawed texts I placed in your hands, and reread them and say, “Oh, this is what he meant” and remember how our eyes met, and what was really in my heart.

Yes I dream, while we work. I take a break and watch you near the fountain, standing there with your friend, wishing I had the power to read minds or lips. Wishing I could see the love that is in your heart, and whether the love you have now, is the love you want, and if that love will surround you forever and bring you joy.

When I don’t see you, I see you, my eyes averted to look at the far wall, or to laugh with a friend, or fiddle with the strings on my mandolin. But all the while, I see you as you approach and as you pass, and the heart, my heart, warms up when you are near. With every occasional greeting of “Aye”, I speak a thousand words to you.

So stupid really. Silliness. But that is me. The dreamer. The wishiest of wishermen. You know me by now, and I bid you laugh, because I will get over myself and always be content to know that you live and breath and have found contentment in your heart. I knew you deserved someone who loved you, and that is the best thing in the world.

Still though, I shall dream a crazy dream, and one day when you are alone, you will remember even this, and shout my name in the wilderness and I will descend from the heavens into your heart.

Love,
Oliver de Cerne

He looked at his words upon the page, then waved his hands over what he had just written, and like that, the words were gone. Wasn’t that how it was with him? One minute he could not do without, and the next minute it was all distant memory, or never to have existed at all?

Sometimes he wondered if he could love anyone.

He got up, took a mutton chop off the flame, a piece of bread, and a book, and sat down to read. He looked at his hands, his palms. A million words were etched into the skin of each hand, never to be removed, never to be read, never to be understood. But he could understand the jumble as sure as each sentence was burned into his mind.

She called him bi-polar, because she had no poles, and was always content. She was never in the north or south but right on the equator, mellow under the sun, and looking browned and lovely. But he thought he could see deep into her soul, catching her on the sly, glancing at her face while she typed on the computer or when she laughed as they walked through the store.

Perhaps she was sheltering herself, as villains and rogues and men with divergent eyes had made a funhouse in her soul. There was much she had not allowed herself to experience, like fig newtons or philosophical flight, or having a picnic on the living room floor. “That’s ridiculous, Oliver,” she often said, wondering when he was going to get back on his rocker.

She told him that he thought too much, and was moody and all over the place.

It was probably true, though she seemed to ignore the obvious, that she was near his heart, touching things in there, and oblivious to the effect and not even knowing the terrain in which she wandered.
She seemed, to him, the most reliable thing, and a person that could be trusted.

He put on Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet,” the segment that he first heard in a commercial many years back. He had gone for days and weeks wondering, “What music is that? Who created it?” His sister eventually asked a coworker at her school, a fellow teacher, who knew classical composers like he knew that he was better off teaching in the suburbs and not upper Upper Manhattan.

She came back and told her brother and he rushed out and bought the music. He was disappointed that the part he loved was so short, so all that passion to silence to passion came and went like an Arizona storm.
Had he his way, he would have extended the song to twenty minutes or so, making it last like Ravel’s “Bolero”, for Prokofiev had surely erred.

His birthday came and went, about the day after he had his eyes seared out of his head by the understanding that his hold on her was slight, and another man was dancing in her eyes. The day before his birthday she walked into the huge lunchroom with a suitor holding her bag. He, that man, had an impish grin upon his face. Oliver smiled weakly at the sight, and knew. A thousand sailors abandoning his sinking heart via every deck and rail. “It is finished,” came the thought, while his coworkers mocked the bag carrying man, who was in love, or delusional.

Oh Oliver, again? Do you ever learn? Is your faith unending? Is that your secret power, that despite every obvious fact, and recurring disappointment, your faith remains intact? That is very, very crazy…

The monk outside his cottage, and down the road a bit: He stopped at the store for an iced tea, and to get some cash from the ATM. The air had warmed since the night before, and was pleasant now. The man in front of him on line wanted a pack of cigarettes, but was too drunk to verbalize his preference. “Marlboro?” asked the clerk, and he agreed. He would have agreed to nearly anything, not being of clear mind.

Once back home, the monk sat down at his desk and penned a letter, for he planned to leave for far away places.

“I love you. I have walked for miles in the dark across the earth. I have sunk into the depths and battled demons and spirits. I have had my eyes opened, where I can see the souls of those who come near me. I have been slave to great masters and small. My habits are many, and bad. I have seen fair maidens, and cut my heart upon their indifference. I have torn down kingdoms in a day and made mothers weep. I have sat in the quiet, listening to the crying on the other side of the world and done nothing, and have laughed at the wounded laying at my feet. I have run, and I have confronted. I have spent and wasted. I have dreamed lavish dreams, and hoped vain hopes, and laughed with God at myself.

Then I met you. You were young and beautiful. Wild even. I knew you were wild, and my better monitor, my wisdom, told me not to walk across your path, lest I wished to walk across the flame and be burned. And yet I did, because I found I could not resist you.

I am a dreamer, love. I am the master, you are margarita. And like in that tale, I thought that I could bare the thought of you at the ball with Satan, dancing under the night sky. But in the book, in The Master and Margarita, I don’t think he knows what she has done, or where she has been. The writer only knows that he loves her, and that she believes in him. She rescues his burned pages of writing from the fire.

There is fire raging across my soul, and forces are moving in to put it out, lest I become a heap of ash, and useless. Women have such power to set men aflame, and then turn without a thought to another, swapping diamonds for pearls, or pearls for trinkets. A beautiful woman can have anything, and when she knows this, her temptations are great. All the world is a peacock, angling for her sight.

I am no peacock. I have papered my belly with my fortune. I have drunk time, and vomited it up, leaving the bottle half full. I have sat here, watching life drift by, fearful of the world and much that is in it.

Oh love. We have no chance at all if there is a pause, or a but, or if you cry in disappointment at the sight of me. If I ask, “But do you feel the same…?” and you answer, “Yes, but…”, then the wind has already shifted, pushing my sail outward, and my boat from your coast.

I shant fight the elements or nature, or human nature. I cannot. I am but a man. I may be a monk, and filled with magic and power, but I am yet a man, and filled with wisdom. My wisdom tells me I am too weak to love you in the manner that love for you would demand. It would be a difficult love, filled with a thousand beautiful cuts across my heart, and I would be forced to dig deep and pull out a type of love that will leave me torn apart. Full of joy, perhaps, but ragged.

And yet, I love you. I saw you with me love. I dreamt it. God reached down into my chest and pulled you right out of my heart and lay you on the bed beside me. “Who is that?” I asked him. “This is your heart. The dream of your heart. Now love her and cherish her as you would your own soul. When she is sick, care for her, when she is weak, carry her, when she has a dream in her heart, make it come to life.” I awoke and looked to my left, and there you were.

The monk set pen down and took a break…..

“Ha, and Ha again! You make me laugh,” said the king to the man, before having him dragged out and put to death. They brought in another, who bowed down before his wife’s father.
“Sire, if it means anything to you, and if you stand by your daughters, and by love, and God’s arm, you will spare me. Spare me for the sake of love.”
“Oh, and what is this love? Was it the same love that let you steal to the house of my enemies in neighboring lands, and promise with your tongue what your wits could not deliver? What is this love that would see me removed from the throne, even killed?”
“No. It was not your death we sought. And we returned. We came back to you because we realized that you are blood and our bond is strong. We came back for love of all we have here.”
“Yes, yes, and even if you could, you would still leave my daughter-your wife-fatherless if I were to let but one eye droop and stagger. Love you say? Love of vile lucre no doubt.”
“No. We erred, lost our wisdom, but returned.”
“Indeed, and now that you are back in my bosom, you will suckle on the tit of my wrath. Go now, face your demons, traitor,” said the king.
“So you would make both daughters widows?”
“Look at my face. See these hands? I would place both hands around the necks of my offspring and slay them where they sleep if they but blink at the righteousness of my authority, and the purity of this land.”
“And that is fatherly love? Have you no compassion?”
“This is my compassion, future ghost. I rule over peoples in the south who call the sun Master. I rule over people to the north who call the moon Savior. And I rule over people here in the center, who call me Father. But a few years back I was in the North Vale, where me and my archers burned a village to the ground: every man, woman, and child. And before that, we pushed through the southern marshes, hunting down that evil man Sali, who would turn those under his teachings against me. We hunted him down like a dog, and killed him and his entire clan, placing their young on sticks to dance under the moonlight.”
“So you care not about your people, but rather, about your power,” said the son-in-law.
“But of course, but if I were not so strong and the center of the wheel, the spokes would fly off, the wheel would not roll, and it would be every man against his brother. It would be the sun against the moon against the stars.”
“And is that bad, to let go?”
“It is stupid to let chaos reign. Who am I, a god that I would let chaos reign, and let each man’s freewill lash against his neigbhors? Such is chaos, and the world it would create would have me upon a throne listening to a thousand mournful voices saying, ‘Where is our king that he would not hear us and let evil befall us.’ But the minute you step in, and prevent this or that, you violate someone’s freewill, and freewill cannot be selective, allowing for the will of the good alone. Better to dispense altogether with such considerations.”
“But that is freedom, and why we left to begin with. People deserve as much.”
“Nonsense. Freedom is chaos. I watched what happened to King Titorian in the far north places. It was chaos after his death-birds flying from the cage and turning on each other. That nation across the waters finally came with great noise and much talk and put Tito’s kingdom back together, for the people could not clap two hands together without producing death.”
“Well, father, I of all men meant no harm, and you know my love for my wife and that I have here risked my head for that love. My heart and every emotion beats with love for her. Do you not know what it is to love so deeply and purely?”
“That is for me to know, and you to sleep forever on, dear son. I leave the practice of love to the lovers, and the theory of love to the monks, and when love stands in the face of peace, my own peace, I opt for peace and bid sentimentality goodbye. Now, any last words from that pitched heart of yours?”
“Yes, I have a few final thoughts because…”
“Take him out, and kill him, and mark his grave with a blank stone, and teach my grandchildren to spit atop it, for it is the resting place of a man who would choose chaos over blissful peace,”said the king to one of his loyal men, who did as he was commanded without regard.

Sayita stood there counting off the time in her head. Another fifteen minutes or so and the work would be done. They were digging a hole, and her husband worked quietly along side her. “Hurry, hurry, we must be ready when they come, and take them unawares,” he said. It was a good hole, and deep.

Once she dreamed of something different altogether, but the life that she imagined as girl was not what had been offered to her. As a woman you get only so many offers, and it is never clear what to accept and what to reject, lest some unseen something be lost, and never to be had again. She had taken hers and now all she had was this: revenge. So if you happened to be someone, and rode your horse down that path, you would spill into the ditch. Or, if you happened to be walking, and unwares, you would tumble. If you were not vigilant, and drove your carriage forward in a hurry, your fall would come, if your time had come.

They sat by the road and waited. Sometimes the wrong person walked by and she or her husband had to stand straight in front of the ditch and say, “Yea traveler, walk not this way, but go around for there is a ditch and you do not wish to fall.” Sometimes the traveler was very grateful and tossed money down upon their heads. “Toss the money into the whole in the ground, so they may sleep where their hearts worship,” said her husband Atrous with bitterness, fingering his shovel and gazing down the long road.

Eventually they saw their target. It was a monk named Nathan, and known to have a strength beyond any other man of those times. He was also known to be be of eager spirit, willing to go alone when others thought better to not go at all. “If you will not come with me to handle this task,” he had said, then I will go at it alone, and you will see the fires burn in your own backyard for lack of action.” And off he went.

“He cometh, quick hide, ” said the man to his wife.
“But he walketh not alone,” said she.
“Then the gods have spoken the fate of the lot, for if one walks the path with the enemy, then one sups, sleeps, and dies with the enemy.”
“But the children? I see young ones.”
“No matter. They will grow old and rain fire down upon our heads. We must, as the gods wish, kill every man, woman and child so long as they allow the traitors- these monks- to walk among them and defile the land.”

A carriage approached, filled with women and children and men up top holding the reins. The monk walked out in front, hand on the head of the horse. Nathan saw. He saw the long road ahead, and that it was missing its center, and that dark figures stood to the left and the right.
“Why father lead us into death?” he said quietly as they approached, but knowing there was no way but forward.

Sayita watched them, picturing bodies flying apart in every direction. In minutes the enemy would travel over the ditch, and fall inside. She and her husband would toss sticks of fire into the hole they had spent so many days digging, and the enemy would be destroyed.

Well not the exact enemy, but close enough. In times like this, with the enemy in your midst, it was not the time to distinguish or say this one is good, but that one is unjust. It is all injustice. There is no place to lay your head. All around is smoke and ashes and shame. The leaders are in the hills hiding, or in the back alleys pointing out the way, unable to stand in the center, and stand tall. It has been that way for so long.

When her uncle was found in the deserts and killed, it was the last thing on earth that she could bare. And really it could not be borne. Yes he was fighting the infidel, but in his own land. She remembered being a child and sitting on his lap, listening to him play the small pipe. He made her a song and said, “This is your tune” and when she heard it, she always came running. He would give her fruit or some sweet bread. She loved this uncle, and now, he was gone.

She counted off the moments in her head, and watched the women sitting atop the carriage clutching their young. These women were like her, and yet, so different. For a moment she wondered what another life might feel like, or if the Gods she followed granted their favor more broadly than she imagined. She wondered even, if the Gods she followed were the same as that of the man across the way- her man– who waited to toss a stick of fire deep into the hole they had spent so much time digging.

He was listening to “Pavane”, by the composer Fauré, and watching some birds flying overhead in the distance. The television was in the background, two men debating the nature of war. “You don’t judge the success of a war, or its failure, by the number of men killed. You ask yourself if the deed, if done and successful, constitutes some greater good for the many, rather than possible death for the few, and soldiers at that.”

He thought about the song about war being good for absolutely nothing. It was a sentiment wholly at odds with human nature and historical precedent. Some things, some people, some nations, some actions, if left unchallenged, would build from silence to a crash of thunder at the gate of your life, like Ravel’s “Bolero” upon your ears. You could listen to the music of the beast, and even, whistle the tune, until, at the very end, all is thunder and blaring, and it is too late. The end, your end, so far over there but a moment ago, is nigh.

The monk put these thoughts out of his head. He was thinking on a woman. Agnus Dei, was what he called her, but he never told her that. Lamb of God indeed. He could see her when she was just an essence, sitting in the hand of God before birth, giggling and laughing and speaking in the language of that place. It was a real language, quickly forgotten.

That was the deal the Master made with his creation. Once upon earth you ceded your spiritual knowlege and language, giving your mind over to the physical, and eventually forgetting from whence you came. That’s how it was to be. Parents never knew this. Nobody really knew, except a few. Some of the monks knew, and have always known. He knew.

If you watch the face of a newborn, with its eyes shut tight, you are inclined to think it is in deep rest, still developing, and unable to see. It cries. You think it is calling for nourishment or longing for the warmth of the womb or feeling some internal discomfort. Momma stands consulting her book, or calling her mother, or confident Dr. Jonestein, or, if all else fails, her mother-in-law, to find out why the new one cries. “Oh ho ho, ” says the good doctor, explaining the ways of the babies to the new mother. He has seen it all, and knows it…all.

But he is wrong. The baby cries, with eyes shut or eyes open, for she sees. She sees the world she has chosen to enter. From a distance the world looked blue and bright, an ornament on the tree of life, but up close, the sound of horror and the spirits of darkness abound. Out she comes from the womb and knows that the good doctor has, in the dark of his own private life, done hideous things. She gets home and hears the voice of her mother and knows her soul too, and weeps. She can see every man’s core without opening an eye, and it is frightful; it is the lung of the smoking heart of humanity.

That is how it is upon arrival into the world. At first you cry, then you silently observe. Then you speak out, but nobody understands you as you try to remember the language from that other place. You adapt.

You decide to give in to the world and speak their language. You can choose to remember or to forget (for He gives you that choice), but it is easier to forget to ease the pain; the land of love recedes until, after but a few months, it is just a dot you can see floating across your closed inner eyelid. A dream of God floating past. This world here, in the bed in which you lay, is your world now. Peek through the bars on the crib and see who comes to your rescue in the night.

The monk knew this is what every newborn child went through. He thought of his Agnus Dei. He could see her before she arrived on earth, for he had that kind of vision. “Oh my lamb, my lamb, ” he said quietly as the music rolled over him. “My beautiful little lamb. I love you.” He wondered who would be there when life fixed upon her, seeking to devour. Who would stand to defend? Someone must stand and face the beast and fight on her behalf. “I must,” he said to himself.

“How do you pick a good judge?” asked the king of his most trusted monk. The monk was not quite listening, lost in thoughts of love.
“What sayeth thou?” said the monk, his mind rolling over the memory of the young woman.

“I have to put someone up to join the council of judges. I am torn. Do I choose someone who walks with me along the paths of my mind, knowing my wishes, and with an understanding that what I hold dear is likely to be correct, or, do I choose one of independent mind, unpredictable in sentiment, with a veneer of evenhandness.”
“It would seem, dear king, the latter.”
“But does not everyone really carry their own biases in heart and mind, interpreting the law writ centuries ago in the manner that is molded by their present circumstances and existence?”
“To be honest? Indeed my Lord. Nobody is pure and without bias.”
“So it would be better to choose the wise man with the bias I know, than the wise man with the bias I don’t?”
“I would say, simply, choose the wiser man, and the one who holds truth above all, without deep curves and detours in their path to that truth.”
“Well said. But I can tell you are not with me. What is it that vexes you?”

“Oh nothing worthy of a king’s attention. I am but a servant in this court, advising, healing, listening. It’s not my place really to bore you with the meanderings of my mind.”
“Bore me anyway. I’ve all the time in the world, and politics do not stir me.”

“I think I am in love with a woman who I have seen, but who has never seen me.”
“Oh ho ho. Now this is a tale worthy of a tale. And I thought the floods in the south were the end all. Did you see how the rabble made me fire my commissioner for mishandling the floods? I was supposed to be the fortune teller, and know of great damage by the gods…”
“By God.”
“Whatever. Whomever. The gods. They told me that I should have sent a thousand horses and carriages there, when Lord Neamire himself, who ruled the area, ran around the area in circles, letting thousands of wagons be swept away. The very same wagons that would have well carried my subjects to higher ground. The ass. The common donkey is without rump, for it is Neamire himself. But go on. The personal is far more than the greatest tale of disaster or the political. My monk in love. Go on, go on.”

“Well there is not too much to tell, but that she has never seen me.”
“Pray tell then, how do you find yourself in love, and I take it the love flows like the river in one direction?”
“Well, it is a complicated story. I was away, remember, at your bidding, meeting with the kings in the northern regions. Before leaving I stopped for an ale at…”
“Hmm, drinking on behalf of the king no doubt.”
“Pardon my Lord. I was of thirst, and stopped for a drink before journey. I carried a book–the book–that is filled with my life and all that I have encountered. I rose early in the morning forgetting this book. The proprieter of the establishment had a daughter, who found my writings, read them, and in time sent word to me that she thought I was of a type she had never met.”
“Ah, she reacheth for the high fruit by reaching for you, no?”
“I am not too high, dear King, for the lowest of the low, and rather, upon corresponding with her, it seems that I am doing the reaching, trying to move the stars across the sky with my heart.”
“Ha ha, drunken bunny you are. I ought call my archers to put you out of your misery. Ho there, staggering about it the fields, what is it?”
“Dare I ask?”
“Well yes you must. That is your heart, walking, point in air, stiff and waiting to be touched.”
“King! I think you read me wrong.”
“Well she is beautiful according to your words. And you have been what? The virgin for thirty seven years? My own sons have–on the dark’s side, mind you– tilled many open fields, yielding fruit far and wide and they are but half your age. You monks will be the death of me. Which is good since you can heal, and no doubt bring me right back to life so I can laugh again and roll right back over into death.”

“See, your mind is better formed around floods and judges, and not this small little matter in my mind. I told you as much.”
“Oh no. Take no offense. If I know you, and I do, your words and mind are true, if not wise in matters that concern your own heart. So how is it that you have grown to, as you say, to ‘love her’?”
“Well, she wrote to me, and I out of curiosity watched from afar to see who it was that showed such interest in me. And I saw that she was of great beauty.”
“I had no idea the “vintner” has such beauty from his loins. Perhaps I ought to bring them courtside?”
“I could not bring myself to go near, for I am just a monk, and not comely to look upon. I am a man, and not young. I am strong, weathered, indulged by years of non-labor.”
“You are not so bad, of a sort. You would make quite the king of a small nation.”
“Uhm, thank you. But I am not a king, nor a lord, or knight. I am a man with convictions, and a weak will. I have a few meager talents, a little wisdom, and no wealth to speak of. I am not outwardly strong. There is nothing that would make her see me and see her heart’s desires confirmed.”
“Well then, that is a problem. Ought I make you instantly wealthy? I have some unsettled lands, provided you come back whenever I need your skills.”
“No. That would not make a difference. I would want her to want me, not what I might have, beyond what I have created from my own hand and the power of my own mind. Then again, I don’t know that she might, deep down, really want what I am, and that my doubts are all internal. I go back and forth, like waves on the shore, or birds before flight to greater lands.”

“In other words, you are no good to me in choosing my judge. Well I have decided anyway. I will go with the wise man I know, rather than the wise man I don’t. I suspect he may not be up to the task, and rejected, but so be it. In any case, a wise man will take the law into his own hands and rule in good faith. As for you, I would say that you must let her see you. Go to her place and sit down and order a meal, and pay her no mind. She will either, eventually, come with a yay or nay. Life goes on. The world is full of everything. The world is full of wise men, one wiser than the next to the point where you cannot say who is the best, you must simply choose by their spirit. The world is full of disaster, and one cannot anticipate each one and say, “Yea there is the storm.” And, the world, too, is full of wenches and doves and delights, and when you have thought that this is the last best delight, lo, there another appears, and, ever more beautiful, another. Fret not over any one thing. Pick something to believe in, for the Dark One thrives on your indecision as much as your sin.”
“Well, it seems you have been of more use to me than I to you. Though, your advice is not fully pleasant to my ear, for I think I want this one woman.”
“Well then, plot it out and take her and make her yours. Time is magic, dear monk. Do not worry whether she sees the sun to her left, or the moon to her right, or the highest hill in some distance. Just show her by deed what true love can be.”