Oslo Forest

“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.”

Lost monk. Living in the middle of the city without purpose, form, or love. “I can’t pull my life together”, is what he said to himself over and over, while trying to figure out a way to make it all come together. Each morning he traveled into the core of the city on the public bus, and each night he came home the same way, always alone, without detour. Had he been a man of little faith or bolder character he would have long ago killed himself. In his room he had a small sword. It was given to him- along with a pewter goblet- by his sister, who forever remained confused as to what sort of thing might be useful to her brother on his birthday. She was about five centuries and one continent too late, but it might have served him well in the middle ages.

Sometimes on break he looked out the window at the city’s core, and the Westward Ho building. That building sat odd in the middle of the new, and he imagined that a devoloper with vision could take that property and turn it into something unusual. He didn’t know what the building was being used for now, accept that he saw the occasional person in wheelchair rolling themselves out the front doors. Maybe it was some kind of low income residence.

Once he caused it to rain after he had been dreaming of the storms they had back east, and which were woefully lacking here in the desert. He was at home and stepped out onto the porch and visualized the Valley covered with water, and saw himself dancing in the rain. Within moments the sky opened up, the rain came down, and all his neighbors opened their doors and windows. It was only rain, but when you lacked water, it was a miracle and people wanted to experience it.

The job was wicked boring. He worked at a newspaper taking calls from customers who would literally die if they did not get their paper, or some section of the paper- like their comics. No really, they would quite simply keel over and drop dead from boredom or lack of anything. Old people. They come to rely on distractions in place of people, because people go. All those people you began your life with go. All those people you loved, or thought loved you, well they moved on, or died, and left you here in Phoenix to find your life’s meaning in the timely delivery of your comics.

The hardest thing, once arriving at work, was to stay there, and not simply get up and walk. Take the elevator down to the lobby and out into the open air, and put one foot in front of the next till he had reached the coast back east.

Once there he would take off his socks, and lay back on the Carolina beach, and watch the ocean roll in from Europe. He would smell the cool, slightly pungent water air, and breath deeply. Out of the ocean a goddess would arrive and fall at his feet. “I love you and have waited forever for you to come back,” she would say. “But you have no feet,” he would say back to the mermaid, wondering about the merits of being loved by a woman with no vagina, or feet.

Every few mornings while standing on 7th Avenue and Bell, a Jehovah’s Witness would appear and attempt to convince him, without exactly admitting to it, that of all the Christians in the world, only the Jehovahs had it all figured out. The monk and the woman had a running debate about hell, and whether the hell mentioned in the Bible represented eternal damnation. She seemed to suggest that such was not the case, and that a merciful God would not in fact let you suffer forever in such a place, but rather, that you would cease to exist. The monk wondered if that was a variance worth arguing a over. Eternal suffering or non-existence; same difference, peut-etre.

Occasionally he glanced down to see if she had on a wedding ring, imagining that any day now she would pop from her car married. For a while they even debated whether God should be called Jehovah. The name of God seemed really important to her. Each time she appeared she would say, “Hey David, how are you?” and he didn’t have the heart to tell her that his name was not in fact David. Somewhere down the road he planned to make some great theological point about the unimportance of names and he would bolster this by revealing his correct name and asking her if that rendered everything she had said to him invalid. He tended to feel that God did not really care what you called him, so long as you paid attention to him.

“The love you bring won’t mean a thing, unless you sing,” sang Travis over the speakers of the monk’s mp3 player. Each day he sat on the bus listening to music and watching people get on and off. An attractive woman would get on and sit across from him. They would briefly make eye contact, then her stop would come, and off she went. Sometimes he wished he was older, or younger, or altogether different so that he would be caught off guard by someone’s attraction to him. That wishing well was filled with more copper pennies than water.

“I don’t care if you have no drivers to bring me my paper. You missed delivery this morning and I want a driver to come out and bring me a replacement,” said the woman from Kirby Retirement Village. He told her this would not be possible, that all the drivers had gone home for the day (maybe they were at Subway getting a toasted tuna sandwich or at a strip club in Scottsdale), but that he would credit her account. “I do apologize,” he said, his mind drifting across the faces of his coworkers, then up into the air, and out the window. His mind was gone. Only his voice and body remained. “No, you HAVE to bring me a paper. Let me talk to your supervisor,” said the woman. She too would no doubt die from lack of newspaper; whether she would die figuratively or literally remained to be seen, but she was huffing and puffing on the other end of the phone, breathing heavy, like literal death had stopped in for brunch. He transferred her to the non-supervisor on the help desk.

He wanted something to drink, but not the soda sitting there on the desk. He ran his hand over it and turned it into water, and sipped. Parlor tricks. All the power or magic in the universe is useless if it does not create love. His power was particularly worthless. One can only go so far with the ability to cause water to come. Perhaps if he was in Africa he might be a God. He thought of that, going to Africa and making it rain, but he knew that was not the problem there. There was always enough food in the world, and nearly every famine in Africa had at its core a set of circumstances largely manmade. Water was not really the problem, for anyone. Men were the problem. Love was the problem.

He spent hours of his time each night talking to a woman from across the country. She had no idea what he looked like, but each night they talked, sometimes for hours on end about nothing in particular. It was one of those things that something inside him told him might be foolish, and it was interesting to him that people could connect sight unseen, and then, sight seen, probably disconnect; it was inevitable in a world where people were looking for gods and goddesses, and all one could do was turn soda into water, instead of water into wine, or solitude into love.

Some people are not old enough to love, and you have to grant them a lifetime of experience before they realize that there is nothing new under the sun, or moon, and that love resides not in the object of one’s affections, but comes instead to those who stop to apply it. All else, all the choosing and experiences and new faces are nothing but the treadmill running through your mind, each step bringing you closer to nothing at all. You must stop and choose to recognize love, which rests not behind a face, but inside your heart.

This was the preaching that his father gave him from the time he could first understand spoken word. He knew this to be true, for he had received the gift of wisdom early on. One night while resting underneath a heavy blanket, a presence appeared in his room and asked him what he wanted. He knew it was God, or what was thought to be God, or some emissary of God. It could have been Zeus or some powerful being from afar, but he could feel the love, and called it God. Having heard the question, he thought back over all his father had shared with him over his many years, numbering no more than twelve, but a lifetime in his mind. His father told him of the great one named Solomon, that king of the Jews, and how he was the wisest ever. “Ever father?” he had asked, somewhat incredulous. A lot of people had come and gone in the interrum. This he knew. Not a one of them was as wise as that storied king?

So when asked the question by this godlike being what he wanted, he opted for a choice that was not readily sensible to him a short day later. Indeed, by the next afternoon, he had wanted something more substantial, like thinness, maybe money, or a naked woman (for he of late had become accustomed to the idea that women declothed were something to be had, though he could not quite put his finger on it). Why didn’t he, at least, ask for something like an unlimited supply of electronic toys, which he could share with his friends, rendering him instantly popular for the rest of his days, or until toys no longer held an attraction. Instead, and in the odd light of God, he asked for wisdom above all.

Life continued on. He grew older. Along the way he went from being a husky little boy to a well rounded man. All the while, and on the way, he searched for love amongst those around him, but it was never quite right. There were girls, and then women, who made his heart soar, and who dazzled him with their loveliness, but they always had someone else crowding the entrance to their hearts. There were a few here and there who wanted him, but those were always the ones that did not move him. Perhaps they were uglier than he hoped, having maybe one asset that might attract, but overall a disappointing package. And he would not eat a fig in exchange for an orange, or be lead to any pond just to quench his thirst.

He could remember two occasions where the women he wanted showed some interest, once when he was 13 and once again at 19. After that, it was disappointment. In those two instances, he lacked either time or courage, disbelieving that they might even really care for him. Once discovering that there was something there, it was too late. Further, that was mere youth; school days and summer flings never amount to more than memory anyway. All through his teens he told himself that things would change in his twenties. In his twenties he told himself that things would change in his thirties. He knew this, because his wisdom told him that man tended not to be alone. His eyes told the story even.
Everywhere he looked he saw couples: beautiful men and women together, fat men with skinny women, round bulbous women with bony men, the ugly with the lovely, the charming with the foul. Everywhere, there was love, or rather, the appearance of what was commonly taken for love: two people together. His wisdom also told him that in most cases none of this was love. All too soon the couples might split, or shift, or find their love had fled in the dark of night or light of day. In actuality that love was there, for love never flees, but they could not apply it because they mistook inclination and attraction for something deeper, leaving love sitting on the sidelines quietly. Love is there and usually you walk out the door.

He would comfort himself with the idea that those loves were not true. Every time he chatted up some woman only to find out she was attached, he told himself that it was a matter of moments before she was free again. Or, his wisdom told him that people were wanderers, and if you presented the right words or face, they could be swayed into a dalliance. He never tried this, to sway people away from their true loves, though he dabbled lightly, wondering if he had any such negative powers. He heard enough to know that his wisdom was true, and that people were not overly loyal to what they had, always seeking something better or looking to find something that would make them feel better. This was natural, as often enough people lost the energy of their initial attraction, and after that, the self that was made full before with compliments and lust and flowers and sex was left wanting.

Regardless, and without anything even pretending to be love, he was left wanting, and alone. He thought back to his meeting with God. Or god, for how could THE God make him such a raw deal, letting him choose wisdom, when in fact he so needed to be equipped with love. The idea of having love consumed him, manifesting itself in different ways. Sometimes he wanted to just die for someone, some woman. He would daydream of doing a noble deed, sweeping a woman out of danger at the expense of his own life, but with the knowledge that he left the world full of love. Other times it was not so pure a love, or love at all. He marveled at the beauty of women, each with a different shape, smell and look. Their voices rang smooth and soft, their laughs like mockingbirds, so light, so blue, so lovely. Everywhere were breasts that sat atop bodies like cinnamon buns, glazed and there to be eaten. It was the most ridiculous comparison, but one that he had made more than once. He imagined grabbing a breast, and gently squeezing, and placing it to his mouth, and…oh!!

His wisdom allowed him instantly to know what others were doing wrong, or why their relationships were failing, and women confided in him, and his heart often wanted to interpret that confidence as something more, but his wisdom sat guard saying, “They would share that with a stone should a stone have ears.” Too true. Women liked to be listened to and affirmed. Give a man a breast and a woman an ear and both are equally sustained.

Once he met a woman over the phone, and she eventually sent him a picture. She was beautiful. She likewise wanted a picture, and wanted to meet him in person, and was convinced he was going to be something special. He told her stories from his past, and how he was a ghost, like all the Caspers in the history of the world– the friendly ghost– and that women tended not to want him. She asked him why. Are you fat? He thought about this. It would be easy to say “Yes” and be done with it, but he did not feel that was quite the term, and he knew that was not the full reason for his woe. He knew he was too fat for those he loved, but at other times, this seemed to be on the edge of absurdity. “No, I am not really fat,” he said, which was either true or not, depending on one’s point of view on such things. If you loved him, it probably made no difference. But who loved him, or would take that action? “Send me your picture,” she said, not wanting to spend her life attracted to a ghost that she might not be attracted to. She was young, and he knew that was a long life of searching she had in front of her before she stopped and rested on love, and that love would not be applied to him. This he knew.

It was curious to him that he had the wisdom to know himself. I am arrogant. I am cynical. I am a chamelion. I am hardhearted but equally softhearted. I change. I forgive. I am full of lust. I am tired. I am lazy. I am a hypocrite. I am kind. I am loving and have never been loved.
He realized many years ago that having wisdom did not necessarily give you the strength to do anything about what you knew within. It was like being a physician without hands, and he was resigned to the fact that it would always be others with the hands on experience, while he stood against the wall like some holy ghost, giving guidance to those with more solid souls.

“Hideous misery was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld its awesome glory, and wept,” said the monk, laying his hand across the body of a woman in a wheelchair who had fallen asleep in the heat of the day, after the flood, with thoughts of love on her mind.

She had been trying to remember how she got to this place, and why her life arrived at this particular corner, alone in a strange crowd, in a wheelchair, with neither food or drink, friend or foe. The heat. She saw it coming down the street early in the morning with a grin just this side of sin, and a hat made of fire. He embraced her, and wiped her dry brow into a sweat.

The streets were packed full, as was the hall inside, and she sat pinned against the wall of the building unable to move at all. She lacked the strength, and even a titan could not clear a path through the crowds who surrounded her like a dark brown sea.

She thought back to a time when she could see love clearly. Do you know? Perhaps you saw her, them, in that diner, and she was fustering over his habit of spilling things, like his coffee across the table onto her pants. And he was scolding her because he did not want to spend another day looking for curtains that matched some indecipherable color and price point in his wife’s imagination. They went back and forth over these things while sitting in the diner tasting each other’s breakfast, with each saying, “I should have gotten what you have.”

Who can say that now for anyone? Who can say that for a life, for a city, for a nation? Who would say that here, once the levee gave way, flooding out the city? Oh run, run away, for there is nothing good to have here. Do I covet what you have when it is good only? Or ought I to want what you have, if all you have is pain to share? Many years ago the monk had met another of his kind who had lived nearly forever. That one said, “God promised to never destroy the world with flood.” So far so bad, as specifics were everything. The world was not a nation was not a city was not a life of a woman in a wheelchair wondering how her time had come to such an end.

Miriam tried to lift her arms to wipe her head, but could not. Her clothes were so damp and she had the urge to strip all off and run naked down the street. She lowered her eyes and thought of Christ giving up his ghost. Night reluctantly came, substituting the hand of fear for the promise of cool air.

She woke up the fourth morning to the sound of cursing. Two men were fighting over an object and about to come to blows. Observers would have you think that all are noble and struggling to make it through the difficulties. But no. Often as not, people are the same people they were before, only more so, free of the constraints that an organized world places upon a soul. “Get the F*** away from my television,” said the one to the other, in a land now without electricity.

Nausea came upon her, and her breath grew heavy and she knew this was as it would finally be. So she thought of the diner, and how she would love to relive that moment again. She wanted to be picking a Park’s sausage patty off the plate of someone who loved her while arguing over where to find the cheapest curtains with blue birds on them. He gave in, you know. She dragged him that day over half a city or two, with a couple of towns thrown in. When she had finally found what she was looking for, he looked up in his taciturn way and said, “Yep, I like them quite alright.” Then they went out to eat again, this time at the Chinese buffet where they argued over whether or not they would go to church in the morning. He wanted her to stay home and watch football with him. She did.

These were the thoughts she was thinking when her life submerged between the worlds, slumping her body over. People nearby pointed saying, “She’s dead, she’s dead,” but did little about it. What could they do? The floods had come and there was nothing to do now but wait.

By the time the monk reached her, flies had begun to take liberties with her body; they walked gingerly over the top of her head, mesmerized by the faint sweet smell in her hair. Soldiers were coming from the opposite direction on a caravan of vehicles, led by the mayor. He had a pressed red shirt, and the very same shirt he wore on television when denouncing the governor and the federal authorities for not doing anything for his city. “Someone has to take responsibility,” said the mayor of the city whose levee had broken, and who had thus far governed as though the city were built atop a festive mountain fortress.

The monk leaned over the woman and breathed into her ear. “It only works if you believe, now awaken dear one.” She opened her eyes and looked around at the world that was once again clearly her home, and tears clouded her vision.
“What’s wrong? This is our world,” said he.
“I know, and it is so sad. For me at least,” she responded.

With that, he took his hand and rolled it over the top of her head and down across her face. It was as though he had removed a portion of her scalp, and skull, and she could feel a rush of something pouring into her. Her decayed body then slumped and she gave up her soul. A small child watched this wide eyed, then told her mother, who told another, and another. A rumor spread through the streets that a British tourist in a turtleneck was killing old black people by pinching their noses shut. The national news reports jumped on the story, knowing the truth when they heard it.

“It’s like this, and forever it will be this way, until I have worn the last hole in my last sole,” and he looked down at his own feet which were planted firmly on the dirty floor of the bus. He sat in the back because if you sat in the front or middle-in Phoenix- you would invariably be giving up your seat for a person in a wheelchair or for a young, usually hispanic, mother.

That was a constant ethical question for him. In other cities, or rather, in N.Y.C., and when he lived there, it was rare that a mother would get on with her kids and one had to be the gentleman. At least in his part of New York. But here it was guaranteed that during some part of the trip a mother would get on the bus and you would soon find yourself either standing and hot, or sitting and guilty. Rather than work this out in his head, he retreated to the back where the mothers and the wheelchairs never came.

“I am a monk with no power, and yet in a long tradition of powerful monks. My uncle was one. My great grandfather was one. Yet here I am, on the bus, worn out soul, tired and hot, alone, in the dark of the day, people distantly near, dreams unreachable but dangling in my eyes like sirens.”

Maybe it was simply women; maybe he merely needed the attentions of a woman. Perhaps he needed to know a woman could love him, which was not something that was a certitude in his mind, nor an experienced fact in his life. You never really know you matter that much until someone calls you out and chooses you.

Jannick looked out the window, and then over the ledge in front of his seat toward the bus’ midsection. The raised rear portion of the bus was safe from the weak and infirmed, and down below sat a mother and her baby. The baby looked up at him.

“Bluh bluh,” said the child, pointing up toward Jannick’s head. The mother looked up to see what the baby was looking at and caught eyes with Jannick before turning away.

“Bluh bluh,” said the baby again, looking at him.
“I don’t know,” said Jannick to the child, but nobody could hear it.
“Bluh bluh bluh, ” said the baby, frowning now.
“It’s different for you. It’s all so new for you. This world is too much now, and while we come here alone, it gets to be too much. Too much to handle alone, ” said Jannick.
“But you chose this life, just as I chose to come here and be the son of this woman who holds me. She is my mother now. And I have so much yet to live, and I’m excited, ” said the baby, sticking his fist up to his mouth.
“But, but, you don’t understand. When we looked down from there, it was easy. We had all the love in the world. Everything was clear. “
“Well, you did not have to choose to remember that place. We all had the choice to choose the lives we would be willing to live. You and I chose to remember that place there, and others chose to forget and begin life here without memories of the other. Do you now regret your choice?”
“I regret knowing that love exists, and not being able to find that love here in the life I now live. I wander like a ghost, a wind, untouched by friend or foe in this blasted dried out desert.”
“Don’t. There is love here. You will find it.”
“Which each passing day, and each year of age, I move farther away from the love I knew, and my only consolation is that with each day I also move closer to returning to that love,” said the monk on the bus to the baby.
“Don’t walk across the desert without water, friend, ” said the baby.
“I don’t really think that is my choice. And I am so alone without a drink. I have no will to live and yet, because of what I know, I cannot end my life either. At least Christ had the love of those closest to him. Satan showed his face even, and tempted him. Women washed his feet. Disciples followed him and listened to his every word and weeped when he wept. He had all of that, and yet was a God, and I am a mere man, and older than he was. I have walked a longer road with lesser vision, less wisdom at my mind’s fingertips, and no love to be seen. I am dying my little friend. Slowly. Surely. “

The mother stuck a teething ring in the baby’s mouth, and the child gave the monk a big smile before turning around to rub his head on his mother’s nose. The monk always told himself that if a baby smiled at him, he was not too far gone into the dark, but still, he wondered.

It was something he had forgotten, though he had known. “She is cutting herself,” his sister had told him ages ago, and now his niece stood before him, arms wormed with the healed remains of deep gashes. She did not do this anymore, and at the time he knew she would eventually stop, but it was another thing to see her pain slit across her arms despite the happy face.

He had not seen his family–his sister and nieces– in four years. His sister looked the same, one niece had grown taller, and the other still looked and laughed as she did as a child, save for the cuts that contradicted her otherwise content appearance.

“What have you been up to?” his sister asked, while taking note that he seemed to be the same old monk he had always been.
“Nothing much really. I am working, and reading, and trying to make good, but mostly in my mind.”

He made little use of his calling or powers. He had suspicions that he might be teacher, or a deep reader of the mind and heart, or able to heal with the touch of a word, but he was not sure.

Once his father told him a story, and a very short one:

There was a man who longed to do good and live a life of purpose. He remained vigilant, so as to avoid evil, and asked God daily what he should do.

“Help me, ” he said to his wise friend.
“Who am I, God, that I would help you? I care not whether you go left nor right, so long as you do nothing at all, and are of no use, ” the friend answered.

The monk thought about this story often. It would seem that the good left undone was just as important as the good done, and while Satan might still lose your soul to heaven, he could, at least, destroy the fruit your life might yield. He might get to you by making you do something, or nothing, and the road you take to flee the City of Temptation might be temptation itself, prostrated quietly at your feet.

His father told him this right before he died, so it was hard to forget, though, in practical application, he of course forgot it daily. It was usually his sister who tended to remind him of the passing and lapse of time. He watched now as she fluttered over his niece, tugging at the girl’s clothes, critiquing the colors and her weight gain.

“I am afraid she is gonna turn on me, and curse me , as they practice the craft, and you should see the spells and curses. You don’t know.”

The man listened, and looked into her troubled eyes. He shook his brain back and forth, slowly nodding disapproval inside his head.
“You need not fear when someone is casting spells, or claims a power through witchcraft or any of its variants.”
“But you don’t understand. I have seen it. Once, my grandmother told a woman who had crossed her that she would die. It went about a week before the woman turned up dead. I think she was hit by a car, or something like that.”

“You have to ask yourself some questions, my dear one. If the power is from God, and this god of gods is good, and if their power was true, would it not result that only true blessing can come from their deeds? “
“Yea, but they don’t say it is from God, necessarily.”
“Well if it is not from God, but from his creation and lost friend Satan, would it not hold that Satan cannot move, breath, or think, without the hand of God? I mean, since we derive our Satan and God from the same book, and the story is clear, if true, the one is the creation of the other.”

“I suppose, but wait, aren’t you also saying that God allows Satan to do evil, and thus, God has a hand in evil?”
“Oh nothing of the kind. God allows man free will. Man chooses what he will do, right or wrong. Sometimes, with billions of men making their choices, these things conflict. God’s goal is not to eradicate evil, but rather, to give man the choice to freely love him, which, in practice, eventually eradicates evil.”

“But isn’t he permitting, endorsing evil then, allowing it to exist?”
“Does a teacher encourage failure by allowing students to fail? Should the teacher eradicate classroom failure by stopping the tests, or giving all the answers? Should failure be removed from the pursuit of knowledge? You let the students find their way, while still frowning when they opt to play instead of learn. “

“Well, what if there is no God at all, and their powers come from some force, and they are among the few born with these powers to curse or help people? What if it is not a matter of being aligned to God or Satan, but rather, there is no God or Satan, and these powers exist, and they have them, and we don’t. “

“Then I would say to you why? Why were they blessed with an advantage from nowhere that you do not have? Are they smarter, more cunning, deserving? Are they greater in wisdom or scientific arts? Have they studied year upon year to gain such power or skill? I would say not.”

“But yet, they have it, and I have seen the powers work.”
“And are we speaking of happy people? Are we speaking of millionaires or of ones overflowing with joy? Are we speaking of people with abundance or great earthly goods? These with the powers, do they have great earthly or spirtual blessings at every turn?”

“I don’t follow you”

“For all their talk of power, it is used for the petty and small. You know people, and their powers, by their fruit. What can you say to the man who can curse you dead, and yet, cannot lift himself out of his own daily misery. What do you say of the woman who can strike sickness upon you, but lacks the power to heal herself? And why should such people, via voodoo or witchcraft or the numerous other arts, have a power that strikes good or evil in other’s lives, and yet, they cannot rise from the bed in the morning with joy?”

“And yet, I have seen people cursed, and sickened.”

“Then you have seen life as it happens, and every curse or blessing is the result of coincidence or physical actions, but not incantations of vague sourcing.”

“Well my grandmother says her powers are from God anyway.”

“Then you have nothing to fear, for in as much as good fruit is in her hand, then you are blessed, and the moment she offers strange fruit filled with anger, revenge and spite, you are still blessed, for God would not allow such, if you are his.”

“But if I am not his then, I could be harmed?”

“Well, it is like this. No man has power over you, unless you give them power by being afraid, or heeding their words and allowing the spirits of fear and darkness to take your mind. But you have to allow it by investing faith in their bad intent and evil suggestions. Whomever you choose to believe, that is who holds the power. We choose our Gods and our allegiances, and when we give them the power of our minds, and our faith, then we reap the results. Put your head in a lions mouth and he will give you his teeth. Put your heart in the hands of God and he will give you joy. Put your faith in the words of the sorceress, and you are at the mercy of her whims. You can invest in good and evil. Millions of Germans invested in an evil man and made him strong, or stronger. They placed their faith in him.”

“I see, sort of.”

The bus pulled around the corner and her office loomed into view. “Well this is me right here. Are we still on for later?”
“Yes Minette, certainly. Remember, it only works if you believe” said the monk in the garb of an average man.
“What does? ” she asked, leaning into his whisper.
“Good and evil,” he said, kissing her cheek and bidding her a good work day.

Six times he jumped into the water and then swam to shore. On the seventh time he jumped, and sank to the bottom, where he stayed, waiting to die.

From that point forward he had all the love in the world. People came out of the forests and mountains and hills and valleys and towns and cities to express their love for him. He was so much more real to them, dead.

They went to his home and gathered his few things, including his stories. The writings had always existed, but nobody much cared to read them while he was alive. Now that he was dead, everyone came to the conclusion that he wrote with such passion, or as one soul said “An illuminating passion, I would have loved to have known him.”

Even the women-who loved him not while he breathed air- fancied him much more now that his body breathed water. He was more romantic than they realized. They read his words and said amongst themselves, “Oh, if only I knew such a man who could write like this.”

Which of course, they did. He was just at the bottom of the lake.

While he was more alive he worked, and ate, and wrote, and walked from place to place, seeking something, but finding largely indifference.

You often cannot live alone, or find love, unless you are immortal, and lying at the bottom of the waters waiting for your time to come.

It was not an ideal moment, what with the town being overrun by soldiers. It was sheer chaos for the first few minutes, with men on horseback pouring in from the west entrance, and with little opposition. But it was not so bad as it seemed, and even the horses upon which they rode had a casual flare to their nostrils, as though at play and nothing more.

It was an event that the villagers had long grown accustomed to. However, each time it happened the initial reaction was as if it had never happened before; frenzy was always the first response. Some even talked of “the frenzy” with excitement on their tongues. “Will you wear this tunic, or that, during the frenzy,” a father once heard his daughter saying to a friend, and he promptly assured her that during the frenzy, she would be indoors with the other good women, and not out being the younger sister of the Whore of Babylon.

That a frenzy- the running, the stashing, the hiding, the jumping over tables, the yelling- was not really necessary was obvious, but most agreed that it made the following days more interesting when running, yelling, and jumping could be added to the memory of days past. It was that type of town, where nothing much happened, and you made your own fun.

It was a game.

How could it not have been? They knew that each month soldiers from Lord Montre would sweep in, collect up money, food, and any other remotely interesting available items, then sweep out and back to whence they came. Sometimes Montre himself would come, and explain to them again why it was necessary to take a portion of their money and goods, and how in the end, it was his gentle hand that made the production of such commerce and goods possible. On it’s face this would sound like the wolf at the door seeking applause from the sheep for his sheep consumption activities, but in actuality, there was more to it.

Montre was a scoundrel, and fighter, but also, a native son, and they knew that he would die for them if such a sitution arose. His was a family whose line in the area was long, and for every misdeed, many blessings usually preceded and followed.

It was during one of these moments that Rejitta Sunsdutter stepped out the back door to run to a friend’s house (for the women in excitement liked to spend the frenzy together and watch the strong and lovely ride by from upper windows), but instead grew afraid at the sound and rumble of so many approaching armed (and drunk) men. It mattered little if they were friend or foe, or cousin.

As she stood, stock still, a monk happened to be walking down the road. He saw her there, as he had often seen her. She alone was beautiful to him, and for weeks upon months he had observed her and longed to approach. It seemed too difficult to get the words out, impossible even. The fact that everyone knew the feelings in his heart did not at all help his efforts. There were many who laughed at him, and thought of him as a monk with no gifts. He could not heal, or fight, or make loaves from rocks. He perplexed the many, and charmed the few.

So this was his moment and he took up his courage, ran to her side and mouthed, “Quick, follow me.” Inside her house her father looked out from behind the window, and called to his wife: “Is that not the monk who speaks not a word, making off with our daughter in the middle of the frenzy? Oh now I have seen it all.”

“Climb over now and stand with me,” were the words that seemed to come from his mouth, and she complied, despite the dubious nature of the rescue, where one false step might send them both plunging down fifteen feet into the water well. He stood with one foot in the bucket, and she grabbed onto him, and they lowered themselves in, till they were floating just above the water below.

He still had not said a word to her, but in his arms she could feel him almost shaking.

“Do not let me go,” she said. She heard, in her head, his response.
“I will never let you go.”

And there they stood, swinging on a bucket on a rope in a shallow well, eye to eye, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, and the earth rumbling overhead.

These lips of mine here stricken lame,
without your love how shall I be,
here heart is calling out thy name.

I feel not just a burning flame,
I speak a thousand hopes to thee,
these lips of mine here stricken lame.

See this was the thing. After such a long pursuit, she finally loved him.

Most people in life are blessed, so blessed. Love comes to them in the form of a face and figure, and many times in a life. But it didn’t really happen like that for Asa at all. Of course there are some who whispered that the monks ought not to be looking for love in the first place, but he was of a faction of monks that did not hold that serving God and loving women might be mutually exclusive.

He found her. He had lived beyond thirty years. “I am older than Christ, and I liveth still, without love,” and then he found her. But her heart did not find him till seven years later. She accepted his attentions and knew his feelings, but she was not a one to set aside her many diversions and suitors. She was a busy one, and this tormented Asa. But he waited.

“I will show her constant love,” he said, and made himself her first and last resort, depending on her situation. He supplied her every need and want, and catered to her whims. She spent the morning accepting his gifts, and the night lavishing those gifts on others who appealed to her more.

Still he waited.

And as day follows night and the earth rolls over, her heart softened and her mind cleared and she saw there was only one who had stood by her always. She saw also that she had spent year upon year lavishing torment upon his soul, for as day follows dark, so too, her neglect followed her smiles, leaving him destitute in the night.

Now everything was different and she handed him love. He was filled with joy, and walked home by the long way, past the pastures and the far side of the river, mind aloft and thanking God.

He came to house and it was on fire. He could hear screams from inside. He stood for a moment watching, not so much the house in flames, but rather his own life.
He ran to the home and went inside. The flames lept upon him with a ferocious glee till his skin sizzled. He dashed around the lower floor, and could smell himself with each breath. Nothing. He ran upstairs.

Did you know Asa had powers too? Of course, all the monks did. Asa could absorb pain. Often enough, it was not even conscious. He did not feel physical pain, and therefore, was most careful in everything he did, lest he accidentally hurt himself without feeling the injury.

Upstairs he found a woman and child, but they were now dead. He was too late. He picked them up and carried them through the fire, and they burnt as one with every step. Once outside he set them down by the river that ran nearby. He leaned over to drink some water and saw his own reflection. He was black as coal, a tower of ash, and no features to speak of.

He thought of his love, and how she might see him; she would speak fondly of him for his courage, but reject him for his appearance. He looked again at his reflection in the water, and tipped over and in. He was never seen again.