Now it is dark and the faces of all the people I have met offset each other vaguely in my mind. I sit behind my screen of anonymity and hide my face like a beautiful white queen, savage and forgotten over long years of silence and contempt, like proud Ayesha who loved Kallikrates. I know their thoughts and they lay the innermost workings of their hearts down to me for my pleasure: I take the series of their lives at my selfish and supreme leisure. I know their loves and their losses and their simple dreams. I know their desires and mortal lusts. I rise above, and live forever.
Leaf by leaf the pages are rent: the selfish cannot bow down to the humble, and the humble cannot help but to give in to pain. I have left behind the ignorance and doubt and hope of foolish youth, this is what they say, this is what they tell me when I ask them, whither truth?
I sum myself up with the scales of this society: the balance does not account for much. I look upon these my people with a fear like regret, or a regret like fear: they are inconsistent and foul and tiresome and greedy and depraved and sensual, and I do not love them. Yet love them I dost, for they are all mine own. Then one calls me followed by the other, and I am lost between the two until I must tear myself in halves, or die otherwise when I have seen the world a thousand times hence and known all there is to know, and seen all there is to see, and have become a strong woman of the Unworld. This will continue until the day I die; or the day I meet the man who can stay me from going and love me otherwise. This I know to be truth. But men are petty liars and women are false peacocks and to be human is to sin: so I shall die otherwise from the death I have been appointed.
I who am unWise: I who am unStrong: I who am Fair. I the Savant, I the Critic, I the Hypocrite, I the Lover of Beautiful Things. I the Proud Beauty, I the Selfish, I the Cruel. I the Runner, I the Seeker, I the Fool. I will live forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment