The Soldier

When you stand next to the Sourcerer, on the hill overlooking his Tower, you can see that he's not all completely dressed in black.

He has black hair, of course, and it's bunched up in the back into a high pony tail, and bound up in his pony tail is a single red flower, something like a rose; a gift from his wife, The Goddess of Flowers, an undying flower, bound to an eternal song.

On his fingers are rings of gold and silver, but plain, without jewels.

He wears black, but it's not always the same black; sometimes it's a robe and sometimes it's a shirt, and sometimes it's a tattered old t-shirt, but it's always a shade of black.

Sometimes you notice that he wears strange little things on his person, but it's hard to keep track of them, as they seem wont to come and go. Sometimes he wears a necklace of twigs and sea shells, and sometimes a bracelet made of driftwood, and sometimes he holds a big stick in his hands and seems to admire it.

They're all silly things, the type of things that a boy might collect because they caught his interest, but the sorcerer is no boy, oh no. He is youthful, yes, but not young; his eyes, and the way they glance at you, tell a different story.

His eyes are cruel, but never indifferent; he is always deeply interested in the things he sees, like a crow watching you from a high perch. Nothing slips past him. Nothing is unnoticed. Everything is important, even if it seems quite ordinary.

His mouth is clever, his ears always open, his hands always seeking; they seek everything and nothing, they seek out, gently, and they grasp nothing too tightly.

The Sourcerer is always understated, and yet, when he turns to you, you cannot help but feel smaller than you just were. It is not so much his appearance that is daunting, but rather that he carries himself with an absolute, smug confidence, that somehow seems deserved.

And, indeed, who could challenge the avatar of the Tower?

There is no threat anywhere that could bring him down, for he is the master of magic, the only Sourcerer, and if you have ever made magic then you only borrowed it from him.

He alone is a monolith, the thing that all men strive to be, but which they can never attain. He is the Tower, and even the greatest warriors out of all of history, and the most bloodthirsty warlords, would consider themselves less masculine than the Sourcerer.

It is the air he has about him, this sense that he looks at the world and laughs at it; he takes none of it seriously because, to him, reality is just another thing that gets in his way.

He has a cruel laugh, but it is earned; to him all men are boys, and so he laughs at thier antics, just as you'd laugh at some puppies tumbling around on the floor. He would mock a king or a begger, it doesn't matter, to him they're pretty much on the same level; just little boys playing at being men.

And if they get angry with him for laughing? Well, then that just makes him laugh even harder!

You wish that he'd just keep his eyes on his Tower and forget about you, because he gaze is not so much a look as it is a spell.

When glances in your direction you find yourself taking a step back, only to be flung back across the ocean, to the land you came from, and seeming to be going about your normal life.

You walk down the street and go about your work... but everything is different, wrong, somehow.

The Sourcerer is with you, but he's not beside you, or watching over you like a crow, he's inside you, wearing your skin like a suit.

As you walk out of your front door, you feel that there's an aura around you which pushes reality away, which makes even important things feel distant, like looking at the world though a camera lens.

Somehow, it's your world, but it's also not, because when you see it as the Sourcerer does then it all seems so upside down.

Things which once felt important to you, like your car, and your position at work just feel so boring, like it barely even matters if you were a cook or an engineer, because what you do does not change what you are, nor the way in which you carry yourself.

You feel that you could win out in any situation, and that people blathering on about titles and promotions are just playing pretend to make themselves feel bigger.

And, at the same time, things that you'd never notice start to feel important.

The way that your wife moves seems so utterly sensual, the curves of her body could hypnotise you for hours. You could watch her folding sheets, or talking on the phone, and be reduced to a drooling mess. How is it that you never before saw the sheer depth of her beauty? How is it that now she can seduce you with just a touch of her hands?

You feel weak around her, like a little boy, and you'd do anything to make her laugh or smile. You prostrate yourself in front of her, and nothing comes even close to her, for she is the keeper of your heart, and she moves you to passions which are intoxicating and utterly blinding.

But, when you are away from her, you seem to feel the rhythm of the world, and you seem to feel that nothing is as it should be, and yet it could not be any other way.

The crowds on the streets are all wrong; people out of time and place, lost in thier own sea, bleating like sheep, constantly, while never really saying anything of consequence.

Thier words are hollow because they do not really speak from the heart, do not really say what they mean; they are too afraid to be different, and so they flatten themselves, and put out thier fires, and pray, from the pits of thier stomach, for acceptance at all costs.

Talking to them is like talking to a child because you see what's important, what's really important, whereas they see nothing but grey fog, whereas they keep themselves blind, lest they see something which doesn't fit in with the herd and they start to think in a way that does not conform.

They are boring.

Thier lives are boring, and original thoughts cannot be found in thier head.

In truth, it takes no real magic to trick them, just a few fancy words thrown out in the right order can bring them to anger, or confusion, or love, or despair.

The men are more scared of seeming weak than they are of global warming, and the women are too scared of being ostracised to speak up for what's right.

Thier thoughts confuse them, so it seems to you, and thier passions often follow thoughts which thier minds consider to be uncouth, unwanted, or unpopular.

They wage a constant war on every faculty of thier own beings, from the passions in thier genitals, to the hunger in thier stomach, lest they admit that they feel overpowering desire and give power over them to someone else, or, God forbid, become fat!

But these feelings make you uneasy, make you feel like your drowning, because to see the world through the eyes of the Sourcerer is heady and distressing.

What once grounded you and made you feel like the world mattered now seems trivial compared to what you know now. You are untethered from what you once accepted as truth, from the religion of social conformity, and now you are adrift in space, a tower floating in the void with no idea how to get home.

And so you're glad when the Sourcerer takes his eyes from you and you can return to the Far Shore...

Uncanny as this place may be, it is not nearly as uncanny as your homeland now seems to you.

You and He look at the Tower, he is smiling cruelly, and you are pale as death, mouth agape, wishing that you'd never crossed that sea.

And, so you're with the Sorcerer now, on the hillside that overlooks his Tower, and you can see the base of the Tower now, and it is truly a mountain of jagged, black glass, and in that dark valley the base is surrounded by what looks like a combination between a garden and forest.

It's nighttime now, but you were never aware of a time when the sun set, or when the light started to fade, and yet it wasn't as if someone turned off a light switch either, the transition to night felt as if it happened, but you don't remember it happening.

The Tower still shimmers with strange lights, almost like constellations of stars, but there are no moons or stars in the sky, just shades of black, the Tower is the veil of stars in this world.

You watch the constellations dancing on the Tower, always moving downward, down towards the garden at the base of the Tower, and the shapes on the Tower seem to melt into the garden.

You sit now, with the Sourcerer, on the crest of the hill which overlooks the Tower, a campfire between the two of you, and your eyes are fixed firmly on anything but the Sourcerer, lest you meet his gaze again and fall under his spell.

And you sit cross legged on the dirt, feeling the heat of the fire, the world around you gently illuminated by the stars on the Tower, and you can't help but feel all your pretensions about yourself have fallen through holes in your pockets.

You dare not even look at the Sourcerer for the fear you now have of him.

And you are, once again, a little boy in school, trying to avoid the gaze of the teacher who you know doesn't like you or your smart mouth. In the presence of the Sourcerer you are no longer an engineer, or a fry cook, or a bus driver, but a gormless little child, under the hard gaze of your father.

And, yet, you can't figure out why the Sourcerer would want you in his presence; why he would sit at a campfire with you, as if you were equals, when you are not even close to being equals. What does he gain from sitting with you?

For, surely he gains something, or else he wouldn't be sitting with you. Is this your prize for crossing that vast ocean? Will be make you his apprentice?

You sense that that's not what what he wants with you, and you wouldn't want to know what he knows at any rate.

No, an idiot like you couldn't even apprentice to anyone anyway, especially not someone like Him.

And so you watch the constellations on the Tower and you try to make some sense of them, but the Sourcerer chastises you.

The words on the Tower, he says, are the words of a spell, a spell written in a language that no-one speaks, a spell that only a man can read, and if someone did read the words on the Tower then Yin and Yang would collide, and reality would crumple like paper, and the Tower would go back to whatever it was before anything had eyes to gawk at it.

Best not to look to hard at the Tower either.

And so you just look at your hands for a while.

"I knew a man like you once." The Sourcerer says to you, "He was a soldier in a vast army, and you really do remind me if him."

"He fought in a war to end all wars, a war against a foe so villainous and evil that there was not a drop of mercy in his heart."

"And this evil-doers army was just as evil as him, wicked down to the core."

"And the Soldier, the man who makes me think of you, he fought for love and justice and peace, and he, and all his fellows, were good men, virtuous and pure."

"But, during a pitched battle so fervent that it scorched the Earth itself, something went horribly wrong for the Soldier."

"He found himself wounded and broken on the battlefield, bleeding heavily, so heavily that he ought to die quite quickly, but death never came and he just bled and bled."

"And the field of battle had fallen silent."

"And the scorched earth was barren."

"And there was not a soul, living or dead, in sight."

"And the Soldier realised that there had never been anyone else, not really, and that, in fact, all of his allies and enemies had always been him, that he had waged a war alongside, and against, himself."

"And now that the illusion was broken, well, he was left alone, dying, but never reaching the moment of death, bleeding and bleeding without end."

"And he knew that there were no enemies coming to give him the final, merciful blow, because there had never really been any enemies at all."

"And he knew that no allies would come to save him, or even kill him out of mercy, because he had been his own allies, just as he had been his own enemies."

"And so he was doomed to die forever, without dying, and, that eternal life, was somehow the worst fate he could imagine."

"But, who should appear but a nurse, bearing the Balm of Gilead, the cure for all wounds and sickness."

"It is doubt, the nurse says, which has caused his present condition; doubt is a parasite which eats him from within, but to be free of doubt he must accept the Balm through the pores of his skin."

"Now, the Soldier knows of penetration, of course; he wishes for his enemy to come and stick him with a spear, to deliver the final blow, to go back to the war which seemed natural to him."

"But to be penetrated by the Balm?"

"This he cannot do, to open his pores and accept the Balm into himself, as the nurse had said?"

"If he dies, then he will simply be born anew, as a Soldier once again, but to let himself be changed by the gentle perfume of the Balm?"

"This he cannot do."

"And if he did let something so gentle sink into his guts, then what? What would he become? Less of a man? Or more of a man?"

"What do you think?"

And, of course, you fear that you do not know.

"Well, let me tell you then." He goes on.

"Though it hard for him to open his skin to gentleness, but easy for him to accept force, this makes him still a boy."

"A boy who plays at being a man will fight, he will hit, and he accept hits in return, in order to prove to himself that he is strong."

"But true masculinity is penetrating, but not violent."

"In order to become a man, the Soldier must become primed, to allow masculinity to penetrate him, and the tip of a spear is a poor substitute."

"The truly masculine penetrates you, yes, but in that penetration is a separation of things, thoughts and feelings, ideas and sensations. It is the kind of penetration which does not injure, but which pushes gently apart, and which untangles the threads of the mind."

"But only a woman may lie down and accept this kind of penetration, for it requires a receptive state of mind. She must absorb that force which separates, and therefore become clear to herself."

"And so, no man can truly become masculine, because he cannot receive the separating force which he himself can supply."

"No, in order to become masculine, the Soldier must first become femanine."

"He must learn to receive."

"Truly receive mercy."

"The kind of mercy which does not have a clean end, but the kind of mercy which sets him on a long, long road to recovery."

"Being a man, he longs for the story to simply end and for the next story to begin."

"But, now he is given no choice."

"He now must discard his simple ideas of warfare, and become that which he never thought he could be: open, gentle, femanine."

"Lest he remain a boy forever, and the Goddess turns from him, and he tastes not of her soft fruit."

"Do you now understand?"

And you look at your hands in the firelight and you sense that you do understand, or at least that the conclusion of the story was obvious, or that you saw it coming, but this land follows the logic of a dream and so you can't be sure if you had heard herd the story before or not.

But the Sorcerer knows that you did not truly understand, and so he goes on anyway.

"The truth of the spirit is to be between the poles of male and female, and many people may flit between these poles, at times receptive, at times separating."

"To be a man is to separate reasons from truths, and that I can speak of to you, but for a man - such as me - to speak of what the feminine is like from within is abhorrent, it is a crime against nature, like plucking the petals from a flower. The Goddess sickens those who trample her flowers, and only a woman may pull the petals from a flower, for a man to defile a flower is a sin."

"That is because men love flowers more than women do; the flower symbolises not what they are, but what they cherish. A man will always shield a flower from harm, just as he shields his daughters, and all girls. To a man, the flower is sublime and sensual, it is what he craves, what drives him, and a man would never trample a flower."

"Picture yourself, a man, walking though field of flowers, and ask yourself, would you rush headlong into that field, or would you walk carefully, brushing the flowers aside?"

"A man could no more destroy a flower than he could destroy a mighty oak tree."

"But it is true that a boy may destroy a flower in his play, and the Goddess will likely forgive him, for the boy is delicate too, like the flower, and thus is allowed to err."

"A man is not a tyrant, or a hulk, he is a not a monolith, only I am a monolith, but nor is a he a mouse, his is a bear, and, much like a bear, he must be free to roam and stretch and growl."

"There are those in the world who say that men should not labour on simple chores, and that only women should clean, and cook, and wash."

"Fools."

"Picture in your mind a janitor."

"It is always a man you will picture, and not just in body, but in spirit too."

"And what does he hold in his hand?"

"The Mop, The Broom, The Brush?"

"He excels in the practice of controlling force, for a man is all force, he is a bear, he is the blade, but he is the master of applying force."

"He mops, and cleans, and scrubs, and paints."

"He shears and rubs with the right amount of force, that is the gift of men, that they know how to bend and no break, they are the curators of force. A man is never a brute, and a man who uses hurtful force on a woman will be torn apart by the Goddess, but his force is fruitful and beneficent when it is applied gently. He carried his wife over the threshold, he squeezes her tight, he grabs her and kisses her, all with force, but a man controls the force, he never simply unleashes it."

"Women want this force form him, but not the brutish force that children value; they want this controlled force, which seeps into them and separates and clarifies."

"A woman must know that man is never quick to anger, but that he is capable of bringing his force when it is needed. He must let his force spill out without his control, if he does this then he is a boy, and the Goddess turns from him, and he tastes not of her rare fruit."

"But a man must clean his home, and help to make it; if he does not help in the making of his home, then his home becomes hostile to him, alien, and he finds that his wife boxes him ever tighter, until he is caged."

"He needs a cave, a chamber, a shed, a game console; a man is filled with force, dangerous force, and he must have time to uncloud himself. He can provide the separating force, it is true, but he himself must have space to stretch out in peace, lest he become wild, like the bear in the cage."

"What happened to him last week still lingers, and he struggles to separate his thoughts from his feelings. A man must be able to be alone, to receive his own separation."

"He builds worlds in his mind, when alone, like the Soldier did, and he tries to build his ideas into a monolith, to make a Grand Theory of Everything, to create a model of the universe, to exclude feelings and to understand all. But when his Tower of Babel becomes large enough then God strikes it down, the battle is a stalemate, and he bleeds forever."

"No man may put all the pieces of the puzzle together, thus will he know the mind of God and anyone who knows the mind of God becomes a part of God, no longer human."

"No, a man must only make little monoliths, small enough to escape the notice of Jehovah. He must make a model for each facet of his life, and wage little wars on his own ideas."

"A man is always at war, for all wars are a wars of ideas, and a man must know which reigns supreme., this is his natural way."

"And so, the Soldier is no fool of a man, rather he is a smart man, brought to a final and inescapable conclusion; he understands now that there is no way to build a higher tower. He must grow a garden on the soil of the Earth, but only the Goddess can teach him how to do this."

"Do you understand?"

You do not.

Or do you?