Dark Age

To see them from above: the roving herds of beasts, the rivers carving stone, the rituals of man in all their varied panoply, to see the clouds roil over the patchwork latifundia of Asian plains, to see the mines of our home, is to remember the patterns of the world, and the majesty and complication and impermeable obscurity of distant lands. It is to remember how few people you know. How many do not know you. How many will soon forget you. How many praise you today to offer contempt tomorrow. Permanence of fame, power, dominion of the individual, are illusions. All that will be measured, all that will last, is your mastery of yourself.

That is what my father told me. It was his warning about power, though he sought it to his end. I've never understood how a man so wise could be so undone by himself. Perhaps I never will, and that is what has always frightened me. Not that I cannot control my own fate - that is impossible - but that I cannot control myself.

The tragedy of the gifted is the belief they are entitled to greatness, Lysander. As a human, you are entitled only to death.

"You know the curse of this world?" I ask, looking at the body the Carver made for me. "The greatest gifts were given to the worst of us."

"Not realizing they are gifts is what makes them the worst," he replies.

Don't you find it peculiar? The human conviction that we are the heirs of history instead of paragraphs that are almost over. A survival mechanism, no doubt.

What devious designs freedom requires. One must worry about the strength of a principle when it must compromise itself so often to survive.

I think, as with all things, honor is best appreciated in moderation. As is cruelty.

The legends of our age die one by one, like autumn leaves; and when they are gone, will we be lesser for their absence?

It seems cheap.

With his death imminent, the worlds feel emptier. Almost as cavernous as they did when Cassius fell. One by one, the titans of my youth disappear, and freed from their shadow, I do not feel liberated. I feel bereft.

Nothing is permanent. No one escapes.

"The bill comes at the end," I whisper.

I kept looking for hope in the world. Expecting the world to supply deliverance if I p[lucked the right chords. Demanding that it supply validation to my labor if I just gave enough effort. But that is not the nature of the world. Its nature is to consume. In time, it will consume us all, and the spheres will spin until they too are consumed when our sun dies.

Maybe that is the point of it. Knowing that ine day darkness will cover all, at least your eyes were open to moments of light.

He has little appetite for banter. He knows the dangers of the path I have chosen to walk, and he doubts me because the old do not remember the necessities of youth. They see only the years on our horizon to which they think we are entitled. But we are entitled only to the moment, and owe nothing to the future except that we follow our convictions.

You know I believe we all begin equal parts light and dark. I fear you think your strength lies in your darkness. But the measure of a man is not the fear he sows in his enemies. It is the hope he gives his friends.

Life is meant to be felt. Else why live? Valleys make the mountains.

A moving mind is always fed. At rest, mine eats itself.

Is a man a coward if he realizes that bravery is just a myth the old tell the young so they line up for the meatgrinder?

Only humanity could grasp the stars and then let them slip through its fingers for the pettiness in its heart.

I do not feel brave. I am not the center of this symphony. No one even cares if I am here.

Where is the immortal majesty the poets promised me? Where is the stern will my ancestors preached to their children?

It was just an illusion conjured by fools who never left their libraries, or by agents of necessity.

This is the Noble Lie.

I once thought the greatest sin of war was violence. It isn't. The greatest sin is it requires good men to become practical.

From a distance, death seems the end of a story. But when you are near, when you can smell the burning skin, see the entrails, you see death for what it is. A traumatic cauterization of a life thread. No purpose. No conclusion. Just snip.

I knew war was dreadful, but I did not expect to fear it.

How can anyone not, when death is just a blind giant with scissors?

Nothing beautiful survives the mob.