As I write this it is six days since I last saw the sun.
That accursed trickster and deceiver of the emperor dropped
me through some poxy trapdoor as I cursed him for what he is. I lie in this deep
foul cellar with just two deficient lightwells far above. I am glad that my handbills
proclaimed that charlatan for the devil he is. When they find me, the emperor
will have him beheaded and his guts fed to the cats for making his loyal and true
adviser vanish into thin air and claim it as sorcery.
I am hoarse and
weak from five days of shouting with no food or water. All That son of a dog
left me is this damned single slate and stylus to scratch at it. The slate is now
almost full again. These few days make me believe it will be clean in the
morning.
It is now the beginning of the sixth year of my
incarceration. I regret my lack of faith
in the sorcerer. I should not have ridiculed his abilities so publicly and
rudely without proper scrutiny of his acts. My position remains unchanged: I
receive no food or water and yet miraculously I am renewed each day along with
my beloved slate to reflect on my sins and refine my thoughts. I still hope
that as I endure my daily penance of line writing, I will reach a point of true
repentance and eliminate from my mind all malice towards the wizard. I pray
that at that point he will release me from this place.
Over six long decades I have mastered the arts of brevity
and of contemplation increasingly free from desire. Serenity lies in the perfection
of truth. I praise the wisdom of the great one who granted me this perfect
space of eternal peace for the telling and retelling of the one story with ever
greater clarity. I feel only love and wonder at the magnificence of my master’s
creation. I see with ever deepening respect, the justice and beauty of my existence.
I wonder if further revelations are yet to come, and if my spirit has yet reached
a point where I might be released to Nirvana?
After six centuries I am overwhelmed by a fresh revelation
of my most magnificent miracle-maker’s power; for he had set my contemplative spirit
in a most exquisitely carved ivory inro guarded by a lapis scorpion netsuke. When
the merchant of this market opened the inro, I was released. My spirit left its womb and I perceived the scorpion,
protector of my peaceful place of contemplation, become wondrously real and
strike down the merchant with a venomous sting. Free from the singularity of
reflective purpose my mind is fast disappearing: lost in the richness of
existence. I take these last moments of consciousness to marvel at the
screaming face adorning my former repository, the re-petrified creature and my
unfortunate liberator. They were
still there when the collectors came.
No comments:
Post a Comment