Wisdom

The village sage stood in a field all day, hat cocked, eyes fixed forward. He was handsome and kind. He was made out of straw.

To the villagers he was indispensable. They talked of their sorrows with him, sought him out for advice. He was known to be an excellent listener. He served as an arbiter in the bitterest disputes, for people trusted that he would never take sides.

Only once had anyone gone to see him and left disappointed. There had been a young girl, a lonely young girl, who had come to him for companionship. She had asked, "But what of your life, sir? What do you think, and what do you feel?"

This was generally regarded as a foolish thing to have asked. It was not the role of a sage to feel anything.

Cottoning On

My mind communicates to me through a thick layer of cotton. I ask it questions but cotton balls are stuffed in its ears; it tells me answers but cotton balls are stuffed in its cheeks. I strain my ears to no avail: I cannot make out what it is saying.

I need it to lead me places but it cannot. Its movements are hampered, for it is fighting through a world packed tight with cotton.

The Internet

Nightly before bed, I stare at the static lines of text on my computer screen and wish the letters would begin moving, would sprout arms and legs, would morph into tiny black and white figures with laughing voices and lively eyes. They don't, though. So after a while, sighing, I surrender to solitude; sighing, I surrender to sleep.

A memory from a while ago

His frame (incongruously sturdy) landed softly with every step and he moved with a hesitance I could never connect with any particular gesture but it always struck me nonetheless. When he walked he did not obtrude upon the world. Deerlike he held himself in, always alert to the omnipresence of danger, one supposed, though what form he thought it might have taken I don't know.

Knowing he would pass by I had waited there a quarter hour to appear before him and with my presence say: I exist, damn it; I cannot be wished away. I recognized him in the distance by his walk. Unexpected: a paralyzing admixture of sympathy and terror. The words rehearsed a thousand times in my mind (conciliatory words, indignant words), how would I now say those words? Which ones of them could squeeze my swollen thoughts into a moment?

I hid till he had walked past; he didn't see me. The rest of the day: propping myself up with the hackneyed phrases with which one serves the public I hoped my impersonal polite well-rehearsed smile would hide that I was trembling.