I am the king of a ruinous castle.
I built the castle with my own two hands, clueless, but hopeful, placing brick upon brick, grimly satisfied and deeply shaken whenever walls tumbled and euphoric whenever they stood. I had no blueprint, no scaffold, no leading hand – I vibrated with insecurity, in a swallowed perpetual terror that a black swan might come along to break one of my wings with his.
I silenced my anxiety by stuffing it with pride, remembered all that I had built and all that was still standing. I became smug. Covetous. Sneered at all those who seemed to build no walls at all. They were fools; naked to the universe and unashamed, while I sucked on the piece of apple in my mouth like an addict. I needed to know. Needed to add floor after floor, wing after wing, my hands often bloody and my tongue often thirsty for blood.
I met some people who had built palaces themselves. I loved and hated and feared them. Some of them lavished praise on my castle, their words turning into mortar and fortifications before my eyes. Others seemed intent to bombard me; they loathed my very foundation, the land, the air I had built on and tore into me with their words.
But I did not falter. I defended my walls. I grieved the ones that had fallen, yet knew that it was for the better, re-purposed the bricks and built new structures from shambles. I was tireless, breathless, each breath a brick, haunted by black swans and the idea that my whole castle, my whole life, my whole work, could fall to pieces and my calloused hands would mark me no genius and no pioneer, but a fool.
With each night that passed and every morning that rose, I grew faster and faster when pacing my hallways and tracing my stones, panic electric in every step. I turned in circles, frantic, manic, perfectionistic, and when I had nowhere else to turn, I turned on the castle. I convinced myself that something so fragile and painful could never be true. I kicked the walls down all by myself, proclaimed it suffocating and rigid and artificial and cruel and wrong, hated how it had me confined, like a bird in a blood-gilded cage, forever tied to the walls like some dumb creature of no understanding.
I broke free and left. Just left. Like a child carelessly drops a flower once all its petals are torn and there is nothing left that’s entrancing, I let it all fall to the ground with a veil of detachment weaved into my eyes. Everything I had once considered my personal duty, the source of all of my pride and arrogance and self-worth, the very reason for my existence – I dropped it. I ran out of my castle towards something that was deliciously not-mine: the horizon.
All was subjective. All was irrelevant. All was in a state of perpetual flux. The very sky was my castle and I the black swan that defied it. I was one of the homeless now, empty and free. I tasted numb fingers and soft hands and soft hearts and soft brains. I let myself go, allowed myself to be swept away by the tides of existence - from one shore to two shore to ten shore. I never questioned. Never complained. Basked in the warmth of the sand and the light of the sun, accepted the bite of the wind and the wetness of rain.
But in time, I grew dissatisfied. Was this really the truth? A life without any attempt at understanding, at ordering, at classifying, at comparing, deducing, progressing, building, tinkering, experimenting, creating myself? A passive existence like that, forever just nodding and calling it life… somewhere inside my liquified brain, I nursed a rebellion against my acceptance. I was a king. I wanted to shape, to create, to lead and to conquer. I wasn’t made for swimming along with a smile on my lips. I was born to bleed from my hands and to love it.
I wanted blood. I wanted sweat. I wanted the sweet release of laurels, of success and of honour. I wanted my castle back. I would rebuild it better than ever. Slowly, sluggishly, incompetently, I turned around and heaved my amorphous body against the gust of the wind. I walked into the great unknown, first toes on soil, then wading back into black water and swimming against a towering tide, all in darkness. I had no idea where I was, who I was and how I would get anywhere, but I just kept at it, pushing, crawling, floating, step after step and breath after breath.
Slowly, very slowly, in a crawl of time in which day and night seemed as one, I pieced together a map of my world. I found oceans, jungles, deserts, snowy plains and lush forests, mountains, reefs and abysses. I realized that I knew many of these places. I had walked through them in my dreamlike stupor of blind detachment, stumbling ahead without ever stopping to think. This time, I rested. Hidden behind stone monuments, corners jutting out of the sand, stuck between the branches of fir trees, I found bricks – some of them were my old ones, carried far away from my castle by the wind, just like myself. Others were new. I’d found them and tossed them aside without any inspection.
Cross-legged, I traced every one of them. Some turned to steel in my hands, others crumbled to dust and returned to the earth. Hands bleeding once more, I carried them home to my castle. The more bricks I found scattered all over the world, the clearer I saw my castle in my mind. I knew where it was. And now, I also knew where it wasn’t.
Finally, there it was. My old castle on the horizon. It was reduced to ruins and rubble; only a few trusty walls were still standing up to the elements. Without clearing off the ivy and moss, without even stopping to dust off the floor, without looking around the lower chambers at all, I collapsed on my cracked throne and breathed. It was no longer one breath a brick, but a fortified brick every conscious breath. I have changed.
So, here I am, sitting in the dust of my own escape. Master of destruction, disciple of construction, the king of the ruinous castle, and weep.
I know that I will never be only a king again and never only a wanderer. I am something new.
I will wander the world to build my castle and my castle will follow my steps. I am no prisoned madman and no homeless fool. I am free. And I choose to build and re-build and re-build and forever re-build a home.
Let the black swans come. I dare them. Invite them.
If I perish with just one solid brick in my hand, all of it will have been worth it.
izzy806
germansingergirl
jacobvanloon
