The Loneliest Monk (with tongue in cheek)

How amusing, in a way. The narcissism of youth, or maybe, the idiotic simplicity of a black and white world where Cinderella always gets her glass slipper back, at the story's end. A stoic Prince Charming endures despite the tortuous agony of years with the evil step-family. Black. And. White.

If only.

How sad she'd be, the princess of our monochromatic fairy tale, if she knew that the world outside was grey, muddy, complicated. Her creator himself, the great American progenitor of fantasy, was an embittered anti-Semite alcoholic. Who can even venture to guess with what hypocrisies he comforted his all-too-human flesh and bones. It is only with hubris that we, in hindsight, pretend to be able to diagnose a reason. Or, more fitting, a why.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. I am ready for it to be done. Over. I am through pretending that any one of any similar experience could bend a sympathetic ear. I simply do not care. My wild west heart has stitched itself up and moves forward, unknowingly, in the direction of God, in the direction of what stirs within. In moments of calmness it moves with an egalitarian empathy. That is, in between the beats of pumping bile, and raging within every capillary against itself for being so foolish, and falling prey to such utter folly.

As an aside, I never did believe in Cinderella. She has no place in this ephemeral world of ours; of blood, and sweat, and heartache, and confusion. She cannot last but between the crisp white layers of book and binding, and if, by some weakness of character, she is allowed to sublimate from page to palm, well, the effect can be deleterious to those of fragile heart. She can perch to such heights as to draw plans of great domestic bliss and a ridiculously saccharine monotony that could, perhaps, be enough to satiate oneself. But only in the weak moments.

And so, as a hermit, I retire to my cave. To wait out eternity in contemplation of a benevolence that has to be inhuman. So, go with God, dear reader. And, if not that, just go.