The Seven Days of Wander

justice for all. For the ants know the lion will give onto the pursuit in its own life, so do not condemn or lament heavily an ant's life. For all will die in time and all yearn a higher collective purpose then the fill of time's belly.

  These toils, these lives add to the chain of a great endeavour.

  The king can bear so long as the vision is more than the cost.

  The vision cannot be made more by the added links to a chain. That doing simply drags lions into dust.

  Justice for all lies in the greater the ends, the greater the means. Justice does not berate the means but will call it a crime where there was no end envisioned. Nor does justice allow a means greater than the end or a means solely created as a end to any means.

  King Hindus: Your visions from the dust are a wind of delight, Beggar. A king's circle does not normally call from the sight and sounds far below. I find it difficult to believe a common thing does not envy an uncommon thing. Is

  not the path of all subjects one of servile resent?

  Beggar: To that you are always right, King Hindus, singularly every sparrow, nested in dung and sticks, yearns the greater loft of a mountain eagle. And what a mystery that a sparrow has the wings of an eagle's flight, does it not? The means are there, to be taken in the mere unfolding of desire.

  Yet the swallow stays; envious; a part heeds an eagle's screech and lifts to this music, another part, perhaps even a better part, that within its own meaness, its tiny flutter of endeavour so seemingly of no import to wide history in this part, it too finds a greatness.

  For the man that is king, his manliness is defined by his kingliness. If he is only half a king is his greatness, history or the eyes of his subjects will speak not of a full man.

  For he cannot be. He is as if a butterfly with only one wing. In the falter of his flight, no one will speak of or remember the caterpillar matured. For when great heights are expected, the distance of a multifooted march is scorned at a lower dwelling.

  But the man not destined, not chosen to the lust of history is none the less called to the burden of a greatness as well. History has released or ignored him to its clarion call but this has then made his ears quiet to heed the whispers of a deeper, inward reach.

  That the metamorphosis is clung to within. Each man is then stretched to become the fullness of himself; for only the sake of himself.

  In a religious sense it is as if all the great become as martyred prophets to history, all other men become saints and as saints are great onto their own history.

  That history now records the martyrs, the prophets and the saints is only as the saints are rare; that , as in a battlefield, there is only one king and a few truly heroic men amongst the ordinary. Were all the ordinary heroic and saintly in the fullness of themselves, history would record no individual passing but would indeed mark the time as golden!

  For here in the fullness of a man, the species is denied or forgotten. The man wages war upon himself, upon evil, avarice, murder, upon all such things that cause him to be less than full, as if in the cast of a curling, vicious thing devouring his own heart.

  For men of all the species is resigned a special verdict. He has a dwelling of his own being, his own stature. The dog, the lion doe not condemn itself for yesterday's cowardice or failure. They are a species only to the day. They do not think 'yesterday I ran from the bull, will I today be so cowardly?' They think of the bull only when the bull is scented and if still as large they repeat their history with NO LONGING for change. For they do not ponder of dogs and dog and I am a dog.The world outside is a sole existence, they are ruled by the alert or lapse of senses.

  But the individual of a man is departed from the species. 'I am a man' spoken becomes a wheel in motion. 'I am a cowardly man, a greedy man, a courageous man' steers the direction.

  Here the original man is driven from his species where the kingly man is not! For the kingly man must turn history which is a great revolve of the species, yet the original, unique man must direct himself.

  Each has a task for which it cannot be said to be unequal.

  If a herd of gazelles are lead by one of their number on an arduous trek and they came upon a great crevasse to leap, what then?

  The leader leaps across calling the species to follow. If such follow in success, history has a tale. If none follow, historyhas a tale to condemn a false leader.

  For man the same. As a species. But for man as a single parcel of being a different history. Some would stay. Some follow, some dies in the attempt. For the species, does not history mark a place largely of following or abandoning?

  But for each man at the abyss, at the gathering of his individual history, only each man can decide if fullness lies in follow, in stay, or in death with attempt. For the man fullness lies in the weight of tomorrow's vision of today's stride. Woe to a half man who hesitates! Shame to a full man who jumps when his heart demanded encamp! A life time of wander for those who slip from the contest of jump or stay and in their half-stride crawl away in search of a bridge! Curse to the man who stays while believing in a bridge!

  You see, King Hindus, the king should lead the species but the species should not lead the man. Few men can be king but all men can choose their subjection.

  Tyranny as an evil power has no truth before fullness. Tyranny is a whip to the species but is but an ill wind to fullness a stench parted by the granite of singular decision. For is a blind man leads a multitude of blind, who must be as the burden of destruction? The fullness of a man may have no vision equal to a blind king's cravings but surely his eyes will open to the crevasse and demand a halt!

  What have we found? That if each man becomes within his own tiny kingdom of hearth, friends, work in the fullness of a man both heroic and saintly in a measure of an individual cup, that his duty to the species lies solely out of this duty to himself.

  That the very things he is cursed upon, his thickheadedness, his torturous tiny pace, his clumsiness, his vision of inches is in fact solely the fullness of a man who is sure in his being and of doubt to others, even onto rejection of others.

  The species is likened to not rabbits, not toads but man as great turtles moving across the sands of destiny's call. The crimes of a buffoon as spoken before are only crimes seen by kings blinded by the false glints of opportunity dazzled before them. These kings blame a species whereas the fault lies at the point not the rear. They areas if a lion pouncing upon this great pack of turtles, pummelling shells to gather speed, swiping at heads, roaring and foaming, all to no avail. The turtles will follow at their pace and in the sloping low of a turtles path. If the lion wishes the turtles cross a crevasse it must find the bridge and the patience to lead to it.

  For in the turtle is not thickheadness a shell of wisdom to shield from the claw of impatience; is not the tiny pace a sure cautious step all can follow; is not the clumsiness a love of being and fellow being held awkward as a spirit out of element; is not the vision of inches the wary eyes of a kingdom close packed and lived close upon dust?

  What if we called thus this fullness of a man's shell: Spirit?

  That is as you asked, King Hindus, the spirit craves not the wings of a king, though the eyes may have a wishful delight in its circling. As even a man-king will stand his turret and dream of a star's height or a sun's rest.

  But where the spirit is full, there is no murder in a man's heart to tear asunder his own spirit. Whether for king or great or species or another man.Follow he will; but follow by choice. Die he will; but sacrifice by choice.King Hindus: Ah, my tiny chirp of a beggar! Your song is the song of all philosophers, a delightful melody of what should be not what is. That is why philosophers make seldom kings, for both know the effect but only the latter accepts his cause. And a noble thing too! It is not burdensome at all to be the cause not the effect. Murder is not mayhem, when a king is the cause. The cause is the first's rule, the effect is a cringe.

  The spirit is smoke, a gaseous thing. It rises upward only. Has
no linger in the rut, in the pit but for a wisp of scent. Only at the higher level does it congeal to form a dark clouded menace of thunder and bolt. Thereto rule survival in blasts of destruction or a rain of live.

  Beggarly hope, your words forge a question, not answers. Take mine into your cup. Life is survival, death is not. Though you are right in some things.

  The species does give onto a great the many and into the many a great. But there is no each of the many to be something of great, no there is only the many. Just as we say 'the legs of a stool' or 'the bricks of a wall'. We see the stool, the wall, the parts are much more in the sum. Four scattered legs do not make a stool.

  But what is the stool? What is it but the will of a king? The king wishes a stool, he snaps his fate and behold! The legs gather to their task. This is not hard or cruel, it is the better of survive. For where else would a wood leg be? What destiny but the fire or the last devouring need of a king's foot?

  The legs squeak their gratitude and their brothers burn envious eyes from the grate. what can a king do? Go cold amongst a thousand stools?

  And the bricks mortared one upon another, back upon back, will they not sigh upon one another 'Brothers what useless is this wall to block wind and fill air. To give birds a scare and spiders a roost?

  But what joy, Beggar, in the daily appointed