The Seven Days of Wander
what if our traveller risks all to halt, the chariot swerves the driver killed by the saving intent?
Beggar: Is intent fulfilled, whether by saviour or killer?
Executioner: Hardly, for the driver is not saved but bartered to death!
Beggar: Where?
Doctor: At the side of the road.
Beggar: A traveller's intent lies in the saving of life or in a pitfall empty of victim, which?
Lawyer: His original turn was to obtain assistance. The occurrence of another's imperil swelled a necessity to urgent. Was not the intent then to save this chariot driver's life?
Beggar: Yes but to save it from a pit, even onto the cost of the life itself, assuming that life is gambled to chance not surety.
A stone cast hard amongst the eyes driven a dangerous route may or may not kill but will in certain redirect from pitfalls; an arrow to the heart seems a waste of feathered shaft, does it not?
Lawyer: To, I, as logical as the next man's step, it seems an absurdity that a murderer becomes saviour by only the verdict of his intent. And that verdict passed only by the end if successful, that is if the intent fails there is no murder at a roadside but worse; in your words, for if there is failure hung limp armed, remorse in the dying vision of a chariot 'safely' escaped towards its pitfalls!
Beggar: It is your words, words out of the pre-judgement of your gaze, your gaze weak, weak onto all this intent as a child who peeks through its fingers at an astonishing display! Your tongue raises the hue and cry of murder but what is murder? The killing of another human being? A sword through a breast plate, that is no murder so long as war has been lawfully declared. What of rags laboured till death, such tenacious grip amongst great profits and narrow ledges, the ramshackle ladders and ropes frayed ever in justice yet do we not say no one asks a man build his own scaffold for meagre bread. What of simple subtract; seven mouths gathered to a six morsels; and a neighbour's eye has no taste for compassion.
Ah, but the word of these deeds is not murder, nay, call them glory, call them economy, call it all a social order, a noble decree. It is no point to us what these are called, only the confession taken that they are not called murder. So murder is not just to kill. Murder is to kill without social permission. Murder is to kill without the patient hands of thy voting elders; the city councils to the hilt. Murder is to kill for no profit or worse to kill for profit with no intend to share the rewards amongst nodding jackals.
How then our traveller condemned by the city council? A guess would say: if the driver was a debtor unpayable onto the elders terrible will be the traveller's guilt; if, however, the chariot had contained precious goods of an elder commissioned and these goods not lost to the mishap, than the traveller may gain freedom, indeed, likely with licence.
From this, we judge most as poor judges. But through the eye, the heart of the traveller, does murder appear as a blurred smear is his vision, a dark pulse of red blood?
Tis not, tis instead that the traveller intended life and met death; the doors were blank upon his choosing. Call him a poor gambler, yes; call him a murderer, no.
With what then was his dice? His rights at this chance?
The First Law.
Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.
Thus the traveller kills the driver without malice; with permission of intent; and remains more noble than any toad eyes ditched in reproof, though no doubt they will feast greatly after the fact.
Doctor: To say the traveller prefers death by chance than death by absolute, this allows the traveller choose likewise upon others; that in fact his intent has of sense brought them to his guardship bound in First Law. But, Beggar, surely you must allow, must heed some judgement of the means whether ends are met or severed hand.
Beggar: Let the 'Doer' be judge. Who better to judge First Law than those who enact its edict. In the act of 'Do', the traveller bears intent, means, ends, success, failure, reward, acclaim, judge, sentence, punishment; he bears all when his arm reaches to a fallen brother. For the 'Doing', is that not what men, in their belittled grasp but yet resurgence of old instinct called love? Does love begin at need and end at attempt? Or is love like horizon, the traveller bears only his limits, not the world's.
That is, where a traveller sees need, he also sees a need to end need. He has defined it all, not the world. The world may have a greater view but not so exact. A mountain's view is wide yet sweeps clumsy; only the valley knows the sweat of large stones. And even this, a thousand ant eyes still cling as to the smallest ledge whether inched from the plain or towering look; height does not necessarily breed courage.
Who can judge then the judge? Who can execute the executioner? Who can undo the doer? Where is there a lion's mane to warm the broken lambs? Who can love, who can reap, who can gather with the eyes of the unsown, who can offer water from an empty well.
No one.
But there is this for comfort amongst the snails and shelled spines who whisper amongst a man's toenails. There is a caution, there is a great wind which carries the Word amongst lips so heady that the snails hail it: Thunder.
Let us say that men grow out of themselves into Man when the 'doing' is done, when intent is borne, when First Law unfolds its greater wings.
Let us say that here men rise to Man and clouds, their vision as yet held to anything higher but still swallowing distance in a tumult of understanding; a cascade of intimate. Oh!, Floods of Humanity! That his grand embrace could ever sustain and even multiply! But at least and to the long stretched point of all, there are then glanced to the sides likewise others, others of man, not of men, who have burst into the sun flower of compassionate act; done well upon some lost or curling shadow below.
Now one may wish to say here that love can judge loving; giant amongst giant. Man to man. But, no, not even on this mountain's hair (I say hair because the near infinity can all of way's balance on the narrowest finite and because, remain lost to reptilian comprehend, as if a fly that swaggers like a lion need fear no lizard's throaty condemn, so long as it roars without buzz) can judgement hiss or the hissers easily plunge away; a smoky cinder of star; a puff snake withers in a squirm back to a thin stalk of flesh. For when Man looks at Man in outward squint; the mirror is broken; it is not a spell lost but rather a return; when this look comes, a cloud of filth upon the horizon, he is no longer of Man but returns to men.
Why? Because simple: the 'doing' is now done. The intent slipped from grasp. In act, the Man creates and thus elevates his spirit to Man. Judgement uncreates. As if horizons collapse narrow, narrow pulled like slaves bound to a falling slab; pulled by eyes shrinking from glory known as birthed suns to charcoal bits. Tasteless spice now rendered impure in the bitter salt heaped at a mountain's heel. Again, again, this preparation in the ceaseless grind!
But again I digress, tis our concern here of the Man who acts and CANNOT be judged by any but Himself. This is proven.
We have decreed and agreed that intent raises a man to a MAN and First Law is the 'doing' which was created in this 'explosion' of Man, just as the dust swirled when the eagle unfolds its feathered blare of intentions.
If the 'act' is truth then let he himself, the Man, follow the act, his proof always in the taste of change, of movement scented, like the salt of spray delicate upon a traveller's parted lip, a dew of anticipation swaying as if a bell toils for prayers.
Let the judgement be done, not as a gazing about in hollow stones, that is to say the shells of worms departed into yesterday but rather the dog consumes its own reflection by embracing, by drinking at another's need, not seeing the other as himself truly but as the dog would be, puzzled as to why another dog has such a rapture of anticipation, as if thirst coats always in blue circlet of halo. It is movement which disturbs the balance and then sound the destiny.
Doctor: What are these dogs gnawing into the light to do with anything? Bits of reason are not the marrow, how now does our 'bolder' stance judge his own truth as movement; for a man can spin and
never to topple; yet is this your righteous directions?
Beggar: In the desert's storm, the Man is astride his intent hooved as a foam eyed mare, as if both to boil forward as first steam, then the parent hot itself issues from the spout of a boiling kettle.
Where is judgement of deed; where is the gate pole high towards the sun of righteous path?
The sand whirls, whirls all around, the eyes stung, defiled in their very raped of vision. Those who ride beside in the same hot mouthed fear and desperation are each one lost onto themselves, they are of no purpose for guide; for cannot all at this tilt be about to embrace death in a canyon's mouth of jagged tooth or yawing swallow?
All of present falls away, stripped of its grasp at his rein; behind him the wind allows no prisoners of time to plead old orations or shout of new innocence; there are no pardons given onto the dead.
Blind, deaf, alone what is the veil between chaos and purpose. Inner and outer world. The skin!
The skin, as in a reinless horse twins always the warmer instinct of home.
The taut skin tensed to this call beyond unreason; it is as if a drum which throbs only to the touch of begging fingertips; need; mankind's need always known solitaire in the single plaintive voice of final fires.
Remember this: final fires!
Souls, if you will believe, burn at desperation. If you do not believe in