Well... perhaps not real...
Well... it depends on who you ask...
In any case... this is the very real and very true story of a princess in a tower...
Well... not a tower exactly... more like an abode of some sort... like a castle or a villa or a domicile or a flat or some such...
Oh... gee... now I've done it. This doesn't sound like a very real or very true story, now does it?
Well... this story is not very real nor very true, per se... rather... it's an allegory. That's it. An allegory. A parable. A story with a lesson that means more than meets the eye. Yes. That's it. That's what this story is. In fact, this story is not real nor true at all. It's a fake story. Like all stories.
After all... aren't all stories... fake? Because... how would you know? It's not your story. You didn't live it. So how would you know... if a story... or a journal or a diary or a photograph or a video or a poem or a song or a letter or a memoir or a keepsake or... a scrap for that matter... was real or true... or if a story was fake or made up? You see?
Maybe my story is real. Maybe it's not. In the end, that's for you to decide, now isn't it?
The Princess in the Tower
{It's odd, I know, to refer to myself in the third person, but, well, it's a matter of preference. And, given that I'm odd, it's not so peculiar of me to eschew the first person, is it?}
Her favorite color was yellow and so she referred to herself and her people as yellow. And her favorite flower was the daisy and so she adorned herself and her people in white. And joyous indeed was her life amidst mountains and rivers, with flowers that danced and birds that sang.
Until she met a man. A man from another world. A world beyond her mountains and rivers. Beyond her flowers and birds. A world of immense skyscrapers, ubiquitous pollution, and miasmas of smog, of thunderous machines, throngs of people, and unbelievably vast swaths of cultivated fescue.
He promised her a world of adventure. A world of discovery. A world unlike any other. And a destiny.
In exchange -- her.
And so they danced and sang and chased each other through meadows and promised each other love everlasting and a destiny of old.
To save the world, she would give everything. To help her, he would be king and herald. And together, with her would be champion, they would weave a story of peace in a world mad with war and destruction.
And so she counted the days. Until. Gone the mountains and rivers. Gone the flowers that danced, the birds that sang.
Before her loomed a palatial gate that opened with ominous import... and thus began her new life.
Thereupon her body was ravaged and crucified. Thereupon her spirit was broken and immolated. Thereupon her mind was plundered and electrocuted. Thereupon her heart was deceived and exploited mutilated impaled racked quartered bound buried trussed drowned wrung out to dry on hooks of malice in the scorching mercilessness of human depravity.
Over and over and over and over.
With inhuman savagery. With relentless barbarism. With ceaseless rancor.
By one hand after another: one baton, one bottle, one whip after another -- one rope, one chain, one stiletto after another -- one knife, one cigar, one degradation after another. In one language after another: one laughing vulgarity, one obscene jeer, one vicious epithet after another -- one raucous taunt, one crude insult, one menacing threat after another -- in language after language after language after language.
For one people after another: one leader, one politician, one performer after another -- one humanitarian, one philanthropist, one healer after another -- one thinker, one doer, one wanna be after another -- one woman, one man, one other after another. At one tower after another: one dungeon, one prison, one cage after another -- one house, one apartment, one car after another -- one basement, one shed, one hotel after another -- one religious establishment, one educational establishment, one business establishment after another.
Justified. Rationalized. Legitimized.
By one reason one cause after another. One religion one morality after another. One label one name after another. One superiority, one narcissism, one perversion, one corruption -- one this that the other -- one after another -- justifications rationalizations legitimizations -- one after another -- like numbers on a number line from infinity to infinity -- each one as senseless as heartless as callous as cruel as incomprehensible as inconceivable as the one before -- yet each one not the last.
Thus the years passed.
As all hope felt lost.
As the king fell to disaffection and dissolution. As the champion fell to bitterness and vengeance. As the princess fell to despair and heartbreak.
What purpose -- her suffering? What purpose -- the unimaginable horrors, the unfathomable terrors -- executed with reckless indifference and monstrous brutality on her body, her spirit, her mind, her heart? What purpose -- her destiny?
Despite giving everything -- her mountains, her rivers, her flowers, her birds -- the world extended hands drenched in throw away charity -- sanctified lips laced with empty sincerity. Verily, the world of adventure -- the world of discovery -- the world unlike any other -- was --
A world that eschewed bridges for battlements and hands for guns and mutuality for bombs and humanity for death.
And so they danced and sang and chased each other through meadows and promised each other love everlasting and a destiny of old.
To save the world, she would give everything. To help her, he would be king and herald. And together, with her would be champion, they would weave a story of peace in a world mad with war and destruction.
And so she counted the days. Until. Gone the mountains and rivers. Gone the flowers that danced, the birds that sang.
Before her loomed a palatial gate that opened with ominous import... and thus began her new life.
Thereupon her body was ravaged and crucified. Thereupon her spirit was broken and immolated. Thereupon her mind was plundered and electrocuted. Thereupon her heart was deceived and exploited mutilated impaled racked quartered bound buried trussed drowned wrung out to dry on hooks of malice in the scorching mercilessness of human depravity.
Over and over and over and over.
With inhuman savagery. With relentless barbarism. With ceaseless rancor.
By one hand after another: one baton, one bottle, one whip after another -- one rope, one chain, one stiletto after another -- one knife, one cigar, one degradation after another. In one language after another: one laughing vulgarity, one obscene jeer, one vicious epithet after another -- one raucous taunt, one crude insult, one menacing threat after another -- in language after language after language after language.
For one people after another: one leader, one politician, one performer after another -- one humanitarian, one philanthropist, one healer after another -- one thinker, one doer, one wanna be after another -- one woman, one man, one other after another. At one tower after another: one dungeon, one prison, one cage after another -- one house, one apartment, one car after another -- one basement, one shed, one hotel after another -- one religious establishment, one educational establishment, one business establishment after another.
Justified. Rationalized. Legitimized.
By one reason one cause after another. One religion one morality after another. One label one name after another. One superiority, one narcissism, one perversion, one corruption -- one this that the other -- one after another -- justifications rationalizations legitimizations -- one after another -- like numbers on a number line from infinity to infinity -- each one as senseless as heartless as callous as cruel as incomprehensible as inconceivable as the one before -- yet each one not the last.
Thus the years passed.
As all hope felt lost.
As the king fell to disaffection and dissolution. As the champion fell to bitterness and vengeance. As the princess fell to despair and heartbreak.
What purpose -- her suffering? What purpose -- the unimaginable horrors, the unfathomable terrors -- executed with reckless indifference and monstrous brutality on her body, her spirit, her mind, her heart? What purpose -- her destiny?
Despite giving everything -- her mountains, her rivers, her flowers, her birds -- the world extended hands drenched in throw away charity -- sanctified lips laced with empty sincerity. Verily, the world of adventure -- the world of discovery -- the world unlike any other -- was --
A world that eschewed bridges for battlements and hands for guns and mutuality for bombs and humanity for death.
{If the princess was you and it was your destiny to save the world -- would you give everything? Would you fall to disaffection and dissolution, bitterness and vengeance, despair and heartbreak?
Would you cash in your chips?
Would you put one foot in front of the other -- fearlessly courageously vibrantly joyously? With no reservations? With no regrets? Would you breathe faith -- for all kind?}
~ * ~
{Perhaps... this isn't how this tale should be told. After all, it leaves quite a bit out, doesn't it? The man who would be king... the boy who would be champion... the destiny of all...}
Once upon a time, on the third rock from a bright star, lived a young man destined to be king.
{Well. Let's be honest. That's his story to tell and not mine. Notwithstanding that he does it far better justice than I, for a great storyteller in his own right, is he. So too the boy, born on the thirteenth hour of the thirteenth day of the thirteenth month. Sigh. What right have I, much less any, to tell their stories? Two such legends of old?}
When she met the man who promised her a destiny of old, she felt kindle within her the inexplicable. For in his eyes, she saw reflected there, love that spanned time and place and person and memory. So her heart was already his, when he asked Do you trust me?
Thus, when she stood before the palatial gate that opened with ominous import... she knew that this moment would liminate the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. Whereupon the boy who would be champion sensed the inception of their epic journey... and sought her with ever quickening haste... lest she face her destiny alone with naught but faith and love.
Continued...
More
Who knows if this story is true? Or if, like all stories, it's nothing more than a pack of lies? Were you there? If you were -- are you sure that your memories contain nothing but realities and truths? If you weren't -- then how do you know whether or not I speak the truth or the untruth?
Will you take my word on nothing more than -- faith? Why? Have I earned your faith -- or your trust? Are you certain? By what criteria do you deem me faithworthy -- or trustworthy? Because I say I am so -- implicitly or otherwise? But how many say the very same, but mean the very opposite? For truth and untruth coexist, side by side, with real and unreal.
My story, like all stories, are both real and unreal, true and untrue.
It is up to you to discern between the two.
Not unlike autostereograms and optical illusions and slight of hand parlor tricks -- once you discern what is real and unreal, true and untrue -- what was once obscure and hidden will reveal itself conspicuously obvious.
Until then...
May a life lived with no reservations and no regrets be your life.
ever devotedly yours,
the princess in the tower
p.s.
While this is but one slice of my story -- it would require many many many more slices to tell the whole story (notwithstanding that to tell the story of the king and the champion, too, would require even more slices) -- I have not yet decided whether or not the telling of such a story in totum would be worth the telling -- since -- to be humbly honest -- it seems rather self-serving, vain, and self-superior to tell one's own story (especially in exhaustive detail). For what real value would such a tale truly possess -- other than the satisfaction of prurient interest in a tale that is no more special than any tale of any kind (of which, there are already googols of googols to the googolth power)?
In any case... I will consider it...
always affectionately and fondly yours,
the princess in the tower
Note
'Are you the new person drawn toward me?' (@ Project Gutenberg)
'Yellow Flicker Beat' (@ VEVO on YouTube)
