Excerpts from “Nostos”

Excerpts from “Nostos” – 243, 285, 327

Excerpts from Nostos

243.

THE BAFFLED KING

Where hast thou gone? When hast thou forsaken me?

When I was crowned king I ruled over a vast kingdom. Now all have I lost, and all is vanity. The cold morning air creeps through my castle window so as to wake me. And the light that finds me is dark as the lightest dusk. Still, I rise and walk out into the world. Behold your king, I say to the deserted dew-covered fields through which my saddened voice echoes. There are no more steps in the long, winding corridors, no drowned voices through the stone walls, no tired hands building homes, no fathers wielding swords, no mothers tending children... I don my armor of heavy gold, silver and pride, and though I have no destiny, I carry on, leaving behind nothing but a bed half-cold.

Lush ivy spreads in between the rifts of my castle walls, the grass outside grows tall and wild, the well overflows with the rain of days gone by. No war has my kingdom seen save that of time... Earth and wind will reclaim my very history. Soon, no memory of me will remain. Though I have not fought valiantly I truly loved my people, and for that I wish to be remembered. I have no other hope, no great ambition. Now they have all gone to distant lands in search of warmer suns and kinder rains, for they obey a stronger calling than that of any king, for verily, they obey the call of time. What a fool have I been to stand idly by, thinking time would halt at my childish whim. I ruled over unlettered villagers who were far wiser than me. Dust grows on old books I once read blindly.

I walk along the road to see how the castle walls rise higher with each step, their shadow as imposing as its stones. They hold together strong, defending a hollow kingdom, a dying castle, a lost king. I touch the wall, I close my eyes, I press my ear against one of its old stones. It tells me nothing but dead silence. I look around, I find the shadows loom darker over me. And as I gaze again upon my land, here where everyone once stood, I feel my weary shoulders bury me deeper into the ground. I sit and rest my head against a stone, and under that cool shadow my armor surrenders all of its glow. And as I watch the clouds dancing across the sky, and the wind blowing on the reeds, I resign to the peaceful yearning to sleep, as if I've been awake for a thousand years.

285.

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have nothing. In this world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have refused the world.

For the world was given unto me as a poisoned chalice. And though I tried to drink it, in the end I could not be swayed by it, the serpent's venom left simply too bitter a taste. I have seen through the mirage it conjures up in the minds of those who drink it with a heavy thirst and ask for more. In truth, it is not given, it is forced unto you. You will one day find yourself wholly indignant when that swirl turns in your belly, and you will be begging for a brief and imminent purge. How could the world reclaim a gift, you will ask in your disbelief... But that is precisely what it does. The world offers us a poisoned gift that we welcome, that we cling to, that we struggle to keep, forever and forever, as if we will never die. And eventually it hurts us in ways we never imagined, it tortures us, it sickens us. Kings and servants, strong and meek, young and old, we die to it all the same. There is no one who is saved, no, not one.

We are never truly given a choice, being here is forced unto us while we are still in our mother's bellies. Such is the eternal paradox of existence. The wheels of causality keep turning, pumping the blood and shaping the flesh that together feed and sustain the world, only to one day crush it all as it turns. We are nothing more than fuel to the fire of the world, this faceless monster who demands constant death and suffering to sustain its own existence... And as for me, as I am part of that suffering, I have decided to neglect its feeding, I have decided to deny the monster's gaping maw any more meat. I find myself simply refusing to take part in it. I take this gift forced unto me, and for now I simply find myself incapable of rejecting it. But I owe nothing more to the world or to any others who still partake in its spiral of existence... I was not asked to be born, I was not asked if I wanted to one day die. And thus, the world is not mine, I am only in it because I cannot be anywhere else. Still, I saw the truth and now, unable to forget it, I live within myself, creating my own illusions, faking my own meaning, believing my own lies... There is no truth anywhere else.

Verily, verily I am my own world, and my world is such a vain empty place that there's nothing in it to overcome.

327.

ARLETTA

I'm often fascinated by people, real or imagined, who embody what I see as a kind of archetypal sense of stoicism, and with good reason. For it seems to me that the capacity for stoicism is quite the powerful answer to pessimism, or in other words, stoicism is the fortitude to endure life and all of its bad things. However, something else comes to mind now, because though I don't attack stoicism in any way, and indeed I very much aspire to it, I wonder if there's something lacking. It makes me wonder if stoicism inherently entails a kind of separation from the world, a mode of living according to which one avoids the good things as well as the bad, due to the assumption that all that is good will eventually be spoiled. So we ignore tasty food because it will one day turn sour in our tongues and rotten in our bellies, its nice flavors will vanish, it will just become bland and nauseating. We ignore a beautiful woman because she might be out of our reach, or if she's within our reach she won't be for long, and we may even ignore having children because they will one day suffer, and for that, for all that suffering it may be best to never have been born...

And so I'm reminded of the Virgin Mary. I have to confess that recently I've come to admire her and, though I remain an atheist, it doesn't matter to me whether or not she was real. In this moment I don't care about what matters and what doesn't, what's true and what isn't. In this very moment I care about what moves me, and that is Mary's fortitude in acceptance of her fate, the acceptance that she would have a baby in her belly, a baby she will bear through all the pains of pregnancy and childbirth, a baby she will raise, love and cherish all throughout his brief life... It makes me wonder just how much she knew and believed in, and just how much she had seen in thoughts and dreams, dreams about that day, and that walk, and that cross... Maybe she knew a whole lot more than she led on, maybe she was a kind of silent prophet in her own way. At least that is what I often think about when I imagine this woman willingly accepting her burden and carrying a cross of her own, from the immaculate conception to the humble birth, and then from childhood to adulthood, and then from son to Son of God. And if she knew a whole lot then maybe she knew about the resurrection too. But isn't it such a brutal test of faith either way? If you had to witness your child's unjust suffering at the hands of men, would you still have faith that, in the end, it is all worth it?

That is the question I every so often ask myself, I ask whether this, all of this, is even worth it... I suppose for the blessed Virgin Mary the answer would always be a resounding yes, no matter how wicked the world would be thereafter, no matter how much suffering there would still be left to endure, no matter how heavy the cross, and no matter how deep those rusty nails pierced the hands of her baby boy.

This has been a sample of three texts from Nostos. The book is a collection of four hundred texts, most of which are written in portuguese, while only twenty-one of which are written in english. As such they will be periodically published here, in full.

You can find out more about the book here.

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