The Grave Tender

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They called him "eccentric, unusual at best, but definately 5 inches short of a foot." It was difficult to not believe the hype, he was quite unordinary. That, however, was what he strived for. Who wanted to be normal in a world of blind stupidity, where the flock commands your free will and your family history predetermines your path. He had no family. No one believed him, but he believed the earth to be his mother. Of the line of Gaia he was sworn to know today for he was yesterday, the gateway between oblivion and destiny. The only mother that would never fail him; at the same time it was the only mother who was physically unable to see blindly past blunders with unconditional love, it was the only mother that we could fail ourselves. There was a cold, hard, liquorice flavored truth in his coined saying of Serenity is the way to Insanity. What if you were so happy that everyone knew something was wrong with you? It wasn't natural to be that happy for no reason, say the disbelievers. "If I can't be that happy, neither can you" they would reason. So the happiness brought on the tears of rejection, persecuted for wanting not, having not, being not. The days wasted away and never flow backward; no opportunity to flip over the hourglass in a futile effort to capture fleeting time. The mundane to you was mere blindness on your part to see what the village idiot envisioned. That was, at least, until the idiot seemed to become the prophet. He obtained that elusive hourglass and turned the end into the beginning. He became quite fond of the people toward the end...or the beginning, they the idiots and he not. What was it they said? He was "eccentric, unusual at best, but definately 5 inches short of a foot." He laughed at this recollection. He didn't mind the number seven at all.

Updated July 22, 2004