...Releasing...the dew from the rose...

'To understand Humanity and to portray it requires... The sweetest consideration of the ever-changing extremes of tranquillity and disturbances in the sea of relationships we all may sooner or later engage in.... Once contemplated, it begins to inspire change, once acted on, the transformation is complete..'

xsapph


Hector knew what it meant to make sacrifices for others. When I met him he must have only been 33, and as an artist, he often earned very little or appeared to ... to actually live on.

Whenever anyone asked if he needed their help, he shrugged, shook his head and contemplated why they even needed to ask him that question, why they appeared to lack any comprehension of his most simple needs or what could be carried out in some small measure of kindness to him, without requiring prompting. What it really meant was that they did not wish to be put to the test, so the onus was there for him to provide the solution, and if he looked to need their input beyond emotionally detached dialogue, then their sense of fear of being a cent, or farthing, poorer was enough to make their hands sweat... or make them quickly change the subject.

How was it that they needed him to expressly articulate a requirement as if this was too complex a thought for them to act on?
Was he any different to them that he did not need the same sun, air or sky?

How was it that they could listen to him, and then disappear out of his life, back into their own without actively making the smallest sacrifice for him, yet so many times over, he had been known to dedicate his own precious energy, and life force to inject a vitality into theirs. Why would they describe him as someone for whom nothing was too much trouble, yet be described themselves beyond egos and vanity as those for him the smallest real gesture was itself too great a cost to incur.

It appeared to me very quickly that he had no real friendships, that he was simply, not of this world.... That those he had were of transparent superficiality.

What was also quite obvious was that they wanted to think that they were the same as him, and whilst they looked at themselves through his eyes, they believed that by association that they had the same depth as he.

I discovered within him elements that each of us whom have some level of inner pride, would call a truly quiet nobility, for he himself never appeared to need to be asked twice to lay down his shield and become at once unprotected for another whom he cared for, or draw his sword in the fearless battle of those who he presented arms for, knowing they could not.

The sheer depth of activity be it physical presence, emotional support, or downing tools to be there in person for those whose call he had responded to time and time again, could not be imitated, nor could his intensity in responding to the unspoken request that he had answered, even as he knew this would be another distraction, from his difficulties and trying to fill his own wants...

Like the frozen robin in the winter wind, he shivered as if he was dancing alone to haunting Edith Piaf's blues.

..."I am always loyal to you," he heard from the same person that had sat and listened to others attack him, whilst saying nothing more than, "Oh, I had no idea...." Afterall, why bother to expose oneself to anything so sticky as defending the honour of one's friend? He had never heard anyone come to him and say that they had felt privileged to defend him whether he was right or not, but because true devotion was blind. So each time such information or episodes leaked back to him, he could not help but be disallusioned and wonder at his archived history of experiences.

Somehow, I always felt that in some previous life, Hector was a fallen angel, for he kept merciful secrets close to his chest, and those who he guarded it appeared to were entirely unworthy of his sacrifices. He followed through on all his offers, he made good all his pledges, and he was the first and last person anyone might have turned to, in a moment of despair, before they turned to God.

His imperfections concentrated all his energy towards those who fulfilled his need to rescue them, even as he could not be.

Hector spoke of shadows that penetrated his dreams at night and that he could not either overlook or fear because he knew that they were there to allow him the comprehension of knowing himself before all others. If he were to ever hum a tune, or a slow lingering melody it was with a fateful sense of imminent doom and the thought that he was not only acutely aware of his fragile humanity but also what it meant to be mortal, and possibly unable to free himself of what he had read were material concerns. If he ever wanted to be successful, it would have been a definition that was beyond most people’s comprehension, because it was unlike anything they would have understood.

To him, the success of the moment was when he sat knee deep in grass and with a small broken flower opened up each petal, soothingly, to soften it's pain and remind it that it had lived even for a moment explicitly for God. When he lifted it's broken neck, it was as if he lifted a bird in his hand with a broken neck.

When he laid it softly inside a favourite book, to be rediscovered some time in the indefinite future by another's eyes, he knew even as he placed it there, that such a tender moment was explicitly for God.

When he closed the book, and sat staring into space, with his eyes in the middle distance where the air appeared to tremble and he could see everything fading, almost as if he were underwater... even then he knew that these were the moments when he breathed explicitly for God. He knew that with each day, he was slipping into a creative coma, a place where he would eventually stay and remain undetected and eventually stop fading into, for it would fade into him instead and he would no longer have the need for senseless relationships.

Each act of contrition was itself a small step towards closeness to him, but those around him had no intention of ever repaying such kindness, for it was not in their nature to consider the natural laws of recompense… or that the Universe requires from each of us, our fair and just payment for each blessing... and that each controvert act to be resolved equably.

Thus, ‘Nothing in Life (but unconditional love) comes for free’… and the price being paid by each of us was immeasurable.

He felt he had paid his dues and he now wanted out, but it was a gentle whispered expression, not one that required vocalising even.

This was his first stage of understanding himself, accepting that aside of those that he felt an unconditional love and link into, those who through bloodlines he felt an aching recognition that he would miss for all his lives future, and feel in the winds whisper, a longing for... that apart from these very few souls that stepped out of their security for him, that would lay down their life for him, and consistently through never-ending kindnesses, expressed their love for him.... all others would eventually be forsaken and walked past as they became excluded from his inner circle....

As he detached and extricated himself from any sense of owning to disavow them and release himself and they from what he realised was no longer a bond between them. This was a step taken without any remorse, or soul searching, for they did not belong in such a place as supposed soul mates. It was as if some bright light inside him was itself enough of a beacon to guide him away from their darkness. A darkness that surrounded their selfishness and denial of the Universal spiritual energy that he felt humbled by, and knelt in obeisance to. He realised he was slowly losing his language links to them... That the stream of words that had once flowed freely between them was no longer sufficient connectivity to hold them to him, or him to try to confront the barriers he had felt were always there.

Most of the time, his dialogue was the same, one of feeling connected to a spiritual thinking beyond reasoning, to a reasoning beyond emotional attachment and to a symbolic place beyond material acquisition.

What always surprised me were those who questioned him when he had cut his emotional ties to them, and who felt some kind of injured pride first before comprehending how little they had valued him, how it had only been words, and this they had thought was in itself enough, without for a moment considering the true meaning of love and it's 'unalienable rites of passage'... those of sacrifice pure and simple.... When he began to look beyond it all, he felt as if so much he had experienced was merely a tissue of illusions, and as such just a lyric hummed low and lasting only as long as he hummed it.

Such was the growing restraint which he focussed his quiet energy on, that it had already begun to change the subtle flares of shimmering fire behind his eyes... so that the haunting eyes that stared back at you, stared past you and although you were in the presence of an artistic soulful creature, you already knew you were being passed as he was on a journey without you.... Remembering you, even though you were there at this moment here sipping coffee with him, or walking beside him...

It was clear that such unworthy souls were already no more to him than a trickle of rain that slid down the stem of a rose coursing past it's thorns to be part of the puddle of 'living' the material illusion... and leaving behind the soft petals to which the trickle had clung for a moment when it magnified the petals surface explicitly for God, just as he did in his artistic self expression....

Little did he know that they had for a moment in their mirroring him, and their using him also to cling to, merely reflected his surface through their transparency, and that they could not take any part of him with them, just as the trickle of rain took no part of the petal, but it’s dust.

Little did they know that he had been there to allow them a moment of clinging to beauty, before they merged back into their oblivion… a forgetfulness that would eventually lead them to a perpetual stupor that they had a momentary release through his eyes and love to experience through his art.

.... by xsapph