The King is Dead; Long Live the King

Lets all sink with the King
--Alonzo, The Tempest

The end of the year brings me to reflection, as I suppose is often the case for most. It seems a dreary time, and quiet. There seems a waiting to it, while events gather in secret, wrapped in the future like the rain which hoards itself in clouds before they break--all in good time--and revelation becomes manifest.

I have no dreams other than those which have fled. My goals are the boundary markers which describe the lands long departed from, frozen in testimony to what is both changeless and unchangeable.

And I wonder what I am doing here. I perceive myself as a second thought, brought to life in the flesh by some sort of unwise science--a Frankenstein monster--made of parts yet never a whole, pinned to the earth, to the table of creation, by every stitch and scar by which I am drawn and concluded. The beginning now becomes the end.

In my life I have made a few good decisions and a lot of bad mistakes. I have been a fool when wisdom would have suited, and lazy in the days I might have otherwise redeemed.

In the past I have loved with passion and conviction. What is love now other than a fortune already expended, and whether for good or ill, no matter. It is the finished canvas, the portrait on the wall. One passes it by two dozen times a day and affords it barely a glance. It is done, and simply there.

I have seen people die--almost everyone eventually--and will likely see no more without I happen to have a mirror.

Do I love at all, or only remember?

What are 10 years when one is 20 and 30? What when 55?

All that I would accomplish, given a lively grasp of every second remaining, lies yet unattainable beyond the chasm of time, fixed in the frozen land where no man may tread.

In short, I would re-accomplish my life.

What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?

So asked Prospero of his daughter, Miranda, who knew neither how he nor she had come to their full poor cell.

And yet, what we see will never be more than what has been done. We both know and do not know, and the puzzle is both solved and without solution.