MsTiara’s Thoughts

The year was 1612 when I was turned into a vampire. I was only 23 and had just buried my 4^th husband. The man who turned me was old in vampire years, even though he never told me how many. He said it was punishment for the deaths of my husbands while I still lived, I tried to explain to him that I was not the one who killed them off, that it was others wanting their money and making me into a pawn for them to use. But, he would not listen. He said that the living death is the punishment. I shall be immortal and watch all that I care about die why I still live.

For the first hundred years I just managed to get by, scrounging around, using men where I could find them. I had no education and no knowledge of the way the world worked beyond men taking care of you. But men no longer desired me. I think it was because there was something about me that was so very base, almost animalistic that they could sense.

When you look back in time after four hundred years, the first one hundred seems to go by so very fast, but a blink of the eye. But it was all about anger, fear and barely surviving. I like to forget about those times where you feed and don’t care what you destroy. You are just an animal.

The second hundred years was when I started to realize that life needed to get better or else I might as well just see the sun tomorrow and say good bye to the world as I know it.

The 1700’s were the start of the industrial revolution and that was when books started to become readily available and knowledge was what I seemed to be missing in my life. I soaked it up and played with it for the next hundred years of my existence. There was nothing that I wouldn’t do to learn. Men were a means of access to their libraries. Conversations over brandies I taught myself to present myself as a lady and slowly I changed and grew to become the person that I think most resembles who I am today.

It wasn’t until the 1800’s when I started to feel that there was something missing. Two hundred years into this existence and yet it took me this long to start to feel lonely. Maybe it was because I was too shallow to ever need to look beyond myself. Maybe it was the knowledge that had become my constant companion. But, all of a sudden it struck me that I had no one to share this knowledge with, my life experiences. I would think thoughts and say them with my companions and they had no reference point. They wouldn’t want to stop and savor the moment for they had so very few moments before they died. My interactions with other people became meaningless and empty. I started to feel alone.

One day, while walking in Paris I walked by an old church which was decorated with ornate gargoyles. One of them caught my eye, it seemed to have a glimmer a wink that warmed my heart. Each evening I found myself walking by the church and acknowledging the gargoyle before going on with my business. It came to pass that I started to share my thoughts with him and his eyes seemed to gleam as if he could hear what I had to say as if he could see into my non existent soul.

There was a balcony that was adjacent to where he perched on the church and more often than not I would find myself making my way up to there and perching myself next to him. Sharing my thoughts and my dreams, he took away my loneliness and he made me feel whole.

I had many stories about my gargoyle. He was an immortal cursed to the stone image waiting for love to set him free. He was a guardian and a protector of the streets who was able to change between the gargoyle of stone and flesh of a human. So many stories over the years and he gave me great comfort as my silent friend.

But time slowly slipped by and he always stayed a gargoyle. He was never able to share his thoughts or opinions with me. He stayed the silent stone statute so quiet, aloof and distant. Years went by and time slipped away. Another hundred years passed. I probably would have kept on kidding myself that one day he would open up and suddenly start sharing and speaking. But, I had to face facts. I had lived 300 years and there comes a time when you need to stop believing in the fairy tale and the lies that you are telling yourself.

So I walked away. I did not say good bye for he would have to has been real for that. To this day several hundred years later I can still cry over the friend that never was.

I wonder if he was really just a stone statute or if he was truly just a prince unable to face living and sharing?

So I went on my way into the 1900’s still alone still searching for someone to share my thoughts and dreams with. I wonder if I will ever give up on that dream?

This morning the Goddess woke up, took a nice leisurely bath, and went outside onto her front porch to read the Sunday paper. Her house is hidden away in the woods on the other side of our dreams. It is a beautiful cottage, rustic in nature that seems to have grown from the woods around rather than have been built by hand. The very walls seem to breathe and have roots and it is those roots that allow the Goddess to interconnect with the world which we call reality.

As she sat drinking her tea and breathing in the air around and the wind seemed to caress her skin, she was at peace. Until she started to read… Then slowly tears fell down her cheeks to land on the newsprint. How, she wonders, can people cause so much pain and display so much anger in such violent ways? I gave to the world everything they needed to live, to love, and to be happy. But, they had to pervert it, they had to destroy it, it wasn’t good enough for them. So now the world is crying out and shrieking in anger. Trying to find its way back to the natural pattern of life. But, it cannot for when the humans started breaking the molecular pattern, when they started to play as gods they started the slow destruction of the natural order and patterns of things. And once the bond has been broken it can never be re-forged.

She turns the page and reads about people who will kill themselves and take out hundreds of others, just to prove they are right. How do you reason with the unreasonable? She wonders aloud. She turns another page and reads about a son killing his parents just because they wouldn’t give him what he thought was his “goddess” given right, the right to a toy. When did life become less than a toy she wonders?

As the tears continued to drop silently from her eyes, she looks up to the peace of her forest and wonders why she should even care about those people when they do not know how to care for themselves. She ponders what she should do as the “mother” of the earth and whether or not her caretaking should include the humans who are so bent on destruction or if she should just let the earth reclaim itself. As she closes the paper and it disappears so do her tears. For the cares of the world are gone as easy as wiping the paper away from her memory. She finishes her tea and slowly starts to walk into the forest murmuring words of love and wisdom to her trees. She has given the world all she could and now it is up to it to find its own way and so she walks away and the memories of our hate and ugliness no longer touch her.