(no subject)
”For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.”
My Queen, I think too much of you, I think too much, and you would call me idle.
For what have I done?
I have been born, and I have died. I’ve died young. I have planted and plucked, killed and healed, broken and broken down, built, wept and laughed. I have danced, I have pained. Oh, but I’ve sought! I have embraced, and well refrained. I have kept silent, too silent, and Pandora will never forgive me this. I have loved, and I have lost. I have sewn, but never buttons.
I have known war, Akasha, but I have not waged it. You would have had me wage it.
And always, is it not so? The men and women of myth build their cities, for the riders of the North and East to push back, to ruin! Have I not seen nomads, my Queen? Have I not taken Amadeo’s hand, have I not seen Kiev Rus? Did I not walk Byzantium?
And what spurs war, my Queen, you who have so diligently spoken of dissent? Adversity, oppression? And what fires those? Difference.
We are different, and so we must be at odds, we must be either absolutely right or in absolute error, for my Queen, we are human still. We are humans in mind and in sight, if not the blood that you’ve given, the Blood that flows free. One who is different is one who questions, competition - we will not suffer mentalities, we will not suffer alternative.
And how have I seen this! The Romans and the Greeks, and never two civilizations have been closer, and never have they been more apart! The enlightened heads of each could not bear the same room, let alone the same chalice, the same sofa. Was it not Cato who scorned the Greeks so? Cornelia of the Gracchi, who kept them on each side in the wake of her widowhood? But Cato, you were weak-willed and your house haunted by Dis, and Cornelia, she will be known as the Virtuous! The univira who aspired to a peace among the like-highly-minded, a peace of temperaments!
Akasha, she too was a woman, yet she held nothing in her of you. Nothing of your turmoil, and nothing of your lusts.
Certainly, she held no love of the stadiums, not the ones of old Rome, and not the one here.
Shall I speak to you of the wonders here? Of the walking dead without trace of the Blood, of the Pegasus - a Pegasus, my Queen! The very spawn of Poseidon, the ride of Perseus! We have broken dreams, and look what dreams would bring us! I have seen art in this City, I have seen marbles and jewels, a squared piazza and the ocean. I have seen catacombs.
And I have known men to bleed here. The smell stays past evensong, though the fight is often young, when the day’s barely broken. The teeth of morning dyed in red, is that not an image, Akasha? Is that not a picture? I would paint for you, though you would not receive.
I have painted for you before, and you would shatter Venice.
Ah, Marius, you think too much. There is dissent everywhere, and dissent brings the change that you so love. You must not be a hypocrite, you have always loved change.
So they’ve a stadium, and so they’ve gladiators. What is it to you?
Panem et circenses, a stadium is not war.
Surely, this will not mean war.
- Marius de Romanus
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
Our friend Asimov does not forgive.
And I have heard of fighting here, of first blood drawn, or true bodies. I have heard of win and gain, of loss and death.
I have heard, but not seen -
And perhaps there is no Evil, if it is not seen, although this stadium is grand. It is a dream of ancient Rome, and her plagues and her follies.
Let’s we not wake dead.
-
I am not a warrior, I have no such tricks. I ask instead for the simple things, if there are those who would know of where to find them, how commerce is made here: thin paper and canvas, the oils and the easel; the turpentine and the brushes; the pigment - the sort of earth, to mix with yolk, and a pity that no modern man will take to it. The feel of it is finer on the finished work.
[ooc: beware vampires in very congenial moods? >D!]