The brooding beast

He sat silently. To the unknowing observer he seemed deep in thought, brooding but calm. The reality was of course much different. There is a reason cliches find themselves so worn-- appearances and their deceptions.

He sat silently but was loudly restive underneath. It was as if a different sort of blood was flowing through his veins. This sanguine humor no longer bestowed control of his limbs to the spirit. It was as if a reaction was evoked from him without his consent. His mind did but everything to reassure his body, like a rider trying to control the horse underneath him flailing wildly from some invisible provocation.

Most of all he wanted it to end, at least at first. He wished to reconcile the disparity between his mind and body. Though attempts at taming the spontaneous unnervings of his body, returning to the calm coolness of his mind, were largely ineffective. The mind itself only grew desperate with anxiety as its attempts to gain control exposed how impotent it really was.

Yet this was as essential as anything else. He needed to understand his place, needed his pride curtailed. He had to understand this gap between the two aspects of his being were opposing each other because he had lost his ability to maintain a unity; had taken for granted his birthright and unknowingly relinquished its possession.

So there he sat, silently and restively; enduring what came on suddenly and unpleasantly as he rode on the back of this terrified mare. He had to reconcile himself to realize this animal could not be reasoned with, could not always be tamed. To sit down on her back is to accept the reality of our frailty at the whims of the world.

And in his mind, as it grew weary of pulling upon the reigns which had no effect, he began to grow curious more with that which set the horse into such an uproar. What was invisible to me I wish now to see! Humbled at last and ready to open his eyes, he set out to translate into the mind’s language the utterings of the body. Of his body.