A King's Wardrobe

Introduction

My name you need not know for it is meaningless in the throes of the words to come. What follows is the discernment of what I feel to be weighing heavily upon my mind without necessity. Therefore, I ask that the passages within this narrative be read with a light heart but diligent eye, as there are many ways to skin a metaphorical cat, but I feel as though the paragraphs written within this short work serve well as packets of knowledgeable and personal information that divulge a genuine aspect of the human condition which I feel is lacking in many writings.

In my admittance of various wrongs, misdeeds and less than admirable thoughts, there resides a truth to the words granted and gifted herein, as they are selected for the sole purpose of speaking ideas of truth in a poetic, eloquent and partly grandiloquent manner.

Should it be that one falls to slumber whilst reading this narrative, I ask that upon awakening, and once the opportunity is had, one returns to the ebb and flow of the verbose type of this work, as it is with a great respect and wanting reverence that the coming riches of literature and language seek a pouring forth of water upon the various sown seeds of thought that, with reflection, grow to be mighty oaks of originality. 

Be it all that one does in a day, let not the counted elements and variables of our toils dictate their worth. Allow instead the true measure by which we gauge our efforts to be the feeling afforded unto our actions. In doing so, we gain the skills necessary to provision our labors their true worth and value.

A King's Robe

Pride is something that can lead one to utter destruction. Too little pride is not healthy for the soul, and too much pride begets a contemptuous and arrogant mind. A fine balance of pride, however, makes for an enriched, proud, and strong individual. It makes for a person who is prepared for great challenges, as they will possess the strengthening resolve necessary to face these obstacles. This is healthy pride.

I, in admitted divulgence, have been less than healthy in my own thoughts and actions. The best means of articulating this position, I feel, can be found in the recollection of the uniquely innocent thoughts and viewpoints we hold as informed youth, but, in advancing years, fall away from with gradual dismissal.

If I were to reflect on times past, it could be said that writing, studying, and learning alongside my fellow youth, with little regard for the ways of rabble rousing, defined my habits. I was studious in my work. It remains to be said, however, that unique circumstances can often foster a tainting pride, and those who are of this lot often suffer from this condition.

In reactive response to this habit, I would like to say that I have abstained from this behavior. This is who I would imagine or dream myself to be, and, to some extent, it is true. In the days of writing these passages, I am a student, and a diligent one at that. I also find myself amongst good, healthy, and educated individuals, yet there resided a period of time severely lacking in these aspects. 

During that time, my wills sang to the pressures of belligerent and intoxicating behavior, for they were invigorating to the rambunctious spirits which plagued my anterior cerebrum.

While in the throes of this state, I envisioned myself and carried myself as a man of worth, and the result of this model construct has yet to fail me in maintaining an ideal of upright character, but it would be wrong of me not to admit that the supposed cloak, or robe, I walked with was one of down trod and blasphemous craft.

In my youth, I would see myself in green. I would be cloaked with the firs and felts of the many woods and forests that I would come to walk, but in coming to know maturity, the royalty of purple could be dawned upon my shoulders only in my vanity. 

My pride as a young man would incessantly get the better of me, and my actions were only a slight less in their hesitant agreement. This lack of reverence for humbleness would lead to my fall, and it would be one of the many causes which would carry me to a state of decay and entropy. 

A King's Crown

My jealousy was the same. Adorned with a crown dipped in beautiful crimson glow, my ire was awakened when others sought to beautify themselves in my presence. Of course, this is to be expected of persons in a society of noble vanity, but my wants were for all attention and well wishing. My brothers were to lay by the wayside while I succeeded in every endeavor. Torn by my capacity for good and my desire to be of token idolatry, I shed countless shade upon my sister, so as to ruin her words of worth and giving. Of the pettiest arguments, I was not. Rather, know me in far greater pursuits of vice like grandeur, as my actions were humble yet the circumstance which was my woe and sorrow gave avenue for the opposing reality which was my wretchedness and displeasure to infect and fester the otherwise goodly portions of my person.

This manner was epitomized in the early years of my instruction. During that time, I enjoyed the luxuries of a fair distance from home, in that there were few who could harbor or impede upon my actions. I took what I wanted and was rarely punished out of the goodness and kindness of those who were of a teacher's resolve. It was also that these same persons did much in the way of guiding me toward a kinder and warmer path. However, their efforts were for naught, as my development was one of mine ire's table scraps.

In this behavior, I fed myself with honest work but played about as a fool, so when the crown which had been placed upon my head had fallen, I thought nothing of it and felt nothing, until I had come to know of what I had lost in terms of responsibility and freedom. In this, my scholarly aspirations were curbed by the idiotic ramblings of words which could bear no fruit. The epitomized ideological outfitting of the 'good and honest' schoolboy was stripped from the young man that had once walked upright in my mind and was replaced by a diligent yet chipped adult who was jaded by the loss of a once idealistic future. That which had been placed upon me had tumbled and was replaced by a yolk unseen by most but made jest of by those who bore the same burden. It came to be that I would mock them with their own jokes, but I would always feel a slightly more burdening hitch in the walk which I was left to endure.

In these throes, my beautifully crowned crimson glow was left dented and mangled and was replaced by a linen cap of fitted and capable weight, yet one with which I found an unending flaw, as it bore no color and what I felt was no life. But alas, my envy was what did me in, and it is what shackles me to this day.

A King's Belt 

The hallmark of a glutton is found in their capacity to indulge beyond the point of health. As an example, in festivities and merrymaking, there sometimes appears the over indulgent 'drunk' and also those who find a home in the madness of spirits. These people were not I. I was good and fair in these matters, as they were not something of which I would find usual spoil, but my indulgence was one found in the procurement of unfulfilling acquisitions, as my efforts in minimalism found themselves to be of some fruit, but that of which was inedible for my soul.

In continuation of the extended metaphor of dress, the belt I would wear in these acts would be one of brown tanwork. The light soft hues of the felt leather would spell the tones of a guiding formality, in coming to know the increasingly expanding presence of a world growing at the forefront of my thoughts. Within my person, with little aid from others, a spite would grow whose primary givings would grant avenue for the gorging of profanity and curse.

In this formality, my path would come to be summated by a loss of conviction and purpose. Hedonism would become my rightful suiting, for it was in the tumultuous chaos of an overactive imagination that I developed inflammatory tendencies that inevitably led me to an excessive audacity of idiocy. My knack for indulgence would leave my mind wounded with the sickness of a pain that was not of this world, but a residual agony that could be better sourced to other realms of living, as its cure was one of thought and reflection, not the bile, root, and tar with which I treated said ailment. In these trials, I suffered from a never ending call to service my wants, as if they were to dictate that which was necessary for my soul's survival, yet I found no home in this house of gluttony.  

A King's Rings 

Found to be of my most damaging and immature of actions was the unending desire and wishful thinking to know union in its beauty. My eyes from a young age saw beauty in abundance and, in doing so, carefully learned to know of the curse which comes with such an infatuation. The heavens would grant but if only a glimpse of this magnanimity, before I was ripped into a world of intoxication and debauchery. My inebriation with the ever present company of carefully crafted novae from the stars themselves left me at a place where knowledge would be my sating champion. With this giving, I threw myself to literature in efforts to come to know but if only a piece of the worldly spoils that I had inherited with my eyes and ears, for it was not only the constellations themselves which gave light and birth to these angels that would walk amongst us, but also the galaxies of harmony that were orchestrated from the instruments which were their voices. Beauty was this to me. I can speak of it in no greater language than a confession of true and burning regard, as each star was to be known by its dazzling radiance and grace, thereby granting nature its due reverence.

I could never be seen by these lights, yet I would make no idol. My mind remained of tune for a song of learning in distant appreciation, for to fall amongst the stars is to fall through infinity. What would guard my heart in these matters? 

A King's Breastplate 

Iron forged in the white fires of a smith's furnace, my anger was one of passive burn. In habit, I would never find myself to be wounded by cheap shots to the heart, as my actions were guarded by a steel clad resolve. This white hot fire was my wrath, though, and I fueled it. I fueled it day in and day out, until I found a peace in the knowledge that it was known by no one. With this, I could not fathom the profundity of the good I would do on a day to day basis merely by being of good character and refusing to indulge in the small luxuries offered by devils in passing conversation. Even the slightest of jades were lost upon my growing tenacity, as the fervor which had once bestowed upon me an enlightened and guided heart now gave avenue for wrath's cultivation. It was through the enumerable audiences granted and characterized by the all too frequent sobs and woes of trial and loss that this cultivation found yield. Many of these saddening narratives were undeserved of half the attention they beckoned for, given the pressing matter of the all too present reality surrounding the relevant circumstances of the various situations with which the persons of these narratives were confronted. These justly founded confrontations were often absent in the relaying of the many depressive narratives spoken all too frequently by the proletariat, and for this reason my mind was angered and distorted by even the smallest of impotent jabs which I thought to be disingenuous acts of war, but in reality, were simply passing flights of polite exchange. It was vexing, and it raised a fury in me so deep that only the branding of a white flamed tongue would sate the needed pain with which I was plagued, addicted, and, to a degree, feared. With this, the anguish of this wicked misguidance confused and sickened me. For this reason, I too fell victim to wrath. 

A King's Gauntlets 

I yearned for more. I yearned for all things gold and diamond to be of form and weight for my own bronze inlaid iron coffers of immeasurable girth and size. The dazzling brilliance of riches came upon me as a sickness that tainted my soul with a seed planted no smaller than a mustard grain yet it grew to foster a rarely kept blossom of ill intentions and greedy longings.

From these soils, my hands sought the touch of material that would grant me oceans of travel and the voyage of spoil, but the truth in my humanity prevented me from ever truly indulging these evils. A king has his gauntlets to grab guard and steel, not to run his hands through gold and coin. These actions would nullify a reign justified by sacrament, as his mind would be twisted and tainted by the woes and wishes of that which would only invoke damnation. What does one do when the signs and crests you knew have turned to a world of spoil and torment? It is naught but greed which is done in this compounding and sickening manner thereby giving way to the disguised, diseasing manifolds of corruption that lead only to death.

A King's Boots

Slow, I was. My inability to accept that which was presently clear for my survival was naught but of the purest sloth, for my actions were not fitting of my words. I sought a peace of mind that would allow me time to reflect upon that which was all of a sudden so prevalent in my understanding of the world. I was left behind. My feet stirred passages of snow while my brethren ran through grass and field. Their legs carried them far forward in their stride, as I struggled with an indeliberate debilitation that led me through peaks and valleys of wild and rock. Again, I was slow, and yet, I was steady. For in time, my mind forged for me a fleeting gait that could fly over field and valley. Though soft the road was not, well marked it remained, as my first reach upward was one of a firmly grasped hand that gave me knowledge in its next motion.

Before this, there was ignorance. Darkness. A hole in which I could fathom no bottom, yet I resided therein. It was not a home, but a hole as it is written, and a hole as it should be known.

As it was, my excuses were plenty and my responsibilities the same, so I crawled hand and foot into a deep crevice and laid there in a cold, muddied pool of my own sullen depression.

After a time, though, I caught wind of that which had been absent for a length unknown. An emptiness, that had long remained as such, had come to feel whole in a manner novel to my person. In this renewed vitality, I arose, and in summoned strength I made way for this fulfillment which had abated my wishful thinking and replaced it with a reverence of deep invigoration.

In doing so, my slothfulness could no longer keep me at bay. My greed found death in my pain. My wrath was no more, for there was naught to speak with or against, and my carefully laden words of appreciation found no idolatry, rather beauty, in their articulation. My gluttony was sated by an understanding imparted upon me as a gifted enlightenment that gave way to a wisdom which was the death of my pride, for in this understanding I now knew of suffering by my own accord.

In time, this came to be a ceaseless march that manifested as a delicate conveyance of triumph which was inevitable in its culmination, and in this walk, my legs had grown strong, as trial had brought me renewal as well as the deeply ingrained embodiment of a tire that would never take hold.

From my place of skulk and scarcity, I departed, and, in doing so, felt the first touch of the Sun’s rays upon leaving the dark wherein I had once resided. With this, no more could be done against my soul’s cultivation, as all things had come to be holy in the light of my mind reborn.