Friday, March 21, 2008

Until now I had never heard him speak of the subject. In retrospect it'd make sense that he was a Practitioner, after all he excreted state mandate as if it naturally occurred in him. The state mandated attendance to ceremony through the mother, believing maternality to be intrinsically based in matters such as hope and faith which, in turn, allows the father to maintain his status, no matter the profession, as a stoic and upright figure, or so I believe. My mother died giving birth to me, and her absence wrought more than a simple complex. It's not to say I'm speaking negatively of her death, but the results were bore more on my father's shoulders than my own. The fact is, I didn't know her for it to reap the results it did on him. I don't know what he was prior, but I can tell you he now exists at half that capacity. Most don't notice, but few are as observational as I am. It would be difficult anyway to view the despair in the eyes of a man who moonlights as a bard. Strumming his steel hippodrome, painting tales with his voice of joyous times, moments in history where men saved the day, where good triumphed over evil, where the knight gets the girl. To me they were cliches, to the public they were memoirs. He had given up on the notion of Deity and, without my mother, found comfort only in the free drinks given by satisfied patrons. I was of the opinion that if God did nothing for him, he probably had little room for a child such as myself. As I grew I developed a sense of self reliance. In times of grief, others turned to the Church of State for advice and console while I simply moved on and dealt accordingly. I never felt as though I was missing something until I began my trials with Sampson. To me, being a practitioner meant weakness. A reliance on the intangible to relieve suffering, mandated to instill hope. They perked my curiosity after watching them commune before our meal. It wasn't simply practice to them. I could feel the passion. It was as if being a practitioner gave them unified purpose in being, bringing them to a level I wasn't even aware existed. I decided to pursue matters further.