... and never wake up again

It begins very small,
Seems like nothing much at all.
Just a germ, just a speck, just a grain.
But the seed has been sewn,
And before you know it's grown,
It has spread through your life like a stain.
And its power will strangle your love and your joy.
And its hunger consumes-- for it lives to destroy!

I was just a boy when I first catch it. They call it the "dark desease" and I've never understood if it's more dark for the ill people or for the people who love them. In the acute crisis I could see nothing than darkenss. I couldn't see the light outside, I couldn't see the bright side of the life. The only thing I wanted was falling asleep and never wake up again.

They say that you can get better, but you can never recover completely. And sometimes, when I'm tired, I feel it growing in me again, taking away my will, letting me with only pain and sorrow.

I see it now, in the light dusk fog, in the silence of a room, in the motion of a river, in the falling of a leaf, in my daily meals and in my most enjoyable job. It is calling me as always. To sleep and never wake up again.

They say I was lucky, it was just at the beginning when they recognize the symptoms. Then they realized that was not correct, the thrut is that it was just a light form. So I'm not so lucky anymore, they manage to cure better the strongest forms. I survived, but I live like an hunted animals, in every second I feel its grip on me. Is this really life?

To sleep and never wake up again... maybe today I will surrend, too tired to fight again

I feel the pain in my back, where the wound has just sealed and not all the dried blood had gone. I feel the pain in my ribs, from the last fights, and in my legs for all the roads I run. I feel the pain in my hart for the people I lost along the way. Tonight I'll again strecht myself, push it to my limits, hurt myself to feel more pain, to feel I'm still alive.

Alone, again, I try to find the strenght for my people, they lay on me. What else can I do if not stay alive, force myself to feel alive? Sometimes I'm not sure of what I become, but I am and that's all that matters

Leaves are floating on the river surface, some rain drops draw circles in the water. Someone is singing a song. They always sing a song for a lost love. I watch my steps, the feet of a man I can't ever be.
And suddenly, as a stroke it hits me: I'm still mourning a lost love, as the song. How many years should pass, how many beds before this pain is over?

Just lie down, close my eyes and leave everything behind. What I was, what I couldn't be. What I dreamed, my unfeasible plans. What I am, what I can't be, the life I can't live

Fighting, and then healing, and then fighting again, every time complaining because I'm not as strong as I would, not as fast in my recover as I would. I've got skilled with the time, but still some blow catch me to hard here and there.

And I'm not strong enough, neither fast enough to recover and be ready to fight back immediatly.

I feel hopelessly weak, and this frightens me. I can't allow myself the luxury to be fragile somewhere, I'm not in the position to. Strong for the weaker, stronger with the strongest. That's what I am, what I have to be, what I want to be. But sometimes I'd like just to sit down and allow myself to be weak, to find someone who grants me that.

Distance in between

There is a nice rule in my branch of the Order. If I hurt a brother, we both sit down for a while, facing opposite direction. In this way he can go beyond his desider of immediate revenge, and I can resolve my guilty feelings. It seems so simple to apply, so stupid that you don't belive it works as long as you actually try it. But it works.

I try to use the same approac with other people, but it never works as well as in the Order. Common people expect to be regarded in some way when hurted, they look for some kind of revenge, of immediate satisfaction. Probably I do the same sometime, if on the other side I don't find the right behaviour. Sometimes it's hard to understand who is the victim and who the attacker, so at the end both of the people involved think themselves as the victim and expect their revenge, their satisfaction. The results it's just a violence escalation which potentially can destroy everything, and then it's always hard to rebuild what is not anymore.

Sometimes you just need to change your point of view, not to face directly the problem to find a way to go beyond it. Not always the straight line is the fastes or the more efficient. Sometimes you just need to put some distance in between to see things more clearly

I saw a woman. I don't remember when it was the last time that I thought, seing a woman, that I was lucky to be alive because I could see her beauty. But it happened. Such grace, such fragility and fluidity in the movements, such transport while making small talks (are they really so small?). How can I be unsure about my path when I see something like that? It's real, my eyes saw that where it was unexpected, where the others can see -at most- something weird. Oh, if the world could have eyes to see the beauty hidden beyond this imperfect body

I stopped to watch the ducks on my way back, tonight. It was a nice evening, fresh and pleasantly windy. I noticed that the ducks where all together; if one was going somewhere, an other would follow. The same for the few people I met. I was the only one alone

Sometimes I wonder if this is the right palce for me, the right path. When I was young, my future was to me like a big armour: growing I would fill it completely and feeling perfectly confortable in it. The true is different, there are parts of me that don't fit in, and emptiness in the armor that I can't fill. It seems to me I grew out in the wrong shape.

What went wrong? is it my shape, or the shape of the armour, to change? I can't answer, the trip put me out of balance in so many places, what was established now is not, what was background now is foreground.

Walking is just a matter of being continuously out of balance. Maybe I'm just preparing myself for the next step. Or maybe not

Back to the old life.

Going back to my mountains helped a bit to ease the pain of tese months, but now I find myself again out of place, looking for other knights, looking -maybe- for a different order to shape my life in.

Mountains are great to face your fears, your weakness, your true self. You can't lie to the Mountain, you can't lie when you hang, attached to a rock, or when the hut seems to far to be reached. You can't lie when the mountain push you to the edge, when your nerves shake for the tension, when the sweat run down your back mixed to dust and rain. You must be strong for the weaker, and stronger for the stronger.

As always the mountains remember me to be calm and still. Clouds move, rain falls, snow melts. But the Mountain is always there, always still and impassible. Silence broken oly by falling rocks. Silence in my hears, silence in my mind. Silence to clean my thoughts, a white paper to start writing from scratch

Coming back has been pretty thoug, still I don't manage to keep the rithm of the life. Life is sliding apart, the days are so brightly long but still so short, so empty.

I miss my mountains. I miss the peace I was experiencing over there. I miss the long walks with my guide, the talks made out silence, the perfect rithm for dawn and sunset, for work and prayer, for people and for God.

I'm waiting. Soon the Order will call me back to the source. I feel I can't last much longer, I'm already out of balance

That dream, again. It has been a lot, but now I deamed of her again. I don't know how to deal with this presence in my deamscape. I don't ever remember the first time I saw those eyes, blu as the sky over the desert. I don't' know much more, just the eyes, those eyes... I could kill for them, I could die for them. I could live for them.

But it's just a dream, and I can only hold on and wait. Maybe, one day, I will meet those eyes somewhere, I'll recognise them and fall for them, for a real person, not just a caracter in my deams

It's strange. I have never seen so many danws in a row as in these days, for my work. And be on duty all the night it's hard. It's cold outside, luckily it haven't snowed in a while. It's cold also inside, the dark and the silence make you think, sometimes you end up thinking too much. After a while you start feeling alone, always, also when you eat with the others, or meet another one during the rounds.

I feel alone. I miss someone waiting for me at home. I miss a real home. And the thought of the people I loved and I lost it's hard to bear, now more than ever.

I'm thinking what I can do once my job here will end. For sure I'll go back to my village, but then? what can I do for this lonlyness? just live with it? I'd like to marry a nice woman, have a normal life, an house, maybe some children... But still the order is calling me, and it's hard to find the right way...

A gift

Once I met a wizard. He had the great power to heal people. Not the wounds of the flesh, but wounds of the soul. He had the power to show to others the Way. He was a wise man too and he seemed to know always what was going on, what was the right thing to say and to do. I guess he was a seer too.

He was old when we met, and was giving all his gifts away. Feeling the end close, he didn't want to waste them. I wasn't a wizard, just a kid at that time, but he trusted me and blessed me. And since then I was able the ease the pain of a lot of people, to show them their own way without knowing it myself. I still remember the first time that happened, the joy for the enlightenment that sudenly fall on that girl. But it lasted just a moment, then it was just pain.

With a great power come great responsabilites, great gifts are never completely for free. And so it was. I was too weak and inexperienced to control my gift, so it was the one controlling me, tearing apart peaces of my hart every time. Every time someone found the Path, I found myself a bit further from it. And one day I was lost, and with the Way I lost the gift too.

It took a lot of effort to find the way back home, but eventually I managed. Meanwhile I embraced the Order and at the beginning it helped to ease my pain. And then my gift was back, but different, weaker. And now I can still feel the other's pain stronger as if it was mine, but I fail most of the time to ease it, to do the right thing, to show the right path. It's nothing I can control yet, it just happens when I don't expect it, when I don't want it.

With the time I learned that the first step is always knowlege and compassion, then love will arrive. And then, sometimes I really want it to happen, but my will is useless, I can't do anything but powerless watch the other's suffering. And this is killing me again, feel the pain without the reward to see the healing

duty call. My shoulder has still problems. Probably it just need time to heal. Anyway the healer was right, it's a bad scar. It seems that, finally, the new medicine is working. So I can leave

I don't like to move now, but the Order call, duty call. And I must go.

I met an other member, from an othe branch. Different duties, different attitude... I was strange to work together. The hard part is to explain that I can't stay, I can't choose where to go. I must just take what will come, that's the Path I chose

It's nice, time to time, do see someone of the order. Well, I know there are not so many of us around, but still I always hope to meet someone. And this time I met two of them, they travel together. Usual talk, how we jumped in, how is life, the comunity, the rules... It was nice after so many years alone, because talking with a knight not in the order is nice, but is not the same...

They are going to stay for a while, as long as I recover completely

It's cold outside. My monk friend is in trouble with the begging for the pours, tha famine makes everyone more vigilant on food. Moreover walking around bare foot it's not nice with all this ice here and there. The farmers hope it will snow soon, otherwise the wheat will suffer too much the cold...

I invited the monk to stay here tonight and the next days. At least it will have a warm dinner and a warm place to sleep

The healer said my hand will give me some problems in the next months, but the big problem is the shoulder. The infection is spreading around my back, and the pain does not allow me to use my sword properly. For sure there will be a bad scar at the end, I just hope to stay healthy and not to loose my arm

let's see

I'm a knight. I'm a monk. I'm a crusader. I'm a curse. I'm a blade in the dark. I'm a crounched tiger. I'm a flying dragon. I'm a drangonfly. I'm the fog of the land I grew up, and the rock of the place where I forged my soul. I'm water and wind of the city where I shaped my iron.

I used to have a soul. I used to have a heart. I joined the Order when I realized I didn't have any of them anymore. I'm a player, but not smart enough for the Glass Bead. The rules of the Game are the rules of my life.

I believe in the Truth, but without a soul it's hard to see it, so this is my quest. I want my heart back. I want my soul back. I want to live in the Truth, for the Truth.