5:7<\/p>\n
The span of the great Gothic arch framed the vastness that he had thought would spell escape. Out. To shrug off the insidious weight of responsibility and tedious pressure of day after day, all he had to do, he had oh so foolishly thought, was to go. To go out into the unknown. To leave the the cloisters of his current existence and join the broader scope.<\/p>\n
But he couldn’t.\u00a0 He stood there gazing out on the desert-like landscape, with hills that gently undulated across the horizon and vast grassy plains that stretched so far one’s eyes blended them with the grey sky to create the illusion of infinity.<\/p>\n
Behind him, up those countless stairs and through those twisting passages, lay his responsibility. A life of ease and luxury, punctuated with bursts of fear and dread. A machine that controlled not only its own mysterious imperatives but also his life and the lives of everyone dwelling in this vast manse. An unknowable and unsolvable riddle that permeated the mortar of these cold stone walls. Only by slowly drinking himself to death had these years past reminded endurable. The peaceful blanket of inebriation had wrapped him lovingly in its arms and provided solace and peace: blocking out the absence of hope, gentling burying the anguish of his own helplessness.<\/p>\n
But no more. The sweet taste of drink had left him bereft.<\/p>\n
The shame and self-loathing had emerged from that tiny little box that had held them hidden away for so many years, and he had sought to break free and once again regain some semblance of control. He had mustered up all of his resources and called upon all of his diminished reserves, and had left the tower that had been the only home he could remember. Why could he not remember? What was it that came before? Doubt drove him outwards. A small but growing sense of righteousness pushed him down the long stairways toward the nearly forgotten courtyard. The merest gleam of hope enticed him to the huge wooden doors that guarded this ancient and mighty fortress from the rest of time and space.<\/p>\n
And so he found himself standing in the looming passage, staring at everything that was other, and could not find that last key, that last impetus, the missing force that could compel him to make one more step. And so he stood, balanced by forces that no man could sway, poised on top of the blade of destiny, unable to move forward or back, but assured that not to move doomed his soul to a slow death as he slowly was pulled onto the uncaring and impartial razor that was the deadly edge of the moment.<\/p>\n
He felt the wind from the plains blow gently across his brow and he felt the warm of the courtyard on his back and he felt …<\/p>\n
… despair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
5:7 The span of the great Gothic arch framed the vastness that he had thought would spell escape. Out. To shrug off the insidious weight of responsibility and tedious pressure of day after day, all he had to do, he had oh so foolishly thought, was to go. To go out into the unknown. To […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}