skit #56: a throne

The lord acquired a throne, as luxurious as any lord deserves, certainly: backed with a scrimshawed bas-relief to retell his heroic struggle to lordship, adorned with gold-gilded swirls signifying the rich futures that await him, upholstered with Bactrian fleece to receive his heir-bearing loins. It is not subtly elevated to command superiority from whomever besieges him while upon it. It is vastly elevated, unbesiegably high, higher than the height of one man, of ten men, of fifty men. The throne sits the lord so high it distorts men to motes.

From this throne, the lord can see all his subjects. He can see his vassals, their serfs; his serfs, their families; his families, their children; his children. He can see past the tithes they pay, past the oaths of fealty they swear, past the trivia his closest ministers report.

When he squints, their anonymous subjects live lives. A butcher dresses a succulent pheasant which he will eat alone, a runt swings a scythe hoping to be recognized as a man, a nun purposely misconstrues the strict meaning of chastity, a vagrant tiles the bottom of his begging bowl with suggestive alms, a mother delivers a daughter prophesied to compose riddles that will flummox thinkers for eons, all bustling below him.

When he squints further, he observes things which transcend vision. The butcher's son abandoned him for the navy, the runt has convinced himself his beard is sprouting, the nun keeps her Husband in mind, the vagrant starves in hopes of marring his lord's benevolent reputation, the mother wanted only an obedient child to help with chores.

And when he squints even further, he finds no delay or separation from his subjects. Everything is intimate. He feels closer than goatskin gloves, closer than lovers' whispers, closer than the plague's rosettes, closer than the passion of inebriety, closer than scrutiny of morals. So close, the lord could not tell himself from the butcher, the runt, the nun, the vagrant, the mother.

Yet when he squints even further, he rediscovers the familiar and ineffable intimacy that he feels as being himself, but it is projected upon his subjects -- to be oneself as another. He feels closer, and understands them in illiterate and innumerate ways, past description, past empiricism. And he is saturated in their feelings, past sympathy, past empathy. He is very close now, singular with his subjects' lives, no longer seated in his luxurious throne high above his fiefdom, with no hopes of ever dismounting again.