Goodbye Sealand

“…And so in every way, Sealand is exactly what it is, and nothing that I expected it to be.  And it remains somewhat opaque to me, despite all my description.  Jack comes first; work comes second; all of my obligations come third, and that leaves time to explore the environs a distant fourth, if on the list at all.  I am mystified by the seeming lack of people my own age, by the absence of places I’m used to thinking of as integral to a local scene, but I’ve had no time or energy to place into solving those mysteries. I raise my eyes to the horizon and there are the same vistas and landmarks there I’ve seen a thousand times before, but all at new angles now:  familiar things presenting unfamiliar sides of themselves.  No doubt it will unfold as it should.  There is the day to day fight, and sometimes there is beauty, if you know how to take beauty where you find it.

We shall see what Magic there is in Sealand.

And if there is no Magic in Sealand—  then perhaps we shall make some.”

–The Book of the King, “Sealand (part 3)”, October 17th, 2003

—

“Do you recall how, when we strove upon the balcony, you mocked me?  You told me that I, too, took pleasure in the ways of pain which you work.  You were correct, for all men have within them both that which is dark and that which is light.  A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were.  His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires…  his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that which was old-  but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream.  Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure.  Always he mourns that which is gone and fears some part of that which is new.  Reason opposes tradition.  Emotions oppose the restrictions his fellow men lay upon him.  Always, from the friction of these things, there arises the thing you called the curse of man and mocked-  guilt!

“Know then, that as we existed together in the same body and I partook of your ways, not always unwillingly, the road we followed was not one upon which all the traffic moved in a single direction.  As you twisted my will to your workings, so was your will twisted, in turn, by my revulsion at some of your deeds.  You have learned the thing called guilt, and it will ever fall as a shadow across your meat and your drink.  This is why your pleasure has been broken.  This is why you seek now to flee.  But it will do you no good.  It will follow you across the world.  It will rise with you into the realms of the cold, clean winds.  It will pursue you wherever you go.  This is the curse of the Buddha.”

Taraka covered his face with his hands.

“So this is what it is like to weep,” he said, after a time.

–Sam (the Buddha), Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny