The Stage and Garden

[Justin Silverblade]

~ Just a quick little ditty that I wrote. It isn't edited, and I don't think I will try, it scares me a little too much to get into such a mood to edit properly. Enjoy! ~

 

 

The Stage and Garden

 

 

The jealousy grew inside him as it had never before done. He was not unaccustomed to it, but now it seemed to have seeded, and spread the beginnings of new plants; ones of anger, rage, distrust. He beheld them as weapons, rather than seeking to rip them from his garden, as any good man should. No. Their roots sought to corrupt him, and wrapped around him easily and consumed his foresight. They had begun to control him, and he knew it.

 

He was regaled as a good man, albeit quiet and gentle. Weak and unpopular is how his greenery had rotted such good fruit. His life was filled with a wanting, a wanting of something, he already had. He had taken such time to tend to his garden of bent emotions he had forgotten what was genuine. In fact, doubt had clouded his mind as to whether kinship even existed towards him.

 

So he volunteered himself off the stage. The play of life continued onwards, and he sat by the sidelines like a coward. Unable to stand, unwanting to sit, his newly seeded plants grew and began to bore their own rotten fruit within his mind. With them he began to see what lay behind the scenes: what really existed within his company, and he hated it. He convinced himself, now, that he wanted no part of it, or these people, yet as a smiling script rolled by his scowling vision, he longed to hold it, and play the part once more.

 

Denied again, stolen what was once his. What should have been his. The lead roll, now stood in his arch-rival’s hands, and his fantasy of what life was, that beautiful play on stage, broken into the news of actors all playing parts. How disdainful, that this was, that they acted, all of them.

 

But he would not reveal the fruit he longed to throw across the stage. For, even as he sat, he acted. Acted like those he despised for doing so. Then the knowledge that he would do such a thing, only sought to water the plants. He was a gardener, but knew not how to handle his plants.

 

And one night, by the starlight, he pondered his garden far from its putrid aroma, and longed for it not to be there. He made a vow; that he would chop them down. Every plant, every tree, destroy each in blissful knowledge and acceptance of happier days and simpler ways, for indeed he knew not the maze of his own garden. The day would come and go when he should have, and did, the mow and sheer take all the garden down. And next daybreak, he looked back to that stage with smile and glee. He jumped alongside his brethren, and found there his best friend, and in his hand, that script. The lines that should be his.

 

The sapling sprouted, once again.

[Wyvern]

A very interesting short story, Justin... one rich with symbolism and meaning. I particularly like your use of similes, especially the comparison of the man's increasingly jealous emotions to a garden in bloom and that of his life to an act in a play.

 

In my opinion, the underlying theme of this tale is centered around the scathing feelings of jealousy the man feels after the part in a play is taken from him, and the man's attempts at deliberatly forgetting this injustice. The disturbing part of the story is that he fails to do so, as when he looks back upon the script that should have been his the weeds of jealousy are born yet again. Perhaps then the theme of this story is that there is no moral weed-killer that can fully do away with emotions of jealousy and anger...

 

My apologies if I misinterpreted... ;p I found it very well written, especially your uses of similes.

 

 

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Almost a Dragon...

"My life is one big crime, I try to scheme through it." -Common, "The 6th Sense"

 

Owner of the Decanter of Endless Booze.

Edited by: Wyvern00  at: 6/9/02 12:40:10 am