Discourses

Short essays by Trevor Worthey

Respect:
When you’re in a theatre, you’re expected to respect the house. When you are invited as a guest to someone’s residence, you should practice self-control—show respect to those who invited you. If respect is disregarded, these institutions deteriorate. Why then, for the sake of the systems we hold dear, do we not practice constant respect? For surely we don’t.

Let’s sneak off, you and I, and find the time, in the dark of the matinee, to unleash ourselves in a hall; no one to watch, no one to see. Let’s get lost in the lightless afternoon. To whom are we denying respect? Who should tell us no, that we must watch the show, out of respect for the actors performing? Have we not removed ourselves appropriately? Can we not respect the house elsewhere? Let’s go off, you and I, and watch the sun pass its zenith through a crystal skylight above a remote hall. Let’s sneak away, to dispel the dark together. But let us respect the dark where it is. Respect is everything.

Discussion:
Coming into this…discussion, we’ll call it—I don’t like the word argument, it sounds too belligerent for people so near as ourselves—we sit down. We must. If we don’t sit down, someone will be taller. If we don’t sit down, that formality that is entirely informal is lost. If we don’t sit down, we might as well have a caucus race, and then we will have to declare a winner—well, we’ll just have to! And the point of a discussion is not to have a winner. Even if we christen all contestants of the race a winner, and give them each a comfit for their efforts, the point of a discussion is lost. The chair symbolizes equality, and when there are no winners, everyone is equal. May the discussion be heated, or violent, or calm, or lazy, the chair brings everyone’s voice to the same volume. There are no performers; everyone is the audience. Coming into this discussion, we must sit down.

And if not the chair, let it be on the floor. Come with everyone to a closer relationship with Earth. If all of us are Her Children, we are much less prone to the unpleasantness of argument. Better yet, let us discuss these outside; may we feel the grass beneath us, may a breeze sweep away our differences. It is so much more simple to discuss with your own kind. Let us take it outside.

The Group:
The group is singular, made of a blend of individuals attempted just that once. I know, that makes a lot of groups in the world, doesn’t it? But that doesn’t matter, because in the group, the world outside is relative. The people in a group are unified by that one thing they all share, presumably the foundation for the group. Perhaps, in the larger group, in Society, these people are outcasts, bereft of the companionship they find so abundant in the group. The one common element brings people together. I don’t care how you are ‘out there’. In here, you are my friend, because we are both plagued by that Thing, that makes us all beautiful people to one another. In this room, our meetings disobey society; in this room, the outside world is only relative.

Does that make the group a society of its own, one where no one is persecuted, where no one suffers for their beliefs? No. Each meeting must end, and society must be re-entered—faced again, regardless of fear or unwillingness. But it’s all a little more bearable, with the knowledge that soon, again, you will experience, all too briefly, the societal perfection that is the group.

Timeless:
Our people are unique. Hidden here, enveloped in magic—a world entirely our own. To climb the trees, and gaze across our land. To bathe in a fresh mountain stream, the water cool against flesh. How long have these things been here, this fire pit, the knife encased in leather? They are the marks of an outsider, which we do not mind, but—something screams at us, tells us that this man has never felt the length of a tree swaying in the wind beneath him. Never has he—had he, before coming here—gazed into the eyes of a Tiger, though his gear suggests otherwise. Never the experience of careless abandon; always the drear of life on the outside. We see these things, preserved in a clearing, and silently we laugh to ourselves.

The world here still goes through its cycles. Spring returns each year, to replenish life’s water vitale. Time still proceeds, but here, there is no measure of time. The creatures here while away the decades, and do not grow weary of life. We have no progress, no forward motion around us. Buildings are not raised. Nature is preserved, not developed. We laugh silently. Water drips from a moss-covered stone. Timeless. It saddens me that those outside would term us uncivilized.

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