It was always hard to part with the lot. I wonder if they ever knew how hard it was for me to leave them and go off to be with people much different from ourselves. I would only long for the time when we were all back together again. It seemed like dread was all I knew. I waved senselessly at people on the sidewalk as we passed one another. There was not a cloud in sight yet students were confused some wearing shorts others wearing thick coats not sure where the weather would go.

I did not think much about the haranguing I did earlier on and I never thought anyone would have noticed it either. A rather slender guy was coming my way and I could tell he wanted to have words with me. At a first glance you would think him frail. At a second glance you would see that it was his posture that gave off that misconception. I stared at a wedge-shaped face under broad temples leading to a pointed chin. I witnessed in the brown of his eye an excessive brilliance that was trapped, it was burning him inside and needed out. From the looks of him you could see he was a passive soul but that some contention had reared its head.

“What’s up Halley? You headed to class?” I knew that he knew he did not care if I was headed to class or not. It was a perfunctory question that students asked one another all the time before getting to the purpose of the meeting. “I heard about that little stunt you pulled in ILR earlier, I think someone YouTubed it.” He could tell I did not like that as the look on my face was mixed with shock and repugnance. I had not even considered social media and what people might say or do with what I had said.

Sinclair had been a year under me. He was not too keen on school but instead favored learning, not too fond of education but fancied becoming educated. He could not say exactly where the lack of focus came from or distaste for how we “learned” nowadays. Had he consulted a doctor they would have told him there was something seriously wrong with him and that he needed to spend some time with a counselor or take some medication but I knew better. Nothing was wrong with Sinclair but something was wrong with everyone else.

“Was all that true? Like do you really believe that stuff or is it just for show?” He was indignant in his questioning hoping that I did not unfairly lead him on to this point where he would ask me these things and I would laugh at him for ever thinking it true. I felt his dejection. I owed him this much and it was a laudable effort on his part. I could talk to him as I pleased, I knew that much.

“What I will say here may not help at all because there is no help for men like us, not today. We are to accept the premise that men are capable of all things and then the conclusion that we will amount to nothing. We are to believe that greatness is exaggerated. A contradiction that I thought could not exist even if I had to imagine it. We are here amongst men and women who want to be praised for nothing worthy of being praised.” He looked calm as if he knew all these things already but needed it to be said by another for confirmation, a confirmation he did not want. His eyes concealed how much more he wanted to know but his heart gave it away to me.

“I don’t think there’s any chance for me here in this world with these people—no room at all and it’s a shame because the world’s such a big place. How’s that for irony? Nothing is anymore, not like it was. How infinite in reason the Prince of the Danes once said about man. An infinite wisdom at no profit, is that what capitalism has taught us? ” What lay in the wake of this scene were the footprints left by war. Bodies would not sully the earth but souls will crowd the sky — that is what will be lost, our souls. We had to win this war for his sake and the sake of those immortal spirits that seek the divine. I had all I needed except men, those men of bronze Napoleon brought back with him. I was determined to take him back with me.

“How can you compromise with them, sit here and join their fraternities, partake in their student affairs? How do you stomach it all. Are you fit to live the life of a hypocrite?” I wish I could fault him for his observations but I could not. I wrapped my arm around the boy’s shoulder and walked him over to the slope and we sat on the bench by the Uris library . The sun was right where it needed to be as I shed light on the situation.

“There is a code people stand by, to say live by would betray life itself so I must take care in how I tell you this truth. The code’s partial implications tells people to act on the premise of one another’s weakness, this pity patter, this navigation through a pretend fog of insolence, this act of playing the part and staging a scene to no end, to be real and not live in reality, to die having never been born is well beyond me. If men can only come to and see that reality is not to be faked, that things unearned cannot be had, that the undeserved cannot be given, that the destruction of a value which is, will not bring the value to that which is not…” I trailed off looking at the little people down at the bottom of Libe. “To know things are but live as if they were not. I suppose in a sense they desire the impossible. You see the only impossibility that there is and that I see is that you tell a man he cannot be when he is. You risk ending this world as we know it. I will be what I can.” I was talking to the both of us now, convincing myself aloud about the things I never professed.

“But as you say who am I to talk about such things yea? I have compromised with them all. I eat with them, flatter them and so on.” There was sadness and regret in my voice. “I almost thought once that my life was not my own to live. I thought that if I was to live side by side with them that I must compromise myself in the process, there was no other way. Well there was but I had not the courage.” I was hurt by the truth he had observed.

“I think people are sick Hails, and even worse they rather not find the cure for their sickness. It kind of frightened me to think that I was the only one around who knew what was real from what wasn’t. Nowhere on earth would shelter me from my own misgivings if I, knowing what was real, lived the shadow of a life without any meaning. Then again I just don’t know if that meaning is really worth all this Hails, all this heartache. I once thought that there was no chance for me to exist. I’ve turned thoughts over in my head many times, whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune. I must cope with this world. If I did not do this I would be committing an irreversible sin worse that all injustices. But why do people make it feel so wrong to live like this? They preferred I remain split into two, to die a half-wit. I cannot keep choosing this life of reason and moral imperatives over everything and everyone else. The love I had to let go, the friends I have lost. To bare these things and live on has been an ineffably cruel fate!” I could here him grit his teeth and see his body tense up. He restrained himself but stood up from the bench to better regain his composure. I got up to put my hand on his shoulder and turn him around.

“Achieve all things because our mind permits us to do so without any limits. Men are important to one another in that they use the full extent of their capacity to reason and produce in that way a better life— achieve in every field of human endeavor, the honor of the polymath! Knock on the graves of men long gone and borrow from their lives what is now dead to us, I’ll say that man’s life is purposeful and he can do with it as he pleases, this is the freedom and equality we all have by right of our mind. Live this life as it was meant to be lived, in the best way possible, to reach any and all possibilities, to achieve humanity and die immortal.” The boy who was once Sinclair was becoming the man who was to be Sinclair. He saw over the slope a world to be conquered and though he feared the people because he knew the challenge they would pose he did not seem frightened by it and I imagine he was holding within him at his fingertips the fire given back to us by Prometheus so long ago — this was how heroes were born and wars won, by truths such as these.

“This is all well and good Halley but what about the rest of them? What about the people that we share this world with?” I too turned to look over the slope at the little heads of hair bustling about. “Don’t worry about people for the blind do not see and the dumb do not think. Why should you worry about that? Those people are men who will stand for anything so long as enough of them stand. You asked me a little bit ago why do this, why put up with it.” My only thought became my sole for being — “to improve upon their silence Sinclair.”

“By no means am I waiving off your worries, I was worried once too. God I worry. They berate me, label me insolent and indignant, laugh at me incredulously. May they be damned those people! To hell with them! If you can do, then you must do and if you must do you only need do so superlatively! Spare yourself nothing but perfection. Search for no fault but your own and work upon it until that fault has become your greatest glory then revel in its wonder. They deem those like you a product of chance that whence you overcome their badgering and blundering you must adhere to their will for the sake of their lives. Men like you hold all the hope which the gift of human ability ever proffered. You men are not the same as people. People will know in their minds that something is right but the desire to follow it succumbs to the desire to remain, as they believe this to be safe. This is the impossible conflict of feeling reluctance to do well and abide by virtue of man’s ability that you cannot achieve, the indifference you can never know, a brazen betrayal! Nothing can be done for the people of undefined thought let them speak in silence. These people live by your favor alone. Give them hell, give them a piece of your mind — I promise they would not know what to do with it. I know you see it now. The only place for a just lot like yourself in a dishonest and wretched place like this is the Isles of the Blessed.”

vv. Francs IV