Male Gestis In Tenibris Theatra(Inside or Outside the golden cage)

Inside/Outside the golden cage

Introduction

"Death is inevitable no life is without natural end"

"The universe forbids eternity even as it perpetuates it"

"Nothing is safe from the vicious ravages of
time"

Preface

The dark fog of evening enveloped me like a cloak folding around my shaggy hair and now drawn features. The streets smoke marked walls and blind alley ways stared out into the evening street as if a million open mouths cried out in silent anguish. Why was I here. What had I done to end like this. The slick stones beneath my feet began to burn as if the very flames of retribution now burned even into the soles of my aching feet. Still low those fires of heavenly revenge licked at my innards and surrounded my very soul.

My name is Pency Holburke I am an Englishman as my father and his father before. My line is not traced in gold or jewels but in black dirt and sweating furrow.  Until very recently a mere ten months ago in fact my fate had been to live outside of wall and gate feeding off the black earth of the English countryside. As the rain poked my face like a stinging reminder of those times my feet turned me homeward or whatever counted as such for me now. The hostel where I took up residence after my fathers death was underneath a whore house and in the deepest ward of the meat processing sector of London's food producing markets. The once shiny streets running daily with blood and filth from the hundreds of slit throats here every day was what turned it into a dark slum not much larger than my own town.

The place where I grew up also was a small affair a simple cottage with a barn and rows upon rows of golden wheat brown soil and a few fruit bearing trees and bushes. My father died young, 35 and left none but myself and my mother behind. My half sister by my fathers first marriage lived with us for a time but she too eventually moved into the city for work. To follow her at the time I thought would be pointless folly however  more will be said of her later. Though fathers heavy hand had taught me well to take care of my holdings  my mother however quickly deteriorated into a deep dark melancholy. Her reclusive nature seemingly oppressed and surrounded by the darkening clouds of grief and isolation she withdrew into her room only emerging to eat silently or to hang a new picture of hers on the wall.

My mother was an artist of some repute able to create wonderful landscapes just from memory much of my early years was spent breathlessly waiting for her to complete another gorgeous scene replete with brush and score marks showing moving and swirling pantheons of life that we never saw from our small covered windows. My mother's art had meant much to me in my youth as when my father was not present she would let me watch and observe while she painted these idle hours constituted our little time together during those years.

However her art had taken a turn for the black as of late. To my horror she made slick black canvas after slick black canvas after slick black canvas. Her long black dress matching her dripping black paint matching her pitch black room matching the dark black pitch of her hideous cries coming from her chambers at night. I was not old enough to know her madness then. But I know now she was gone before I ever left her.

And indeed I must say I did leave. Yes I left my mother I left the farm and I left my home. But I left with a goal find a way to justify my existence. True many a young philosopher had a similar concept to my own but no man I'm sure attempted to archive it in the same way. I was not a squatter and I did not live idly. I studied in public taught  in public and preached my gospel in public. Though my words falling upon deaf ears I would not be dissuaded. I kept proclaiming to them "death is inevitable" " the time will come for us all" "nothing is permanent" as I saw their lives being wasted within this mire of a city. I thought others must know what I had seen, all of the frills of society keeping them from making use of the resource that was their lives. But though it may have seemed to them to be a sad distasteful thing I preached, I patiently and passionately implored for them to do something to escape the trap that was their lives like a cage that surrounded them all.