Motto: I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion -
I have shudder'd at it.
I shudder no more.
I could be martyr'd for my religion
Love is my religion
And I could die for that.
I could die for you.
( John Keats)


Look around. Nothing much to see, is there? A wooden songbird shaped flute on an overused book. Ordinary sight, ordinary day.
But then, what if someone comes out of the blue asking you to give up these things? No problem, you say calmly. But then this someone goes on, suggesting a hypothesis that may even sound hilarious: giving up these objects wouldn’t make a difference… unless you put it another way. You don’t need to lose everything. Just close your eyes for a second, then a century, then an eternity. Faith takes practice. Faith takes being a martyr. Since this is the best exercise, most would recommend it.
If you reach that point, you will never again have to worry that you’ve dropped oil on that interesting quote on plants’ sensitivity or whatever. You will be free with your darkness, with angels calling your name in admiration, or anything you want me to say for persuading you.
But this sounds fairly exaggerated. There is no need for it when you know better, so now you are catching at the poorly carved flute (that has breathed essence upon your sunny days, of course) and the book underneath (which has lent you experience and passion, naturally).
What I’m talking about is simple. It could easily translate into nothing but colors. That’s all there actually is, nuances that silently penetrate every fiber of you, making you yourself and defining your personality when they come in different shapes and tones. Something as simplistic and free as colors frantically attempting to reach their sole purpose, that of providing a pretext for staying up one more night, refusing the sacrifice like a hyper child would refuse to go to bed, particularly when a grinning full moon watches their every yawn, until they are conquered by the bad king of some unknown zone in dreamland.
That’s just how much it costs to be a martyr. You know there are no bridges. There is even no river. Besides, if you try to leap, you definitely will be wrong, like so many other generations. And if you fall, there is the (un)consciousness of you and yourself and nothing but yourself, somewhere where colors run away deserting your musty eyeballs at the slightest breeze. And since they never come back, why not be thankful with this superficiality?
But then we can add one more term to this existential equation. How about his eyes, maybe some first kiss, or other just as important data carefully stored in your high capacity memory (just something more to hold on to)? Sometimes, one of two has to offer this dance. And if your former partner chose to do it, most likely a new type of jealousy would be born by your soul. An empathetic way of dying. Something that you can only imagine once, like sensing colors run away from the other’s eyeballs. And, to be totally honest with yourself, they’re never coming back. But there is something more – those clichéd memories that used to make teenagers’ diary pages blush (the special red crayon effect, but you’ve never told him how you would sneak out of your room every night to personalize those sappy stories). They are not and will never be pretexts. They are the sounds, the very touch of sounds’ chromatic effect.
Something you wouldn’t miss for the world. Rather, something you’d miss the world for. Or better yet, something which cannot go away, an abstract symbol of immortality that can’t be overused, stained with oil, or poorly carved. It can only be loved. So you finally found out that leaping and being wrong with the best of intentions doesn’t always sound so childish. You lose yourself in one final embrace, deciding how to play the tune of Sacrifice.
That’s just how much martyrs can reveal themselves: in the blink of an eye, more exactly when the eye is still closed. And then perhaps the ultimate objects of this experiment called life which means everything to us, infatuated scientists – the book and the bird – will lose their value before him.
Gods exist and it is recommended not to be monotheist. There are thousands of thousands of billions of them, maybe more, and they make mistakes everyday. They mainly have common names, such as rose, cat, human. But if I were to believe in one god above all and if love were the shrine, you’d be… you are my god who never asks or accepts sacrifices or crusades. But once in a while technical glitches occur in heaven (because heaven is a dangerous place, and whoever comes here dies).
So, we do what we must. We sacrifice. We sacrifice forgetting absurdity, we sacrifice for a sin, we sacrifice for the salvation of so many angels in distress. And, having reached our goal, sometimes we get the right to rest.
Therefore, it is not so bad. It’s just that love takes practice. Sometimes practice means becoming a martyr.
What can be more beautiful then knowing you’ve given a significant other the privilege of watching colors’ dance with a sunrise you will never see, if you have the choice? What could be more useful than understanding this?



January 23, 2006