Sunday, December 12, 2010

3. Nixon Ball

Forgive the length, due to time constraints I didn't do much planning and just started writing, only stopping when I felt done. I then did my best to eliminate waste, while still making haste.


Margaret was a girl unlike many others. Her long blonde silken hair was revered by the land's many adoring men, and reviled by it's many envious women. Her figure and countenance were of such beauty that they could only be compared properly to that of Aphrodite. Of course, Margaret's unsurpassed beauty was not the only which set her apart from other girls. As if God had decided when creating her that this particular girl was not yet fortunate enough, Margaret was the daughter of the King of all the land. The land was prosperous, its fields yielded crops with astonishing efficiency and its mountains were practically teeming with gold. Sadly, in this land and in all the lands surrounding it, the concept known to reader as art had not yet been discovered. So the castle had no ornamentation, homes had no décor, cathedrals had no stained glass. All "design" choices were made by engineers in the most practical way possible. No one had ever thought to alter how some looked, so it would be more pleasing. It goes without saying that no one had ever though to make pleasing sounds or even a realistic sculpture.


On her 18th birthday, after a party so spectacular that the reader can't possibly conceive of it (this is inherently true, because no one wealthy enough to comprehend the extravagance of the party would be bothered to read) she had a vision as she slept. In her mind's eye she saw a beautifully cut block of marble. When Margaret awoke the next day she told her parents what had happened in her mind while she slept. Not wanting even their daughter's subconscious to want for anything, the King and Queen ordered a large block of marble exactly as Margaret had described it. Slightly frustrated with her parents overzealous efforts to please, she had the servants move the half ton block to the top room of the highest tower.


The next night Margaret saw a chisel and hammer. Following her usual pattern she told her parents about the strange vision, and before long there were several hammer/chisel combinations laying beside the marble in the top room of the tallest tower. Then the sleeping started to get quite strange for Margaret. She would see herself being celebrated through out the land. She was riding in a parade around the Castle being thrown in her honor. She could sense that everything seemed much more beautiful. There were things she could see which made happy, and sounds that pleased her greatly. Then she would force her way through the crowd to her beckoning parents. All along her way people thanked her for bringing them "art". Then as the confused princess reached her parents, her mother would weep, point to a beautiful marble sculpture and proclaim that it was the best invention in the history of the land. After having felt the grandness of her life in this dream world Margaret could not bear to live her real life. So she set out to make the vision come true. She worked day and night on what she imagined would be the first of many projects. She became very attached to the physical product and the ideas it represented, and she began to refer to the whole thing as her "dream".


Margaret put all of her best effort into the dream, and after two years she was finished. Sadly, on the day she completed the project, the King was informed by a page that his wife had been having a torrid, love affair with one of the royal knights. The king had been a very forgiving and docile man his entire life, but his love for his wife was such that this news sent him into a catastrophic rage. He ran frantically through the castle throwing everything about. The anger fueled a desire for destruction which seemed to be insatiable. After he finished destroying the first 3/4ths of the castle, he furiously began searching for things to destroy in Margret's quadrant. Margaret quickly ran out of her study to see what was the matter. Her servants informed her of what had passed and led her to the King. Margaret pleaded, weeping with her royal father to calm down, but the man was too consumed by rage to even hear his daughter. He tore through every room until finally he reached the top room of tallest tower where Margaret's dream was waiting, under a cloth, to be revealed.


Showing incredible strength, the King lifted her dream off the ground and dragged it to the window. Margaret screamed and cried for him to please put it back. She tried to explain that it was her "dream" and she had just gotten it right. But the old man had lost all sense of reality and with a great heave he defenestrated Margaret's sculpture. It left the window and immediately started descending to the ground. Margaret sprinted to the window, instinctively but futilely attempting to prevent the now inevitable demise of the first piece of art in all the land. Margaret put her head in her hands, she felt as if all the life, happiness, and purpose had gone from her. Her sadness was such that she could not even cry, she could not even move, she could not even think.



She lived out the rest of her days in miserable, depressed, stupor while her father was institutionalized and her mother ran away to another land with young knightly lover. The kingdom fell into ruin as its leaders were either incapacitated or had ceased to care, and all because Margaret's dream was destroyed that day.



And this boys and girls, is the story of how Margaret's dream, went out the window.

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