Here is a character sketch I wrote inspired by a good friend of mine… he’s kind of a true Huckleberry Finn type.. really looking for that way out..

He was far too content a human being to put pen to paper. His mind danced with poetry and myth in a serene, natural way, leaving him without the void that painfully entices the writer to strip metaphors from life and force them unwillingly onto a page. The writer asks, ‘Why do I write?’ and in quick turn, without hesitation, replies, ‘my pen understands me.’ He had no such need, as he felt understood by the birds, the trees, the rivers, the oceans, and nothing delighted him more than to reflect upon the song these naturally ornamental entities lifted him to, often birthing an untroubled, crystal laughter, his instrument and part to play in the lustrous, ever constant melody.

 If the great pain yet comes, wiping away the happiness he so naturally develops, he may find that a dip in ink and a plunge onto parchment are newly necessary endeavours he cannot forsake. Until that day, let the poetry exist in him as it was meant to: let the mirth and myth not falter or be stripped from life, manipulated onto a page, closed in a book, to exist only when the spine is bent in a singular, solitary fashion, creased in an ever deeper fitting groove. No. Let the metaphor continue to be draped before his eyes without a need to tear it forcefully from its natural setting. Let them both, metaphor and man, exist in their proper place… until that day.

Much of his contentment was furthered beyond most men in this: He desired no followers. Many men, he thought, in their heart of hearts, desire other men to follow them, even at the desert of who they truly are. They often play the part of helper or healer, even in areas of knowledge they have no say, speaking unknown lies from their heart, feigning interests or superficial empathies, for it lends to the hand of power. It is their hell though, he says.  A hell of incessantly, unconsciously casting out for the weak, feigning deep empathy and pity, layered thickly with an oily longing to ‘help’, neglecting their true selves in every step and stage of it. A narcissistic obsession deemed by the world as a superman’s attribute, glorifying; and deemed by the heart as unwanted, depressive, smug sanctimonies: for the perverse rush of obsessive pity simply cannot last. It is sooner or later relieved by an equally perverse sense of gratifying power, neither of which feel to the intensity of real pity or power when felt in such neurotic, unreal fashions. He saw this hell in many men, and wished to steer clear of it at all costs. ‘Follow me,’ he heard them say, ‘I have what you need. I can change you for the better.’ Instead, his mantra persisted and endured, yes, at times forlornly, with the melody of leading no man but himself. Pretending he held in his hand what others needed so they could pretend to heal and follow him seemed in union with insanity. It was insanity, as far as he was concerned. Sometimes he got lonely; but quite often, when in league with a truer path, happiness, he found, was blooming in the undergrowth.