The priest looked at the council with such conviction they
avoided his burning eyes. “I’m sorry Father, we cannot change the city’s height
ordinance for you to build a new church. What is wrong with the building you
are using now?”
The old man clenched and unclenched his fists, a habit when
he was deep in thought. “I had a dream in which we worshiped in a church so
close to God, our citizens could see him. They had no fear, no doubts, and the
town had no sins.”
The tallest councilman shook his head. “It was just a dream,
Father. What we have is a government. It is real and concrete, and our laws are
what protect it.”
“My dreams mean as much as your laws. Laws are simply words
strung together! They mean nothing more than the words in any given graffiti.”
The priest’s friend, the architect, placed a calming hand on
the old man’s shoulder, in a silent warning to bite his tongue. The senior
turned and when they made eye contact, the young man smiled softly and stepped
forward.
“Councilmen, before I became an architect, I studied to be a
politician. I learned that laws are concrete, but people, society - even words
are not. Laws, like language, should evolve.” He paused, to make sure the small
group of men was listening. “I once had a professor who used to tell us ‘Words carry the authority to dictate peaceand war, laughter and tears, love and hate.’ But, he would continue, ‘Words are models. We are sculptors.’
Society should not allow the laws to limit us; rather we must amend the laws to
evolve alongside us, our culture, and our very words themselves.”
The councilmen’s’ silence spoke volumes.
First off, I think your background image lends itself tremendously well to your blog posts, especially the second one. The priest’s ambition to build a church closest to God goes perfectly with the wide, freeing, mountainous space your background image provides. To me, a word that could sum up your second blog post would be ambition. You said, through the architect, that “words carry the authority to dictate peace and war, laughter and tears, love and hate.” The picture you chose for this blog post goes well with that sentiment. As a reader, I wonder why you chose to create the collage of languages that you did. Is it because perhaps that these nations were so ambitious, so powerful, and so unrelenting like the priest that it was their languages or nations that got to survive? I think your blog post is suggesting that we should strive to obtain our highest goals and break all the rules. As is it sometimes said, rules are made to be broken.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I love the narrative that you have developing. It’s very clear to read and the color of your text blends quite harmoniously with your entire blog. I really hope that you’ll have some crazy twist in your narrative. I get a very calming vibe from your blog, so it would be totally intriguing to have something horrifying happen. Please continue with this as I am eager to see what happens to the priest. However, I am also curious as how you will tie in your blog’s title “Four Minutes, Thirty-Three Seconds” into your blog posts. Is this number significant to the priest, the council members, the architect? Is it a code of some kind. I’m getting kind of a Da Vinci Code vibe here, which is fantastic.