A princess in the woods

   Inside the coach, the princess stood still, trying not to move a lot while being transported from her kingdom to the one she had been promised to. A marriage of convenience had been settled and her parents were thrilled to know that the prince that had requested her as queen was a very wealthy and powerful person. His kingdom had recently won new territories over a weaker enemy and because of that he had many presents waiting for the princess. But first she had to end her five-day journey over mountains and forests. The road that connected both kingdoms was rarely used and no coach was prepared for such a bumpy ride. Neither was the princess or her escorts.

 Inside the coach there was only one more person: her handmaiden. It was the only person there who could interact with both the princess and the men that were in charge of her safety. The young woman was not allowed to show her face for any reason while traveling to meet her future husband as it was deemed bad luck for any other man to see her before the wedding. So when they stopped for her to go and relieve herself, she was accompanied by her handmaiden and would wear a thick veil in front of her face. She looked strange but those were the customs people respected and it was better to respect them because no one ever knows who takes them very seriously and decides to punish those who don’t respect tradition. The kingdom that they were heading to was a very traditional place and known also for its violent ways.

 There were two guards always riding by the sides of the coach, the driver was also trained as a swordsman and the only footman was also very handy with the sword. When stopping at night to eat and rest, they would always form a small circle around a fire and would talk about women, battles and their work for the kingdom. They also discussed food and their own strength. And every single night, the princess would hear their discussion from the coach. She had to pretend she was fast asleep but the truth was she was fascinated by what men talked about. It seemed that, whatever it was that they talked about, it was real and natural and they weren’t tied down because of tradition or anything like that.

 In the mornings, the handmaiden would bring her breakfast. Every meal had to be consumed inside the coach and they could only stop the transport if she couldn’t relieve herself easily inside the coach. Her handmaiden threw piss out of the window but that couldn’t be done with the rest. For the men, it was funny when they had to stop for the other reason, as with all the rules the princess always seemed like a creature of myth but then they realized she was as human as the rest of them and that amused them but they only talked about it at night, when the women were asleep or at least that’s what they thought.

 Midway to the king’s castle, they realized they had to go slower. The road was full of rocks and very narrow in some points, especially as they got closer to the ocean. So the following days went very slow. The princess was bored out of her mind and the men were thinking about the moment they had accepted to be the escort of the princess. Of course, it was an honor, but the regions they were crossing were far from nice and safe. Many merchants said that the route was extremely dangerous for anyone who transported goods around and that’s what they were doing. Transport someone that was now owned by a powerful king. It was awful to put it like that but that’s how thing’s were: wives were not a companion but an asset of the man.

 One morning, what they feared happened. The pointy rocks managed to break one of the wheels and the two women were asked to descend in order to fix the problem. The handmaiden took the princess by the hand and they sat down on a rock, facing the opposite side of where the men were working. They had a spare wheel so they put themselves to work but then they heard something strange. Or better, they didn’t hear anything. There was not a single sound in the whole forest. Only the ocean on the distance could be heard. They decided to accelerate their work and try to leave the place immediately but that wouldn’t be possible. Very slowly, a group of men emerged from the trees and bushes.

They all had paint on their face and most were pointing an arrow to each one of the travellers.  One of the strangers walked up to the women and tried to get them to walk towards the coach. But the handmaiden started speaking fast, explaining whom she was with and what the traditions were for. The stranger kept moving his hand, trying for them to move but it wouldn’t work. Then, he got close to the handmaiden and she just launched herself onto him, fighting and trying for them not to touch the princess. But then the sound of an arrow put an end to it. It had pierced the head of the handmaiden, who was left on the ground before they grabbed the princess and threw her towards the men.

 The strangers surrounded them but lowered their weapons. They only looked at the people that they were preying on and were apparently trying to decide what to do. They spoke in a strange language and pointed to the princess often. Then, one of them got near the woman but the footman cut his walk. He tried to explain who she was but they pushed him aside and grabbed the girl. They pulled off the veil and revealed her face. One of the strangers, apparently the leader, seemed pleased with himself and grabbed the girl, pulling her towards the forest. She tried to resist without screaming but there was nothing to do. The man was string and pulled her to a place no one could see them.

  There, she knew that she was going to die or worse. She tried to prepare herself in order to fight as well as she could but there was no need because the man that had pulled her to that area of the forest just stood up there, looking at her. She did the same but didn’t know whether he was getting ready to do something or if he was just looking at her. Time seemed to have stopped and she was tired of waiting. If she was going to die, she wanted it to happen fast and soon. But the man just looked and her and finally pulled a bottle from a bag in his waist. He put some water on his hands and started washing his face thoroughly. She didn’t understand what he was doing but then she realized the paint was falling from his face and that, when he finished, he looked like a different person. To be honest, he looked like a person she knew well.

 The man just looked at her and then she asked: “Thomas”? Thomas had been one of her best friends when she was little, they had been best friends until she became a princess and a woman and he just disappeared. He walked up to her and told her that it was pleasure to see her again, more beautiful than ever. Her cheeks turned red and he just got closer and hugged her. She felt nervous at first but then she remembered and everything was ok. It was the person she remembered, the first man that she had loved. She held him strong for a few minutes until she decided to ask him what he was doing in that forest.

 Apparently, she had stopped seeing him around because he had been expelled from the kingdom, as well as his family. The princess wanted to be protected and they wanted a better husband for her in the future so they decided to disappear every single man that had any contact with her up to the moment when she became a woman. They were all sent to other kingdoms, towns, left to die of starvation because they used to be rich people that did what they wanted when they wanted and suddenly they had nothing to survives with.

 But Thomas was stronger than that and he had formed a group of rebels that protected the good people from the bad ones. They protected peasants from their kings, who only wanted them to work and die, so to be replaced easily afterwards. They also fought against traditions and once they had heard about the princess been promised to the cruel king to the north, Thomas personally decided to kidnap her and free her from burden. But she didn’t know what to say or what to do. She realized she was going to become a slave or worse but Thomas seemed too violent, not much different than what they said the king was. But then, again, the sound of an arrow ended it all. Thomas body stumbled down and the princess screamed, watching as the king she had been promised to smiled as he held his crossbow.

 Her life had just begun and it was going to be a hard one.

We made the monster

   So do this: stand in front of the mirror, stark naked, and just stare. What is your reaction? What thought are gliding through your brain right now? Are you really looking or not? Well, this is a simple test to check you are a person of the twentieth or twenty-first century. If you are, you will instantly find something that you don’t like, something that feels “off” somehow. Is it your waist, your ass or your genitalia? Is it your chest, your face even? Not really important.

 If you can’t find something to change, if you just love everything you see, sir or lady, you are lying. Or worse, you are lying to yourself so hard you don’t even recognize truth anymore. And why do I say this? Because we all know this world we live in today has made us hate each other and has crossed the border to make us hate ourselves.

 But what is the point of that you say? Well, easy. If we hate how we look, we will spend thousands of dollars trying to look different, to be desirable. And society is kind enough to tell us what to do in each case: maybe the gym, maybe a full makeover, buying new clothes and maybe even change ourselves physically with the help of a doctor or some other “expert”. All those things will help us but, once we achieve what we were looking for, we will realize this new state of being is not good enough.

 Why? Because we can always be taller, skinnier, bigger, softer… Better, in the eyes of the almighty society that is nothing more than a bunch of people that want our money and our minds. Once we concede, once we say, “Yes” at least one time, we have already lost. We lose our ability to see what’s good or bad, what’s true and what’s false. We just don’t even care anymore because we have entered the social convention known, as the “community” where everyone HAS to want the same thing and everyone has to get it exactly the same way.

 Imagination is slowly dying, more and more, each day more and more pale and pathetic. Because we don’t need her anymore. We have decided that copies are better than an original; we have decided that one good way is better than many great ways. Today, being different is only taken into account when it happens to be a fashion statement, a way of saying you’re “crazy” or “unique”, when truly you’re just the simplest one of the whole bunch.

 Real creative people live like rats, hiding in the dark, trying to live by. They just can’t stand the world and sometimes leave it but others decide to stay on as a challenge to everything that exists. They make their own rules and they are left alone, because no one will really hear or see them. They don’t matter anymore and they use that to their advantage. When no one looks at you, you are suddenly free to experiment more and more, even if that new acquired knowledge is only going to be shared with a handful of other “freaks”.

 Still, the world is ruled by those who think that they are making a difference but, deep down, they know their actions are not important enough to matter in the grand scheme of things. Not that they are bad or evil. No, they are just ignorant and many of them are ignorant very willingly. They prefer this life because the less they know; the more comfortable they are with others. Who cares about the grandiosity of the universe when your boyfriend has a big dick or your girlfriend is a submissive person?

 And that’s the truth. That’s what we all think about because, at the end of the day, even the ones that still use their imagination are contaminated with the filth of a world that hates us for who we are but that need us to keep moving, to keep gaining wealth and power. How many times an artist has succumbed to the stronger will of money? It’s a very popular saying: “artists have to eat too”. And it’s true.

 It’s of the monkey act on the streets: you have to dance and clap and act like an idiot to be noticed, to be seen by the world and to be recognized, with money or food. If it was a world made by intellect, that wouldn’t be a problem at all because everyone would share and no one would starve. But we do not live in such a world. We live in one were there has to be someone on top and someone underneath him. Someone powerful and someone powerless. If that balance fails, they know things will go to chaos because we are simply not smart.

 Beauty is not a personal concept anymore and anyone that thinks that is gravely mislead. No, beauty has been modeled by society for a long time and what each individual thinks of it is highly unimportant. If beauty standards say fat is ugly, it will not matter how many fat actresses or fat models parade around the world. The concept of beauty will not change and fat girls will still feel awful looking at the mirror and living as who they are.

 Even if we know that the chubby guy in the bus is kind of cute, that doesn’t change anything. He’s still ugly to the eyes of society, meaning that we can be accepting but only if we decide doing that will be to our advantage. Or way do you think some societies have begun to embrace homosexual people? It’s not because they have realized they are also humans, but because they can be used as a fashion accessory. That was the way the gay man made it into open society: by being a mascot.

 Offensive, you think? Untrue? Just take a look. On every single society the example of a gay man is the man in the salon doing hair. What’s he like? He’s delicate, very effeminate, girly in every aspect and often skinny. That was the first gay man that got into society and, as it performed a role in it, it was welcomed but not with open arms but with hostility. Eventually he became a pet for the women that wanted to be beautiful, so they became tools to achieve what society wanted. They had a use, they could be used.

 And that’s is the truth behind the so-called acceptance of minorities. It’s not acceptance but tolerance, they let us be there with them, but they always point out how different we truly are. That’s society. Not a beautiful place where everyone is equal and we all hold hands singing. Society is just a place, a gathering of people that have roles to perform. It’s not about freedom or rights; it’s about how useful we can be to those that are powerful.

 Of course, that cannot be used to promote anarchy. Why? Because anarchy is the rule of the people and people are ignorant and stupid. If people, “real people” ruled, the world would be in an even worse state. Who rule us are rats, that’s true. But they are people who wait, whose power has taught them to be patient, to play the game slowly and to put everything on its place. In other words, we kind of need the powerful ones, because that power has taught them how to handle things.

 Power for all? Impossible. Give power to someone that has never had it and see what happens: chaos and even less freedom and truth. People cannot be trusted. And when I say that, I mean every single person in the world. Good or bad, that doesn’t exists. People are just that. They are capable of anything and nothing, at the same time and that’s why, when they are being oppressed, their own “communities” fail to act. They just parade around, faking an interest that disappears into the oblivion shortly afterwards.

 And still, when we take off our clothes, we still look exactly the same in front of the mirror. Even with all those minor biological differences, we are all the same. Even the most powerful is as likely to die as the weakest of the human beings. Even the richest woman can still be capable of carrying a child and even the weakest man can still infuse life into the world.

 Yes, we are equal but only in nature. There, we are all truly a group, a family. But we are not nature anymore, except for our birth and our death. Everything between those two moments has been created by the society, which is sadly made of people like us that have had a glimpse of power and that have decided that that fat woman is ugly, that guy with a small penis is worthless and that child that has dark skin will be a danger just because.

 We have created the monster that haunts us every day and now we are incapable to handle it. And that is, partly, because we don’t really want to handle it, we don’t want it to calm down or to be more forgiving. We want him to be what we are afraid to be openly: brutal and utterly human.