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The Journey

The rain fell heavily on the roof of the wooden house, and the cold wind brought icy air through the streets. The king left behind his kingdom and ventured into the unknown desert, hoping to find the monastery and learn the truth. Wearing his cloak, he became a stranger to the people, walking alone under the eaves of houses, shrouded in darkness and weariness. He pressed on steadily southward, resolute in his promise never to look back. We will leave the rainy night to the memory of the king, for the days that followed became a deadlock for the entire nation. But no one suffered as much as the queen. She tried to maintain appearances, handling every aspect of her husband’s disappearance with calm indifference; in truth, her inner world had undergone a shattering earthquake. She felt as if her identity had left her.

The days turned into even greater torment for the king. Terrible thirst and physical helplessness knocked him down into the sand. Every second was a moment of terrible torment. The king understood that the old man might have deceived him, but he consciously walked indifferently toward suicide. It would have been better for him to die covered in sand than to return to the life he had. After two days in the desert without water, blood barely flowed through his veins, his eyes were blind, and his body burned like fire. After three days, the king fell face down in the sand and most likely died.

“Wake up, wake up slowly, get up and walk,” a strange voice was heard from the sky. “Come closer to the sea,” the voice said again.

The king rose, turned his eyes to the horizon, and all around was a pure blue, a deep stillness. He was beside the sea with a stranger. Puzzled, the king asked, “How is it possible that I find myself on the seashore?”
“It’s simple,” answered the stranger, “one of us is dreaming.” The king pondered for a moment, then turned his attention to the seagulls. They were beautiful, like a forgotten melancholy.
“Can two people have the same dream?” the king asked.

“Of course they can see the same dream; anything is possible,” the stranger replied with conviction. “I have been in this place for a long time. I have been bathing my feet in the calm waves of the sea for what seems like an eternity. I can never wake up. It’s some sort of magic. Try to remember where you were before you fell asleep.”
“I was in a desert,” said the king. “The old man directed me to look for the rose.”

“Ah, an old man guided you too,” said the stranger, smiling.

“Tell me, stranger, who are you?” asked the king.

“I’m just a monk,” he replied. The waves of the sea touched the king’s feet, and a cold wind began to announce the dawn.

“Alas, it is you who knows which flower God loves the most. Please tell me the truth.”

The monk looked at the king with pity, and without thinking too much, he answered, “It’s the rose!”

“It can’t be. It is too simple,” the king replied.

The monk smiled and said, “God loved roses, and this field of roses He endowed with miraculous power. They are everlasting, blooming when we love someone and appearing in our hands when we are far from those we love. Until they fade and disappear forever, smelling their aroma lets us see ourselves with the person we love.”

“What field of roses?” the king uttered.
The monk showed him to look back, and the king was stunned at what he saw. A whole field of bright red roses, and with the sight came a wafting scent.

“This is what eternity smells like,” said the monk.

“But why is the rose more beautiful than any other flower?” asked the king.

“I’ve always been fascinated by roses,” the monk replied. “When it rains, the fragile droplets flutter on each petal, enhancing its beauty. The water passes on the rose’s red, refreshes its sweet fragrance, and is carried to the stem. The thorn-covered stem unravels the drop and lets it drift from the graceful plant to the ground.
Any kind of beauty, ultimately, is but a secret, the most seductive of all. The beauty of the rose, as of every object in the world, is that the secret is always in plain sight, saving appearances and focusing all attention on it. To be like a drop of water, to be consumed by the fragrance soaked in the rose’s petals, and then to realize the demonic beauty by hitting the thorns on the stem, is to know.

How lucky are the drops that barely touch the rose blossom; in them is mirrored just a sensation caused by the first touch, a shadow, a breeze. Those on the stem begin to discern the sweet bitterness of sensations, differentiating petals and thorns by criteria, placing them in categories. Only the drops on the ground know the true beauty of the rose. Beauty is true only when you know it, but until then it is only a sensation, a smell, an image.
Beauty is a whole, a destination with a journey. Admiring only the petals of the rose, I am disappointed by the thorns on the stem. Looking only at the thorns, I do not see beauty. Understanding the rose as a whole, as something in itself and for itself, I have a revelation of a mystery, the mystery of beauty.”

The seemingly mad king began to run toward the water. He plunged into the sea, holding his breath and closing his eyes. When he opened them, he saw that he could breathe underwater. Suddenly, he found himself in the castle, but he seemed to see the castle through water. Everything was suffocatingly close, yet wrapped in a blanket of profound silence.
He realized he was in the bedroom. He saw himself sleeping on the bed and tried waking up, but it just seemed impossible. His shouts were noiseless, his movement powerless. He saw the queen sitting and crying at the window. He wanted to hold her, but he held back and touched her hair instead. The king saw her turning back and looking through him. He realized it was his soul there, returning at that exact moment in the past.

“My love, it’s me, please, just wake me up and tell me you love me and it’s enough. Now I see your real beauty.”
But the queen went sadly inside to look in the mirror. He made one more movement, this time to grasp her. But he felt the water change the setting. In a second, he was in a totally different place and time.

He made a quick movement, waved his hand through the water, and suddenly saw the queen standing beside the bedroom door. She was dressed differently than on the balcony. She was wearing a beautiful celebration dress, and he could hear noises made by people dining in the hall. He realized it was the night of her birthday.
Her eyes were always sad with her beautiful lips and pale skin. He had caused the queen so much pain, but she didn’t deserve it. They both deserved happiness. Reality was far more important than any dream.
And the answer to everything the king sought was so obvious; it wasn’t a book or some wisdom—it was the queen, the one who loved him as she knew best, but for the king, it was never enough. He ran to the queen and embraced her as he had never done before.

“What’s the matter, my dear?” the queen asked quietly.

“I miss you,” the king replied, agitated by his own gestures.

“But I’m here, I’m here in your arms. I always have been.”

“Please forgive me. Give me another chance,” the king exclaimed desperately.

But he looked for a second into the void and realized there was nothing, just water. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe and headed to the surface. He swam to the shore, and when he pulled his head out of the water, he saw a rose floating beside him. He picked up the rose and read the truth on its petals. It was Sofia, the queen’s name.

Excerpt From
Silhouettes of a Broken Heart
Cristian Buga
This material may be protected by copyright.

The Preacher

On one rainy summer day, the king heard of an old man who was known for his wisdom. He healed many souls, and rumor had it that the wise man ate only a piece of bread and took a sip of water when he awoke from his long prayers. He lived on the edge of the kingdom, in a small wooden house with a shabby exterior. The king decided to visit him, but without anyone’s knowledge. He covered his beautiful clothes with a black cloak, and in the middle of the night, he snuck out of the palace, running unseen up the stairs near the gardens. He walked past people’s houses with deep disgust. He wasn’t used to walking so close to people who didn’t live in the palace. All people seemed vulgar to him, and their insensitivity aggravated his despair. Reaching the sage’s doorway, he knocked on the old door three times. The old man came out, looked at him suspiciously for a long time, then called him into the house. They sat down, and the old man lit a candle, the flame of which was the only source of light in the darkness of the room.

“Wise man, I have come to you in the hope that you will be able to wipe away the mold that has blossomed in my soul,” the king addressed, covering his face with the palms of his hands. “I’ve spent many hours locked in the library, but I still haven’t found the answer to who I truly am”

The old man, his movements deliberate and slow, let the silence drift into the darkness. Little did he know that before him stood a king. “You are thinking too much; sometimes you don’t have to control and know everything. Are you trying to understand the world?” the wise man spoke absently. “Only creators understand their purpose and the world’s purpose.”

“How do I do it?” the king asked anxiously.

“You must love, otherwise you are nothing but a blind camel.” The old man’s face was lit by candle flame, and his eyes radiated a strength that warmed even the most desperate souls. The divine can be seen only flourishing in loneliness.

“Love is not the answer,” the king continued passively. “You think I haven’t tried. Love is a changeable subjective state.”

“Tell me who you are, you truth-seeking stranger.”

The king dropped the black cloak from his shoulders, and gleams of gold began to light the room. The garments of expensive fabrics covered with precious stones caught the old man in boundless confusion. But he soon understood who was standing before him. “How can a king be unhappy with the most beautiful woman in the kingdom? You live in the palace, you hold the greatest power in your hands, but you weep for your own pity?”
Having been subjected to those questions, the king hurried to the door, wanting to leave the shabby house as quickly as possible. He had lost his last hope; no one could help him. But the old man’s harsh voice suddenly slowed his pace.

“If you find out which flower God loved the most, you will know the truth, it’s written on its petals” echoed loudly in the air.

The king returned curiously to the darkness of the room. The old man, in a quiet voice, by candlelight, told him a story, or in fact, a legend. Time and space were unknown, and only memory was responsible for the veracity of what had happened.

“In a monastery in a far-off land, a young man was brought up by the monks like all young men. As a child, he was told he had been abandoned by his parents. He studied all the church books and was diligent and honest, but life in the monastery was a mere existence. The young man wanted to know the other extreme of life, the demon of love, the taste of freedom, the pleasure of doing and creating. Often the young man would wander by an oak tree in front of the gate and gaze at the boundless sky, at the plains stretching forever and unceasingly into abysmal distances. He always quenched an impulse in him, the desire to live in his own skin. When he returned to the monks, he was aware that there was no good reason for him to leave their community. He was fed and clothed; the prayers were an ever-renewed attunement of spirit and soul. If he had left, all the monastery servants would have been upset, and the young man felt indebted to everyone for raising him. Time, however, precipitated suffering in his soul, for to give up the possibility of knowing the splendor of all human experience is a torment. The waiting lasted a lifetime; the year became the smallest unit of time. The young man became a weary monk. Everything lost its value, for once he gave up the possibility of living for a noble purpose, the monk turned into an unhappy conscience.
In his old age, his face was exhausted, his brow furrowed with suffering, and, facing death, he always regretted having chosen to live for the monastery. All his life he prayed to a God who never answered him and was cloaked only in silence. He stayed shut up between four walls to be closer to the divine, but all he got was pity. Regrets cut deep into his conscience. He couldn’t sleep at night, he was always absent from services. But one night, everybody saw him going to sleep and suddenly disappear from dinner. In the morning, the monk was no longer in the monastery, and a flower was found on his bed. That flower astonished hundreds of believers because, although it was cut off at the root, its petals and leaves never wilted; it was evergreen. The priests had hidden what kind of flower it was and decided to keep it a secret, so no one could find out the truth which was a word written on one of its petals. They did not want the world to know the truth.”

“What happened to the monk?” the king asked anxiously.

“Some say he died in his sleep, his body transforming into the flower with the truth inscribed on its petals. Others believe that in his old age, he finally decided to leave the monastery and disappeared into the night, but no one knows what really happened” The old man stood up and walked slightly stooped to the window, then said to the king, “If you want to find the flower, you must leave and never return, neither to the queen nor to the palace.”

A draft of cold air rushed into the room and violently hit the window, extinguishing the candle. The old man tried to convince the king that he had never known love, and once he left, his decision would be irreversible, but the attempt proved futile.

“Know that if you truly loved someone, that love became a part of you. You loved projections of your wife; in no way did you love her.”

“It’s true. I fell in love with the queen when she was surrounded by people or walking around the palace in expensive dresses, but I forgot about her when she was alone, when she was crying in bed. But that’s love,” the king replied exasperated. “No one can love without loving himself. I loved her when she was beautiful, but when she was filled with sadness, when she intoxicated me with the fact that she had a complicated spirit, love disappeared involuntarily. I felt nothing.”

The old man looked the king in the eye and said, “True love is when you forget yourself and love the person you love even when she cannot love herself, when your whole inner being is spontaneously found in the soul of the one you love.”

Excerpt From
Silhouettes of a Broken Heart
Cristian Buga
This material may be protected by copyright.

Pride

Page after page, he desperately flipped through the books in the palace library. Philosophy did not give him the certainty and freedom he needed. Often, the queen found him sleeping with his head on the table, surrounded by various volumes. Night after night, the stars rose in the sky, and the king sank into insomnia. For the melancholic, insomnia is a torment capable of driving them mad. During the night, the unhappy seek to escape into illusions; they want to forget themselves, but sometimes a book is not enough. The Queen did not understand what was happening in her husband’s inner world. The same fears and regrets lingered every day. The same waiting went on and on. One evening, she got angry and stormed into the library.

“Who do you think you are?” the queen shouted, quickly approaching the shelves of many books. “Are you a dying man? You suffer from nothing but your own pride. You wish everything were a bouquet of flowers arranged by itself. You pretend to be a weary conscience; in truth, you are only a spoiled child of life.”

The king looked at her for a long time in silence. Then he looked down into a book.

“Why do you forget that I am a being conscious of my own existence?” continued the queen desperately.

“Do you think it’s natural to hug me only after you had a nightmare and were frightened?”

In the library, dusk cast the sun’s rays on the walls. The King got up from the table and began to walk slowly through the hall. Inwardly, he didn’t want to answer any of his wife’s insistent questions, but she kept pressing him.

“According to you, if I don’t read, I must be worthless,” the queen protested sadly.

“And a lot happens in the heads of people who don’t read. Since you like to wallow in self-love, I’ll leave you to your cheap books, but perhaps you should have realized by now that the truth is not hidden in a library.”

The king’s face changed. Anger flashed in his eyes and his hands began to shake. But he calmed down after a few moments and began to laugh derisively. He was in perfect control of his every action, but circumstances had caught him in acute moral unpreparedness. He took a few steps toward the shelves, picked up several books, and began to throw them around the library. He tore pages and destroyed covers. His spirit became powerless under the impact of the force fueled by anger. The king seemed to have transformed into a beast, and the queen was terrified, seeing a stranger before her. The poor woman ran into the bedroom with tear-filled eyes, and the cries of the desperate madman could be heard throughout the palace. The deepest silence carries with it the storm. The evening in the library was the unleashing of a bitter storm. He felt the need to destroy everything to free himself from the burden inside and all the unspoken words. The library turned into a disaster.

The husband and wife in the palace stopped communicating altogether. They became strangers to each other, ignored each other, and decided that the only thing that still united them was their duty to rule the kingdom. For nights, the king dreamed he was walking past a wheat field. Each time he found the red poppy flower down below, and when he looked around, he realized he was alone. The queen was not near the field; he was alone there.

Excerpt From
Silhouettes of a Broken Heart
Cristian Buga
This material may be protected by copyright.

Homage

It was the Queen's birthday, and relatives from far and wide gathered at the palace to celebrate. Expensive gifts were brought from distant lands: jewels, diamonds, and elegant dresses. Guests sat at a grand table in the palace's largest hall, beneath a high, pale-painted ceiling and walls adorned with delicate figures reminiscent of leaves and flower stems. The tables were laden with dishes, and the best wines flowed like rivers, filling countless glasses.

The king had isolated himself in his bedroom. He was ill at ease among people, and celebrations repulsed him. He couldn't fathom how others could be so happy while he was consumed by sadness and desperation. He read a few pages of a book, then fell asleep. In the days leading up to that evening, he had been haunted by a deep restlessness. His heart ached painfully, he was easily moved to tears, “and an unfamiliar impulse directed his every action. A consuming affection strangled him without ceasing. Feelings capable of covering oceans throbbed in his blood, and lucidity was replaced by the impulses of the soul. All his moods had one cause: the king missed his wife. He missed her even though she was beside him.

He knew he should not trust his senses, but all these feelings sprang into his consciousness without any particular cause. Drained of his powers, the king dreamt he was standing on a road beside a wheat field. The sky was clear, and in the distance, the queen approached with a red poppy flower in her hand. She walked slowly, not hurrying. The king moved towards her, and a deep sorrow filled his soul, a longing for a lost paradise animating his senses. His wife's lips tried to form words in the air, but everything was so confusing, each movement requiring immense effort. He could hardly understand what the queen was saying to him. “Full of regret and remorse, she whispered something to him, begging him to hold her. The king's heart overflowed like a lake flooding its surroundings. Her velvety voice lingered in his mind, reducing the whole world to her plea: "Come to me."

Suddenly, someone entered the bedroom and opened the door. The noise startled the king awake. His wife had come to call him to the celebration, as the guests were puzzled by his absence. She watched her husband through the darkness. He lay on the bed with a frightened face and a damp forehead. The queen thought he had a fever, but he rose, came close to her, and embraced her as he had never done before, pouring all his will into that feverish embrace, giving himself entirely to the moment. A sweet embrace, tormenting and full of truth—this was what the whole universe represented then.

"What's the matter, my dear?" the queen whispered. "I miss you," the king replied, agitated by his own gestures. "But I'm “here, I'm here in your arms, I always have been."

They slowly recovered from the strange state they had fallen into, went downstairs to the guest hall, and celebrated happily together. The queen often wondered what had happened to her husband that night, for when she awoke in the morning, he had reverted to his pride and pretended the embrace had never happened. Indifference and distress once again swept over his features, and the moment in the bedroom became an enigma in time.”

Excerpt From
Silhouettes of a Broken Heart
Cristian Buga
This material may be protected by copyright.