Reflections on the Limits of Virtue and the Geometry of Darkness
I have never worn the varnish of purity some men carry as naturally as breath. I could admire it—the symmetry, the seeming clarity—but I could never inhabit it. I have wondered if such a quality blooms from innocence, or from distilled residue of long experience. My own years have shown me that striving to be virtuous against one’s grain often ends in a fever of self-righteousness that swallows the one who feeds it. Yet perhaps for them, goodness is not a posture but an instinct, just as for me there is a certain grime in the marrow.
Given enough time in the darkness, your vision adjusts—you begin to discern forms others stumble past. If purity is a kind of sight, then perhaps it is also a blindness to what those of us in the depths have learned to perceive. Or perhaps my vantage conceals from me the breadth of their seeing, for they may have once stood where I am now, and found a way to step elsewhere. I cannot say.
From where I look, their conviction is often mistaken for wisdom by those still wrapped in ideals untested by life. To me, hero and fool often share the same stage. Still, a seed of doubt remains—could I be wrong? The hero carries a certainty I will never possess, one that reason tells me must rest on foundations riddled with omissions. And yet, I am compelled to watch, even admire. There is a strange convergence in how the hero wins the reluctant esteem of the antihero and the wary regard of the villain alike.
I have no appetite to step into villainy, but I cannot wear the hero’s outfit. I have tried, from time to time—the garment always split under strain. There is too much beast in me, too many edges tearing through cloth meant for gentlemen.