Apr 15
CARDINAL BALUE'S CAGE
I have fallen out of myself
like a naked soul embarrassed to be seen
without a body
I seem to no longer exist
just thoughts flying about
without a human to nest in
I don't know if I mean
anything anymore
the world is losing its grip on me
I am down
to the dregs of myself
half a human being if you know what I mean
the world has become so
2-D to me
& I a one-dimensional being
oh how I long for to be
3-D
when the world was in love with me
I feel like Cardinal Balue
imprisoned in a cage for 6 years
by Louis the something or other
*
Ahhh grief...that invisible unseen woe that no man may know unless he also in the depths of it. I am not talking about the suit and trappings of it but as to how it manifests itself behind the eyes of the person enduring it. Grief is the presence of absence or the absence of a presence. It is like living under a bell jar with the oxygen running out. Only when one throws one's thoughts against the glass and sees them slither down the glass in words or just hang there does grief achieve a brief visibility. Or throwing thought against some invisible force field that has entrapped one's being and see the such thoughts spark into words and fry against this unseen. This only holds for the once that one tries this and is at once different yet again when words are brought to bear...these pathetic words illuminate my father's death and yet fail to grasp the nature of the pain
Louis XI (3 July 1423 – 30 August 1483), called the Prudent (French: le Prudent) His taste for intrigue and his intense diplomatic activity earned him the nicknames the Cunning (Middle French: le rusé) and the Universal Spider (Middle French: l'universelle aragne ), as his enemies accused him of spinning webs of plots and conspiracies.
The great wooden cage in which Cardinal La Balue expiated his treason to Louis XI. The Bishop of Lerdun, who was the inventor of the horrible contrivance, suffered a like fate, and the people, who had but little sympathy with either of these worthies, used to sing:
" Monsieur La Balue A perdu la vile, De ses evesches;
Monsieur de Verdun N'en a plus pas un, Tous sont despesches."
For three years he remained caged, unable to stand, sit, or lie. Louis XI. used to visit him occasionally, and with his favourite, Olivier, would stand and jeer at the prisoner through a hole in the door.
Considered as a State prison of the period, the Castle of Loches was quite a model establishment. Just within the entrance was an even more terrible cage, where Philippe de Comines, the great historian of Louis XI., spent eight months, unable to turn round, but contriving, nevertheless, to write a great deal of the wonderful Memoirs which have rendered him so famous.
The baseless story of his detention in an iron cage originated in Italy in the sixteenth century apparently but I used the story of it as shorthand for "fallen out of the world."
He was supposed to not to be able to stand up or turn around and Louis would come and mock him. Gone into myth and legend now but apparently he was kept in luxury but the horrible story is too good/bad to resist.
I have fallen out of myself
like a naked soul embarrassed to be seen
without a body
I seem to no longer exist
just thoughts flying about
without a human to nest in
I don't know if I mean
anything anymore
the world is losing its grip on me
I am down
to the dregs of myself
half a human being if you know what I mean
the world has become so
2-D to me
& I a one-dimensional being
oh how I long for to be
3-D
when the world was in love with me
I feel like Cardinal Balue
imprisoned in a cage for 6 years
by Louis the something or other
*
Ahhh grief...that invisible unseen woe that no man may know unless he also in the depths of it. I am not talking about the suit and trappings of it but as to how it manifests itself behind the eyes of the person enduring it. Grief is the presence of absence or the absence of a presence. It is like living under a bell jar with the oxygen running out. Only when one throws one's thoughts against the glass and sees them slither down the glass in words or just hang there does grief achieve a brief visibility. Or throwing thought against some invisible force field that has entrapped one's being and see the such thoughts spark into words and fry against this unseen. This only holds for the once that one tries this and is at once different yet again when words are brought to bear...these pathetic words illuminate my father's death and yet fail to grasp the nature of the pain
Louis XI (3 July 1423 – 30 August 1483), called the Prudent (French: le Prudent) His taste for intrigue and his intense diplomatic activity earned him the nicknames the Cunning (Middle French: le rusé) and the Universal Spider (Middle French: l'universelle aragne ), as his enemies accused him of spinning webs of plots and conspiracies.
The great wooden cage in which Cardinal La Balue expiated his treason to Louis XI. The Bishop of Lerdun, who was the inventor of the horrible contrivance, suffered a like fate, and the people, who had but little sympathy with either of these worthies, used to sing:
" Monsieur La Balue A perdu la vile, De ses evesches;
Monsieur de Verdun N'en a plus pas un, Tous sont despesches."
For three years he remained caged, unable to stand, sit, or lie. Louis XI. used to visit him occasionally, and with his favourite, Olivier, would stand and jeer at the prisoner through a hole in the door.
Considered as a State prison of the period, the Castle of Loches was quite a model establishment. Just within the entrance was an even more terrible cage, where Philippe de Comines, the great historian of Louis XI., spent eight months, unable to turn round, but contriving, nevertheless, to write a great deal of the wonderful Memoirs which have rendered him so famous.
The baseless story of his detention in an iron cage originated in Italy in the sixteenth century apparently but I used the story of it as shorthand for "fallen out of the world."
He was supposed to not to be able to stand up or turn around and Louis would come and mock him. Gone into myth and legend now but apparently he was kept in luxury but the horrible story is too good/bad to resist.
