The Parable of the Rock

Zarathustra descended from the mountain, his heart bursting with the fire of a thousand suns. He found a man standing over the bloodied corpse of a King. The man held a common river stone, slick with the King’s "noble" thoughts.

"Behold!" Zarathustra cried, "The Lion has fallen, but where is the Eagle? You have destroyed a Greatness you could never conceive! Why have you stifled the Will that gave the world its color?" The man with the stone did not look up. He wiped his hands on his tunic and said, "I was tired." "Tired?" Zarathustra laughed with the scorn of the heights. "The Master lived for the dance! He lived for the pillage, the conquest, and the creation of new laws! He was a storm that cleared the air!" "He was a storm," the man agreed, "and in a storm, no man can close his eyes. He stole my grain by day, so I stole his breath by night. He called his theft 'Virtue,' and I call my stone 'Sleep.' Tell me, O Wanderer: Which of us is the greater creator? He who created a kingdom he could not keep, or I, who have created a night in which I can finally rest?"

Zarathustra looked at the King’s crown, lying in the dirt. It was gold, but it could not deflect a rock thrown in the dark.
"The King was a bridge to the Super-man!" Zarathustra thundered.
"The King was a man who forgot he was made of meat," the man replied. "He wanted to be a God, but he lacked the God’s ability to never blink. I am the 'Slave,' the 'Small Man,' the 'Herd.' I have no Will to Power. I have only the Will to Snore. And because I am many, and we all wish to snore, we have decided that the 'Noble Storm' is henceforth a 'Crime.' Not because we are holy, but because we are sleepy."

Zarathustra felt a chill. He realized that the "Security" of the valley was a deeper, more ancient power than the "Will" of the peak.
Zarathustra looked upon the fallen King and wept for the "lost heights." He turned to the man with the rock and hissed, "You have murdered a vision! You have traded the sun-bright dreams of a Giant for the grey dust of the earth! Do you not value the dreams of the Great?"

The man adjusted the stone beneath his head and looked Zarathustra in the eye.

"You worship his figurative dreams as the height of greatness; but I prefer literal dreams. He required the world to be his stage, but I require the space on that stage for my bed."

"And the rock?" Zarathustra asked.

"The rock," the man replied, "is my reminder that all men are not just created equal, they terminate equally as well."

The man tossed the stone aside and lay down beside the dead King. "Go back to your mountain, Zarathustra. Invent a god who doesn't need a bed. Until then, the rock remains the final philosopher."

Later,

Bob