SPOILERS: lots--this is set during a fairly crucial scene in
=Phantom menace=
SUMMARY: Qui-Gon Jinn lives in the moment.
FEEDBACK: I hope so. Any and all: comments, complaints and
compliments are welcome.
Serenity isn't something you can turn on and off like the beam
of a lightsaber. It is something that, once achieved, becomes
part of you, so that you don't have to think about calling on
it any more than you have to think about raising your hand or
blinking your eye. Serenity is... neither quite a state nor an
ability, something all Jedi strive for, an ideal surprisingly
often realized. And once it is realized it doesn't need to be
sustained by special meditations, or mental exercises, or
something as childish as a physical posture meant to teach
concentration to beginners. It just is.
I don't have it.
Kneeling here before a shimmering unbreakable wall, still and
silent, my body echoing the first meditation exercise Master
Yoda ever taught me, I reach once again for that inner peace,
and fail. It will not come. I have tried often enough during my
sixty years, and it will not come now, I don't know why I think
it would come now, as my breathing slows and my enemy waits
before me and my padawan paces behind me. Serenity cannot be
forced. Illumination chooses its own moment, and although I
have striven to be chosen, I have also striven for so many
other things, my focus on doing rather than being. The
knowledge that the two are one and the same has never quite
taken root in my soul, much as I have wished for it.
Wishing is not enough. The calm control I do have has served me
well, but my flaw has always been, and will always be, passion.
It has been feeling rather than reason that has led me time and
again to voice a dissenting opinion or commit an impulsive act.
I believe in those feelings, and I still stand by those
opinions, and I am content to be more warrior than mystic, more
rebel than sage, and now is not the right moment to worry that
I have taught my padawan by example not to listen enough to
that inner voice which will lead him to true, dispassionate,
serene detachment. I can feel him, though, behind me. I can
feel him.
When he is still, it is as a candle flame is still in a room
before the wind comes in again through the open window.
Too often, we use meditation as a tool and an exercise,
something functional rather than spiritual. I'm doing it now,
and it will not help me. If I opened my eyes I would see my
enemy's face, projecting rage as I try to project calm, and
being more successful at it. When the wall between us
disappears, I will find my calm in fighting, and he will
find...
The wall is gone, and my lightsaber is in my hand, and I am
moving. There is freedom in this, the simplicity of acting and
reacting, more relaxing to my mind than any meditation ever has
been. Freedom in motion. A lonely freedom, now that I dance
only with my enemy, and have left my partner behind. I dance
with my enemy and with the living force. He is a fool; the dark
side cannot taste this sweet. My muscles burn.
My padawan is impatient. I used to think it due to his age, but
he is old enough now to know a little more about the nature of
time, and it seems to make no difference. He would throw
himself through that wall if he could, to catch up, to fight at
my side once more. He sees what I see: this creature of
darkness, this Sith sunk deep in the misery of hatred, is
stronger than I am. The air is thick with anger, wielded as
expertly as the double red blade.
I parry. Inside. Outside.
The dark side is not about loss of control. There is discipline
in this enemy I face, discipline and absolute dedication. I am
a warrior, but he is a weapon. Unimaginable to willingly lead
such a narrow life, to turn away from peace and beauty, from
humor and companionship. The thought repulses me, much as I try
not to let it. I can't let him frighten me, I can't let myself
hate him as he hates me. But his hatred is stronger than my
calm, his anger a living thing more powerful than my
non-existent serenity. He will kill me.
Knowing that, I can live fully in this moment. I can feel the
force, feel my own movements and his, the glare of the lights,
the flat recycled air. Hear the gritting scrape of lightsaber
against lightsaber. There is no fear, not even in the moment
when his blade slides into my body, setting fire to what
remains of my life. No fear, but regret, regret, as I fall, as
I hear my padawan scream.
The lights have dimmed for me, the world beginning to fragment.
But I see him come, I feel him fight, I can sense his
footsteps as he dances with speed and grace and urgent sadness.
My enemy, our enemy, moves like a perfect piece of machinery,
with an economy of effort that wastes nothing. My apprentice,
my padawan, moves like a tree branch in the wind... but grief
weighs him down, grief beginning to shade into anger, and then
he falls and I would scream, but I know I must not.
I touch his mind with the part of me that isn't pain. Saying
nothing, conveying nothing except that he is not alone, and
there is more to the universe than this fight and this
opponent, and the living force is in him and with him and part
of him always. And my weapon comes to his hand as easily as his
own. In that moment, he is everything I ever wanted him to be.
I have never had the necessary detachment. I don't have it now.
The air grows darker and darker around me as I sense the final
fall, our enemy's fall. And then I look up into a face I know
better than my own, and I try to keep the regret in my eyes
from blending with the sorrow in his as we speak for the last
time. He doesn't need to know. My flaw has always been passion.
I touch his face, feeling his life against my fingertips.
So beautiful.
I'll never know what his skin tastes like.
Perhaps I will find serenity, illumination will find me, once I
am one with the force. But in this moment, all I know is that
darkness falls. I am leaving him. I lied to him.
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