All good things must come to an end, they say, which is idiotic, because what are things? In the context of this worthless aphorism, things tend to be eras or events, rather than physical objects. Obviously physical objects, good or otherwise, tend to have ends. Living things die, edifices crumble, the sun will burn out, the earth will shatter. Likewise, both the goods and bads in produced objects tend to be exhaustible. The whisky runs out, the apple tree bereft of fruit, the meal is over. Art ends too, you know, and however many times you may return to it, you are not forever observing it, which may sound deep, but is incredibly shallow as aesthetic principles go. So yes, your party is over and you return to the grind of your routine, which often seems more or less grinding from outside perspectives than it actually is for you. The summer ends, the concert ends, Leonard Cohen’s life ends, but Lord Choppington does not end, he simply rides off, perhaps to ride again, though there are no guarantees.
Lord Choppington has no poverty of spirit, even in his doubt his spirit remains strong, rich, even. He rode again out of no lack, no absence, he rode because his services were required. He forgot the Kingdom years ago, forced himself to forget it, because he sought to serve people, his chosen community, and, finally, himself.
Lord Choppington has loved and lost, in both senses of both terms, and is prepared to love and lose again, but not for nothing. He mourns bad decisions, mostly regarding unworthy people, but celebrates what he has learned, again in both senses, after each decision has passed. The man is a killer, he makes dead, and when one makes dead, mourning is a vacant afterthought. His comfort is yours, if you are his comforter, and his pain is his own, lest you interrogate him for it.
Lord Choppington can be silent, can be docile, can be amiable, can be accepting, but has no need for meekness. You see, it does not serve his ends to be meek, because his ends are mysterious, not least to himself. There is no immediate power which is motivated to subjugate him, and the earth is hardly worth considering as inheritance. He will let it fall to whomever follows in the line of succession, let it be their responsibility, and let them be meek for it.
Lord Choppington, by the by, has not want to be righteous, for he is righteous in the intervals it is required of him, and in between those, rests. He can say for himself alone that righteousness is not an eternal spring, that it is instead entropic, and must be regenerated from without. Should he be hungry, he shall eat, should he be over-sharp, he shall drink, but to be filled with righteousness only means that he is not expending it, he is needlessly hoarding it, and this Lord Choppington shall not abide.
Lord Choppington, as we have seen, doles out mercy with great care, and arguably not at all. If mercy means forgiveness without reason, then he has no quarter for it, and, in kind, expects and anticipates no such treatment from anyone else. If he does not openly espouse eye-for-an-eye, he secretly harbors tooth-for-a-tooth, but it is secret, even though he sometimes wears it in the folds of a satisfied grin. He will be fine, thank you for your concern.
Lord Choppington will stop wars, but he feels no responsibility to make peace. Should he end you, you might with your penultimate breath consider what it means to deserve being ended, and with the final, whether it matters at all. Should there be peace to be had, he may find it, but to manufacture it where there is none, he shan’t. He is no child and has too many names by which to be called already: Andrew, Pedro, Pablo, Ricky Ricardo, Porkchop. Be both lucky and advised to call him friend.
Lord Choppington is under no one’s heel, lest he has chosen to be for his own designs. He considers not hidden persecution, makes no space in his life for his finer qualities to be impugned or his principles to be held to ill account. He told you, in so many words, that he is neither serf nor sovereign, but rather participates in the various games at the midway of life at his own discretion and leisure. The spoils of prescribed behavior are rarely those after which he seeks, and in the rare instance they are, he will drop his shoulders and hoist the weight as is necessary to attain them.
This is all to say that Lord Choppington is no prophet, no exemplar, no martyr, no evangelist. He rode, I saw it, I was there, and he rode again. But now he was to ride off, and we will all have to think about what that means. He left a body count in his wake, but he was tidy, and that is worth our respect. He did not plan it this way, and I know because he told me this part of the plan, but the sun is setting before him, and so I’ll let him walk, not ride, actually, off into it. At the other side is an unholy bender, a punk rock bar that holds only spirits and spirits for him, but more of the latter than the former. Then there will be a long walk and an even punkier bar, darker, dirtier, more spirits and fewer spirits, until he has a retinue of his own. Then an improbably longer walk, which he takes faster, because it is darker and people may want to test his resolve, which would be their own error, but one for which he would be held responsible. Then a dungeon, a bondage bar, but he is there neither to beat nor be beaten, neither to bind nor be bound, he is there to finish the job. Then please pour him into a car, so he may sleep off his time in a bus depot, and disappear into his plan, until, or if, it is time to ride again.
