Running Close to the Wind

by Alexandra Rowland

I would imagine that it certainly wouldn’t be allowed for me—not because I have a soiled past consorting with the people on the losing side—not the wrong people, mind you, simply the people who did not win—but because, Witness Amita, I am troublesome. And troublesome people, as we all know, are not something that institutional power wants to have to deal with. Institutional power wants to crush troublesome people and break their spirits—and may the Emperor bless my old Abbot Symon who gave me sanctuary, because until my dying day I will believe that he truly thought that he was doing me a kindness—and perhaps in some ways he was! At the end of the day, the vow I made then brought me here to this place, to the cave where the founding prophet of my religion was murdered, probably for being troublesome herself! And here we sit, sipping tea and eating curry! It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it! But while I do not hold a crumb of resentment in my heart for Abbot Symon as a man, he nevertheless was allowing himself to be used as a tool of institutional power, and the vow I made—speaking institutionally—was intended to break me.”