Stones In The Merrimack

The painstaking crime of today is that modesty is a dead and gone art form.

However truth be told, it was never a complex art form to begin with. It was taught by example. And there are very few teachers. Modesty, a token of grace and respect among wanted company, is the unspoken understanding of respect and decency among men and women of conviction. There is no need to boast among such company, as action speaks for itself. There is so much more purity in the genuineness of such exchange. It infuriates me to see such natural humanisms flee from our daily lives into obscurity. And there is definitely a lack of decency in this respect, this coming from a man that is prone to acts of indecency. My broken dialect of chivalry, however bastardized its ways may be, has grown to dogmatic proportions with expectation. I am not sure if I was born of it, learned through nature versus nurture or through simple observation. But I will say that its size is a sheer reactionary revolt to the parody that is your modern age’s desperate need for carefully constructed perceptions. I expect more of you. Politics, media, education, institutions, country, the survival of the everyday family – all made fools of with banal stories, fleeting glory, and over romanticized ideals. If I am to suffer as a fortune’s fool, so be it, but I will never and pray not hear speculation on the common decency of such tongues as these, that act with hardship and fend, speak true, and brief, but never speak with the tone of an immodest soul thieving for acceptance. Consider this an open letter.