Hallow ground is trodden by weary feet, toes curled to the earth as they sluggishly make their way to the catacombs. It is a dreary day with a light drizzle dancing softly on the headstones. Not much is heard aside from the deep breaths heaving in and out of the solemn walkers. They all slowly make their way in one general direction, yet the course they follow seems haphazard at best. But for the one who sits alone on the tree stump it is quite a spectacle. What a joy to behold!

Someone stops momentarily and the young observer holds his breathe. What will this person do? What is his purpose? Oh the anticipation! But that observer is sorely disappointed when the meditator snaps to and continues on, without a hint to new life.

Such a life might seem dull, simply sitting in one location and doing nothing but observing. But there are definite rewards, like when an overturned casket was assaulted by thieving crows. The body was consumed in minutes, the family pulling at their hair in disbelief. He had remained on his stump throughout the family’s ordeal and grinned.

“How amusing!” he had thought to himself, “What a grand spectacle!”

He had listened, one sunny afternoon, as the groundskeeper had methodologically gone from empty plot to empty plot calling out names.

“Here shall lie the Mayor, who in his grandiosity consumed all!

“Here shall lie the pretty whore, who succumbed to her own vices!

“Here shall lie the schoolboy, who lost himself to his naivety!”

“What a prophet!” the observer had thought to himself, “I hope that I too one day will bear his gift!”

On another cold midnight, he had watched as two foxes bound from stone to stone. They sniffed, they marked, they played, and then disappeared into the darkness of the woods.

“What freedom!” the observer had exclaimed in wonderment, “I hope that I too will be wild and free someday!”

Little did the observer know that he was a prophet, and wild and free. That truth was hidden to him, whose only focus was on the world around him. He had little understanding of himself.

But in moments as the one of the procession, there was little need to consider one’s existence. So much could be gleaned, if only for amusement, from the lives of others. The world truly was a grand spectacle!