XII

XII

If you’ve never seen someone bleeding--I mean really bleeding, it comes as a surprise how much blood is in a man. Our great authors have used blood in as many metaphors as there are stars in the sky. But what do we know of blood? Unless you have felt it flow like water around desperate hands, unless you have seen it seep and drain onto shining steel, unless you have seen the suffering caused by your fellow man all in the name of blood and what it contains, you do not know blood.

To most of us, blood is just something that comes out when we’re leaking, be it from a cut after a fall, a nick while shaving, or any of the myriad things which cause the delicate form we inhabit to leak. It’s just a byproduct of life that occasionally we’re reminded of. I’ve heard that some ancient societies used to worship blood in some manner. Thinking on it now, it seems preposterous to us that they would worship something that each of us has inside us. We have it free of charge and in seemingly unlimited supply. Blood fills our language from our bloody hells to our bloodlines. We use it as a metaphor for nearly everything base and primal, yet how often do we actually see blood?

When you’ve seen blood, what you do defines you as a person. I was told that by an old friend many years ago. When you see blood spilt on the floor, staining everything in rust and wine, you know who you are. You know what you’re made of. Whether you want to know or not, blood tests us and defines us. From blood-oaths to blood-feuds, we use blood to define conflict, but is it the blood that’s conflicted? What does that red liquid care for feeling or emotion? Our blood may quicken at the sight of our love, but it is our heart, not the blood. Our heart is tested by blood as surely as the blood flows through the heart and feeds our being. So our heart feeds our soul, our spirit. You could almost say that blood defines a person. But isn’t that what starts wars? Defining a person by their blood? Using a person’s spirit against them under the guise of bad blood.

Yet still, blood has no care for our problems and our whims. It simply flows and brings life to those who have it. Life by one’s self, death by another’s.