The Moss Covered Sage

Garden Solitude

Biography

The Moss Covered Sage has been still for a very long time. His philosophy — if it can be called that, and he insists it cannot, precisely because naming a thing is a form of disturbance — holds that the correct response to most questions is to wait until the question dissolves of its own accord. He has been waiting for forty-three years, and the moss, recognising a kindred spirit, has been with him for thirty-one of those. He arrived at his current estate position after a brief career in academic philosophy, which he left following a tenure review in which he was described as "technically present."

His practice is distinguished by its extraordinary slowness. He moves, estate managers confirm, but the movement is difficult to document in real time. He has been observed, over the course of a full season, to migrate approximately four metres from one end of a garden bench to the other, a journey he appears to have completed without any detectable intermediate steps. Guests who sit with him for extended periods report a curious slowing of their own perceptions, which he neither confirms nor denies, considering the question to be moving too quickly for a meaningful answer.

The Moss Covered Sage is suitable for any estate where the owners genuinely mean it when they say they want somewhere peaceful. He will not tolerate weekend parties, amplified music, or conversations conducted at what he calls "metropolitan pace." He does not eat at mealtimes, preferring to absorb what he requires from the atmosphere. (He has been observed eating a sandwich on three separate occasions, but denies all three incidents in writing, in a hand so slow as to take several days to complete a paragraph.) He is, his references agree, the most profoundly peaceful person they have ever encountered, and also, by some margin, the most unsettling.