Jaques answers some FAQs.

1. Who am I?

Ah, what a question. Indeed, who are you? The idiots who surround me tell me I am melancholy, which is mostly true. But I'm a special kind of melancholy. I'm a traveler. I'm tall. I'm blonde. I'm poor, in the monetary sense, but I'm extravagantly wealthy when it comes to memories and experience. I'm intelligent. I'm an ex-fiance. I am an ex-CEO. I am spiritual. I am afraid of love. I mask that fear by pretending to hate it. I'm not at all organized. I'm a thinker. I'm cynical. I appreciate intelligence and irony. I am a philosopher. I have heard several claims that I'm a lunatic, but only by people in love, and their state of mind certainly can't be trusted.

 

2. What time is it?

21st century, I am not aware of the year. I know it's about mid-day, but the measurement of hours has long since become unecessary to me. I believe it's early summer, as the snow disappeared a few cycles of the moon ago. 

3. Where am I? 

In the center of a clearing in the massive Forest of Arden. The clearing sits on top of a hill, and it surrounded by beautiful oaks that are surely very old. If you stand on the huge boulder I'm currently sitting on, you can see all around the forest, and down into the pastures and some of the sheep/goat cotes. Right now it looks as if that irksome ditz Audrey is trying to ride a goat... oh! But she has some pretty yellow flowers! Perhaps I'll go join her...

4. What surrounds me?

Idiots in love. 

But to be more specific, Amiens is to my right, singing another lovely song and exuding a calm sort of mood over the clearing. Silvius is to his right, strumming on his guitar. Generally, he vexes me with his neverending prattle about true love, but he sure can play his guitar. There is an appetizing basket o' fruit sitting in the center of the boulder, but Amiens wants to wait for Duke Senior to arrive before we eat. The temperature is mild, but the wind is strong today, and will (hopefully) be able to blow away some of those god awful poems Orlando wrote about some girl with an ugly name. Those also surround me, in gaudy colors on each and every tree. 

5. What are my given circumstances?

Several years ago, before I gave up social conventions, I was a very powerful CEO. I started dating my COO and fiance when he came to work for my company, and 2 years later, he proposed. I was so smitten it is sickening to look back on. I of course said yes, and we planned a very elaborate spring wedding. 3 months before the wedding, he ran off to California with another woman and almost all of the money belonging to the business. After this, I sold everything I owned and bought a plane ticket to South America, where I hiked the Inca trail and spent a lot of time with indigenous people who introduced me to methods of meditation and spiritual medicine. When I returned to America, my family claimed I had changed drastically, and paid for me to travel to the south of France for some time away, which is how I ended up in the Forest of Arden. I have now made it my home, and I'm quite content to sleep among trees and rocks, their company is certainly more favorable than that of people. I'm not sure what's in my future, but I know that I want to travel more, and meet new kinds of people who can help me understand the meaning of life.

6. What is my relationship?

My relationship with the Forest of Arden is very easygoing. I appreciate the beauty of the place, and therefore treat it with respect, unlike that peevish Orlando. Any person in love is immediately a nuisance and offensive to my sensibilites. Really, the only people I can tolerate are Amiens, Touchstone, Ganymede, Aliena, and occasionly Duke Senior. Everyone else is in love or otherwise touched in the head. 

7. What do I want?

Immediate: I want Orlando to stop running around the forest and screwing up all the pretty trees. His poems are exceptionally bad, and written on ugly paper about a girl with a stupid name. 

Main Objective: To learn more about life and the forces that control it. Once I understand this, I will understand how to fall in love again without getting hurt. 

8. What's in the way?

Immediate: Orlando is too lovesick to even register what it is I say to him. But I do have some help in the matter, Master Ganymede is working to cure him.

Main Objective: There's no one in the Forest of Arden to teach me. Touchstone seemed like a good choice for a mentor, but he fell in love too. Sigh. 

9. How do I get it?

Immediate: Continue to chide Orlando. Maybe I should steal all his papers and writing utensils? Or I could begin writing good poems about how much he hates Rosalind. That would really set him off.

Main Objective: Eventually I'll need to leave the Forest of Arden and seek wisdom somewhere else. For right now, though, I'm pretty content. Amiens sings to me every day and the weather is agreeable.  And I'd like to see if Orlando gets cured, so I'll stick around for awhile.

10. How will I know when I've got it? 

Immediate: When Master Ganymede turns Orlando into a monk, and the horrible poems begin to disappear from the trees. 

Main Objective: When I'm no longer scared to fall in love again. 

Um, that took so much longer than I expected. I might never procrastinate again because of this, haha.

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Madison