| In the August of my first year |
| It was not a harsh grey country,
neither was it an iridescent gem amongst countries. It fluctuated
between the two, ever subtly changing its aspects of beauty or dullness,
overlapping and creating a slidy effect in the universe, like a kaleidoscope.
The weather could be bright and the trees of sparkling health and yet the
day would be overcast with deepest gloom, clouding the perfect glassy skies
and chilling the sunlight. Likewise the weather could be dark be
and the clouds so low overhead that it would be the simplest of things
to reach up and pull them down, but the landscape would be gently warmed
by joy or love and the clouds would not seem oppressive but protecting
as they delicately softened the cutting edges of the barren trees.
The country was not even so simple as this. There could be a spot of bright
sun and happiness encompassing a tree, and the flowers next to it would
be bathed in sorrow. The land was ever changing in the minutest detail.
Each blade of grass and flower and stone and meadow and tree had its own
fluctuating span of emotions, which dappled the landscape like a crazyquilt.
There were no people in this country;
whether they had never discovered it or had purposely left it alone was
not clear.
One morning a large area atop a hill
in this country appeared to have been cleared, and a perfect square outlined
on it. There was still no one about who could have done it, but there it
was. The country did not speculate on how it came to be there.
It did not have a mind, only the freely ranging emotions of which curiosity
was not one, because to want to understand the nature of a thing one must
have a mind to understand with. Some time later the outlined square
had been neatly paved with stones. A strange structure like a dead
tree with one branch materialized on a wooden platform in the center of
the square. Still there was no one; and still the country went on
as always. Some days after the construction had appeared a man came tumbling
from it. If there had been anyone there to witness it he would have seemed
to fall from the long wooden arm of the tree-like structure. He appeared
quite surprised to find himself in this country. But as he moved
cautiously through the kaleidoscopic emotions of the landscape he came
to a tree, which happened to be overwhelmingly joyful at that particular
moment and he sank down in bliss, quite ignoring the bit of rope around
his neck.
Copyright 1996 Sarrah Ward (HTML by Paul Ramos), Published July 2000 |