I love the construction of your writing, building up layers through repetition of elements, and then shining a light through the story constellation from within, throwing shafts of hope into the dark and icy wilderness.
... and that which was unsolved in the heart… the references to Rilke again, like a golden thread picked up and stitched through the tapestry of this piece ~ brilliant.
The mutualism of the stone pine and nutcracker bird struck as a perfect pitch to tune the discordant notes played by humankind.
“do not run from that which is unsolved for there is no place to hide.”
Indeed! Such a powerful piece and a true joy to read. Thank you 🔥🙏 💕
Thank you so much for the attention. I am doing those things, the layering and the (in Swedish it's called a) red-thread. I'm so grateful for your smart reading and analysis as always, Veronika.
(Also as an aside, I still have your last piece to read, it's bookmarked, but there's been so much recently...I'll be back to it soon :)
yes, red thread it is in German too. I think it was also the alleged colour of Ariadne's thread. For some reason I find 'golden thread' enticing, (perhaps mixing metaphors here in the wrong way, I better check my sources)
I know, time flies when we have so much to write, and even more to read...
Yeah, I agree with Veronika. I think you are creating a style, maybe a format for a greater story. Gregor has enough to say for a novel, I am sure. thanks Jonathan.
Oh Jonathan, this is a beautiful piece of work. There is a greater power here, so evident in your words. For once, you leave me speechless. So I will let one of my favorite authors ‘fill in’ for me.
“I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature—not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.”
"For once, you leave me speechless," - I hope you're well, Lor, he he just kidding. Thanks for the Norman Maclean quote, and the kindness. You are much appreciated in quietness or in spilling words :)
“I have no intention of fighting the system. I’m just not playing anymore.”
This entire piece rolled out before me with cinematic, chilling, beckoning intelligence. Leaning into the humans-before-now and the harmony once lived made me want to weep. I have been one of the questioners, wondering about our value here as if were some sort of sick aberration of nature. But then I feel the harmony return as I read you and our hearth of friends here on Substack and I’m left with hope. But as you so eloquently reveal, maybe not a kind of hope that lives while abiding the rules of society but becoming “a wolf among men.” Finding a new way, listening to a new conductor. May the orchestra continue to grow so someday it is the only symphony we hear.
There's a real feeling (as you know) about loss of opportunities and wrong turns taken at the moment. As I said in the first chapter this idea that somehow humans and not the current social/economic symbolic world are to blame is so sad too. I'm so glad you've (as you always do) got straight to the core of the things Kimberly. I swear when I finally get my first book finished I want you to write the synopsis. I'll discover things I didn't even know I was saying 🙏🏽
"May the orchestra continue to grow so someday it is the only symphony we hear" - Amen to that :)
It's funny how some images stick, I had quite a visual idea when writing that but.
"Sad and angry and howling..." and maybe a little hopeful? Both choices, confrontation of, or retreat from the violence, were made by both characters and there was something positive in both. I hoped :)
When nothing moves or changes, there is no hope. Hope is not an idea; it is the active will made manifest. Both characters acted in their respective ways. So, yes, my friend, there is hope!
To me it felt as if Gregor was the primal, unbound aspect of the narrator. And perhaps Gregor didnt disappear forever, and instead he’d been reintegrated into the narrator’s being. And in the end, they watched the buildings burn together.
Just made me think of the movie Fight Club, which I haven’t seen for probably two decades.
It's funny you should say that Eric, my wife said a very similar thing. For me, there were two separate characters really, but I was toying around with their similarities (we each of us have the narrator and Gregor within us), and morphing them in and out a little, plus I left Gregor's transformation quite open to interpretation... I like for an prejection to have space to happen too :)
I love how you wove the mysterious into and through this story Jonathan, it gives not only momentum but power, once again you leave me quite speechless with awe !
Oh my goodness, this part is just as good as the first. And thank you so much for commenting on my comment, Jonathan I feel honored.
Along with all the philosophy, which is just so good, the storytelling and writing here are phenomenal. Gregor cutting strips of moose meat and the “odour of sweet generous death and spitting fat.” I’m slayed. And then what was it? The ancient towering sheets of melting ice. So much contained in this opening.
And then we learn what Gregor‘s learned—of the course— and of how that’s transforming him (or so we think).
Then the ending! You pull off surprising and inevitable at once. I like to think of Gregor of yellow eyes still out there.
This is a profound and thought provoking piece, Jonathan. Here is to waiting for the chorus and howling to the moon. There is a better way for those who are willing to let go of what we think we know and learn what we have yet to learn.
Now this, " willing to let go of what we think we know" is a challenge indeed. Peeling off layers is most peoples biggest fear. I suspect not yours though, Troy :)
Letting go is unnatural. It goes against our hardwiring. It requires deep introspection, and this is hard for all of us — especially those of us who are perfectionists. We could learn a thing or three from the wolves and stories and the wolves of the forests.
Jonathan, the movement from section one that foreshadows a lack of time --or what I call "Time Limits" a title that keeps changing on me -- reached me with Gregor. The loss that turns to joy and acceptance on your part (or the narrator's part) in this piece moved me so. A decidedly powerful description of both your and Gregor's character. I would describe the story as "resilience" on the timetable that only loss knows ... and that timetable, often long.
I really like your "resilience" idea here Mary, and the pressure of time on the internal/external narrative. "A timetable that only loss knows". So true, so true. Thanks Mary.
'a wolf among men' - Jonathan! Such a symphony you've orchestrated under the night sky. This piece is part of a larger jigsaw and story going somewhere. So much to say, so much to do, such little time.
With the wolves and the burning stars this Friday night.
The clear new moon has cut a fresh slice in the sky. What an epic adventure.
"This piece is part of a larger jigsaw and story going somewhere." - I get that feeling with lots of tings I'm writing, as Veronika says above, a kind of golden thread going through all my writing. I hope I can weave it into something worthy someday.
"What kind of idiocy builds a machine that destroys all life, a machine that no-one controls, a machine we must obey before we obey our hearts? The answer, I feel, is 'idolatry'. We construct our techno-gods, then bow down to them, then worship them, then live in fear of them. A role-reversal; that which we have made to serve us, we end up serving it. And so it is with all 'machines' that try and control Nature.
Thanks Joshua, and I agree. Ever since we've cemented the ancient mammalian hierarchical tendencies through agriculture, we seem also to have cemented a pyramidical (oh the irony) hierarchy where some sort idolatry is sought after.
I guess this pierce in a way is a plea to give up on that too. Time to take indigenous responsibility again?
Anyway, tanks so much for reading and for your thoughtful comment :)
"Time to take indigenous responsibility again?" Absolutely. It tends to be forgotten that Europeans were also once 'indigenous people', connected with the land. The onslaught of Catholicism desacralised Nature and put the emphasis on the after-life (as did Portestantism), downgrading life-on-earth as a harsh preparation to avoid hell. I reckon that is why the Europeans, dispossessed and disconnected from their land, could then go the the Americas, Australia and elsewhere - and behave the way the did in relation to the indigenous people they found on the other side of the globe.
Absolutely Joshua, regarding attitudes to European indigenous people, here in Sweden we have a large Sami population and even today their connection to the past, the land, their traditional rituals etc. is scoffed at and belittled by the majority. The treatment of the Sami is Sweden's secret shame really. Anyway...
I agree also with your suggestion that monotheism in it's various forms continued "downgrading life-on-earth", although I might also suggest that the original Western splinter between humans and nature was Platonic idealism and the idea of perfect forms, which was then intensified with this man in the image of god business.
For me, and I totally agree with you about the source of the unforgivable behaviour of European colonialists, for me I'd add that part of this was also down to Earth (so to speak) in that ideas of separation and dominance, within a hierarchy of power, created the right circumstances for an exploitative economic value system to gain a foothold, and the early formation of capitalism also played a strong hand in the demoting indigenous people (instrumental capitalist racism) to chattels to be dominated and so on.
Just wanted to say thanks too Joshua, it's always such a pleasure to deepen these ideas through the comments and I really appreciate your engagement and discussion these things. Nice :)
Thank you too for the comment. Of course you are right, one could say that colonialism was driven by the search for raw materials to drive the emerging mercantilism and capitalist system, making certain countries that controlled the shipping routes and accessed resources in foreign places very wealthy.
"as these words peck at my civilised facade and call me home" - this is such a brilliant way to put it Ali, and frankly one of the reasons I wrote this was to peck and peck and peck! Thank you so much for reading and commenting, I really appreciate that :)
I love the construction of your writing, building up layers through repetition of elements, and then shining a light through the story constellation from within, throwing shafts of hope into the dark and icy wilderness.
... and that which was unsolved in the heart… the references to Rilke again, like a golden thread picked up and stitched through the tapestry of this piece ~ brilliant.
The mutualism of the stone pine and nutcracker bird struck as a perfect pitch to tune the discordant notes played by humankind.
“do not run from that which is unsolved for there is no place to hide.”
Indeed! Such a powerful piece and a true joy to read. Thank you 🔥🙏 💕
Thank you so much for the attention. I am doing those things, the layering and the (in Swedish it's called a) red-thread. I'm so grateful for your smart reading and analysis as always, Veronika.
(Also as an aside, I still have your last piece to read, it's bookmarked, but there's been so much recently...I'll be back to it soon :)
yes, red thread it is in German too. I think it was also the alleged colour of Ariadne's thread. For some reason I find 'golden thread' enticing, (perhaps mixing metaphors here in the wrong way, I better check my sources)
I know, time flies when we have so much to write, and even more to read...
Yeah, I agree with Veronika. I think you are creating a style, maybe a format for a greater story. Gregor has enough to say for a novel, I am sure. thanks Jonathan.
Cheer Wes, seriously man that's a very kind comment. I'm working on this stuff...hopefully...
Oh Jonathan, this is a beautiful piece of work. There is a greater power here, so evident in your words. For once, you leave me speechless. So I will let one of my favorite authors ‘fill in’ for me.
“I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature—not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.”
~Norman Maclean
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
"For once, you leave me speechless," - I hope you're well, Lor, he he just kidding. Thanks for the Norman Maclean quote, and the kindness. You are much appreciated in quietness or in spilling words :)
I figured you might worry if I wasn’t spilling a great amount of words in the comments.
I was worried. I love your words spilling
“Damn!” he says, settling onto a stump to think about this glowing thing he’d just read…
You see, that's writer's comment right there, David. From your glowing pen I take this praise most humbly :) Thank you.
Right?!!
“I have no intention of fighting the system. I’m just not playing anymore.”
This entire piece rolled out before me with cinematic, chilling, beckoning intelligence. Leaning into the humans-before-now and the harmony once lived made me want to weep. I have been one of the questioners, wondering about our value here as if were some sort of sick aberration of nature. But then I feel the harmony return as I read you and our hearth of friends here on Substack and I’m left with hope. But as you so eloquently reveal, maybe not a kind of hope that lives while abiding the rules of society but becoming “a wolf among men.” Finding a new way, listening to a new conductor. May the orchestra continue to grow so someday it is the only symphony we hear.
Extraordinary, necessary storytelling Jonathan.
There's a real feeling (as you know) about loss of opportunities and wrong turns taken at the moment. As I said in the first chapter this idea that somehow humans and not the current social/economic symbolic world are to blame is so sad too. I'm so glad you've (as you always do) got straight to the core of the things Kimberly. I swear when I finally get my first book finished I want you to write the synopsis. I'll discover things I didn't even know I was saying 🙏🏽
"May the orchestra continue to grow so someday it is the only symphony we hear" - Amen to that :)
I’ve thought the same about Kimberly writing a synopsis of mine… 😆 it’s so hard to see out from the inside of one’s own creation
Kimberly has got definitely skills. I cant see the wood for the trees sometimes, maybe spend too much time in forests ;)
What a splendidly enjoyable read.
A touch of Richard Bach but I don't know exactly why.
Thank you so very much Jonathon.
My pleasure Peter, I'm so glad you enjoyed this. Thanks for the kind comment.
A touch of Jonathan Livingston Wolf perhaps ;)
Sad and angry and howling...
Yet the image of Gregor's naked body running in the snow lights up my face.
It's funny how some images stick, I had quite a visual idea when writing that but.
"Sad and angry and howling..." and maybe a little hopeful? Both choices, confrontation of, or retreat from the violence, were made by both characters and there was something positive in both. I hoped :)
🙏🏽
When nothing moves or changes, there is no hope. Hope is not an idea; it is the active will made manifest. Both characters acted in their respective ways. So, yes, my friend, there is hope!
Beautiful, such vivid images transporting us with you to this wonderous place. A call to action, with a shift of perspective change Can be made.
We need to transform into wolves :)
Thanks so much Dinah ❤️
To me it felt as if Gregor was the primal, unbound aspect of the narrator. And perhaps Gregor didnt disappear forever, and instead he’d been reintegrated into the narrator’s being. And in the end, they watched the buildings burn together.
Just made me think of the movie Fight Club, which I haven’t seen for probably two decades.
It's funny you should say that Eric, my wife said a very similar thing. For me, there were two separate characters really, but I was toying around with their similarities (we each of us have the narrator and Gregor within us), and morphing them in and out a little, plus I left Gregor's transformation quite open to interpretation... I like for an prejection to have space to happen too :)
sooooo beautiful!! XO
Yeeeessss!! :)
I love how you wove the mysterious into and through this story Jonathan, it gives not only momentum but power, once again you leave me quite speechless with awe !
Don't speak, just howl ;)
Thanks, Susie. 🙏🏽
Howl I can do!!
Oh my goodness, this part is just as good as the first. And thank you so much for commenting on my comment, Jonathan I feel honored.
Along with all the philosophy, which is just so good, the storytelling and writing here are phenomenal. Gregor cutting strips of moose meat and the “odour of sweet generous death and spitting fat.” I’m slayed. And then what was it? The ancient towering sheets of melting ice. So much contained in this opening.
And then we learn what Gregor‘s learned—of the course— and of how that’s transforming him (or so we think).
Then the ending! You pull off surprising and inevitable at once. I like to think of Gregor of yellow eyes still out there.
You're so welcome Holly, and thanks to you :)
You know that smell though right, "sweet generous death and spitting fat"? mmm so good.
I love that yellow eyes thing too, the unknown, the mysterious, the wild.
This is a profound and thought provoking piece, Jonathan. Here is to waiting for the chorus and howling to the moon. There is a better way for those who are willing to let go of what we think we know and learn what we have yet to learn.
Now this, " willing to let go of what we think we know" is a challenge indeed. Peeling off layers is most peoples biggest fear. I suspect not yours though, Troy :)
Letting go is unnatural. It goes against our hardwiring. It requires deep introspection, and this is hard for all of us — especially those of us who are perfectionists. We could learn a thing or three from the wolves and stories and the wolves of the forests.
Jonathan, the movement from section one that foreshadows a lack of time --or what I call "Time Limits" a title that keeps changing on me -- reached me with Gregor. The loss that turns to joy and acceptance on your part (or the narrator's part) in this piece moved me so. A decidedly powerful description of both your and Gregor's character. I would describe the story as "resilience" on the timetable that only loss knows ... and that timetable, often long.
I really like your "resilience" idea here Mary, and the pressure of time on the internal/external narrative. "A timetable that only loss knows". So true, so true. Thanks Mary.
'a wolf among men' - Jonathan! Such a symphony you've orchestrated under the night sky. This piece is part of a larger jigsaw and story going somewhere. So much to say, so much to do, such little time.
With the wolves and the burning stars this Friday night.
The clear new moon has cut a fresh slice in the sky. What an epic adventure.
"This piece is part of a larger jigsaw and story going somewhere." - I get that feeling with lots of tings I'm writing, as Veronika says above, a kind of golden thread going through all my writing. I hope I can weave it into something worthy someday.
Thanks as always my friend :)
What a wonderful read.
"What kind of idiocy builds a machine that destroys all life, a machine that no-one controls, a machine we must obey before we obey our hearts? The answer, I feel, is 'idolatry'. We construct our techno-gods, then bow down to them, then worship them, then live in fear of them. A role-reversal; that which we have made to serve us, we end up serving it. And so it is with all 'machines' that try and control Nature.
Thanks Joshua, and I agree. Ever since we've cemented the ancient mammalian hierarchical tendencies through agriculture, we seem also to have cemented a pyramidical (oh the irony) hierarchy where some sort idolatry is sought after.
I guess this pierce in a way is a plea to give up on that too. Time to take indigenous responsibility again?
Anyway, tanks so much for reading and for your thoughtful comment :)
"Time to take indigenous responsibility again?" Absolutely. It tends to be forgotten that Europeans were also once 'indigenous people', connected with the land. The onslaught of Catholicism desacralised Nature and put the emphasis on the after-life (as did Portestantism), downgrading life-on-earth as a harsh preparation to avoid hell. I reckon that is why the Europeans, dispossessed and disconnected from their land, could then go the the Americas, Australia and elsewhere - and behave the way the did in relation to the indigenous people they found on the other side of the globe.
Absolutely Joshua, regarding attitudes to European indigenous people, here in Sweden we have a large Sami population and even today their connection to the past, the land, their traditional rituals etc. is scoffed at and belittled by the majority. The treatment of the Sami is Sweden's secret shame really. Anyway...
I agree also with your suggestion that monotheism in it's various forms continued "downgrading life-on-earth", although I might also suggest that the original Western splinter between humans and nature was Platonic idealism and the idea of perfect forms, which was then intensified with this man in the image of god business.
For me, and I totally agree with you about the source of the unforgivable behaviour of European colonialists, for me I'd add that part of this was also down to Earth (so to speak) in that ideas of separation and dominance, within a hierarchy of power, created the right circumstances for an exploitative economic value system to gain a foothold, and the early formation of capitalism also played a strong hand in the demoting indigenous people (instrumental capitalist racism) to chattels to be dominated and so on.
Just wanted to say thanks too Joshua, it's always such a pleasure to deepen these ideas through the comments and I really appreciate your engagement and discussion these things. Nice :)
Thank you too for the comment. Of course you are right, one could say that colonialism was driven by the search for raw materials to drive the emerging mercantilism and capitalist system, making certain countries that controlled the shipping routes and accessed resources in foreign places very wealthy.
"as these words peck at my civilised facade and call me home" - this is such a brilliant way to put it Ali, and frankly one of the reasons I wrote this was to peck and peck and peck! Thank you so much for reading and commenting, I really appreciate that :)
I appreciate that Ali, thanks :)