Listening to Little Simz new album Lotus, one of the songs, The Flood, put me into a frame of mind that influenced this story. It’s told by a 10,000 year old ghost lamenting he loss of the Human Beings and the new way of the farmers. This might sound a little strange, macabre perhaps, but it’s actually full of optimism for life and belief in the potential of humans to right the imbalance.
The text is there for those who prefer but I recommend listening to this one, I like the reading, it’s got a potency to it.
Anyway, I’ve had a rejuvenating break and I’m very glad to be back, thank you for your kind patience. Enjoy.
As I walk this wicked ground,
Keep me away from the Devil's palm, I am the light
Little Simz - The Flood
1.
They say that it’s choices you make in life that define you, but that’s not true, it’s the choices you can’t make that define you. When those farmers attacked the dog they might as well have attacked me too. I had to fight, I was a Human Being and the dog was my brother. What choice did I have?
So, they murdered me and now I’m dead, obviously. I’ve been a ghost for 10,000 years, so you might think I’m some archaic, old-timey ghost covered in animal skins and freaked out by modern stuff like irrigation and the wheel. Ha, ha, you’d be wrong. I’ve paid attention, 10,000 years is a long time and I have seen it all. Incredible things, comic, tragic, dramatic, fates fickle tricks and the Devil’s handiwork. Except there’s no such thing as fate, and there’s no such thing as the Devil either.
Anyway, I died for the right reasons and no matter what those damn fools say we all end up dead anyway, so give me a good death every time. What about you, can you even choose? It’s funny, but in my ancient world a fool could do the right thing. In your modern world, even a saint is fucked. You see, it’s the choices you can’t make that define you.
The dog and I had crossed through Black Feather Land to see if it were true, to see if these farmers were no longer Human Beings. I had heard the talk, I’d heard the songs about these sickly ones who were trying to dominate and control, who turned their backs on their brothers and sisters and instead, like the goats they tethered in the mud, had domesticated themselves and pulled their horizons down around them like a low wall, enclosing themselves in a tiny world. They were spreading across the land, building walls and imprisoning everything, including themselves, dominating and controlling and extracting and destroying.
That’s why the dog and I kept a safe distance up on the mountain. We Human Beings, we knew the farmers were dangerous. It was as if they were possessed by spirits. Centuries later, after my death, when the Greek’s wrote that story they got it wrong, it wasn’t Pandora who released all the evils into the world, it was those damned farmers. Before they came along we had things under control, we had paid attention, we knew the risks because, believe it or not, we too felt the urges, we too knew the depths to which even a Human Being could sink, we knew that shift from love to hate, how we could be blinded by both the light and the dark, how we could fixate on a leaf and forget the tree, but especially, we knew the danger of giving too much to just one, to give so much that they cannot help but begin to take more and more, until they become so confused and lost that nothing holds value anymore, only the taking gives pleasure. Yes, we knew of these things.
And then the farmers came with their certainty and arrogance and began dancing about and flirting with the very same dangerous, feverish ego that we had held at bay, merrily nurturing their greed and envy and vanity and desire, embracing their insatiable lust for power, building their ego-driven ravenous societies, until, well, you know what happened, what’s happening, what will happen.
And it won’t be a good death. You know that, don’t you. I mean, even though they killed me in the blink of an eye, fired their arrows into my heart screaming that I was a barbarian, me, the only Human Being they'd ever seen, even though they left me and the dog for dead on that clay as streams of our blood pooled between us, even through they turned me into a ghost without a second thought and threw me under the crushing weight of time, century after century, millennia after millennia, a never ending voyage into the infinite, even though they did all this, it was still a good death. It was a righteous death. A death I could live with. And that is crucial.
You see, we ghosts, we have so much time to think and you living, you have so little. Life is so fleeting, and death is immense. You living blossom and wilt like spring flowers, round and round and round you go. And on that relentless merry-go-round of life and death, you become obsessed with death, and you take life for granted.
I understand. You’re only alive for a fleeting moment, a shooting star in Time’s infinite universe, but, believe me, you need to spend your precious moments perfecting the art of living instead of fixating on the art of death. The Sumerians and the Egyptians and the Aztecs and all the rest of them, they drove me crazy growing their hierarchies and worshipping their kings and priests, I knew they’d become ego maniacs. Dying to live forever. Ha.
What these sons of farmers never understood is that time and meaning are in balance, they’re entwined. The more time you have, the less things matter. To an immortal nothing matters. And when nothing matters, well, what’s the point? Farmers and their elixirs of everlasting life and their immortal gods and their reincarnation. Let me ask you, what kind of soul wants to spend eternity in the void of meaninglessness? Believe me, after 10,000 years I know what I’m talking about. But it’s ok. You can still sort yourselves out. Maybe. You need to sit around the fire again, and speak and listen just like a Human Being.
You might still have a chance, perhaps, you might still have time to tell yourselves a new story. After all, all you’ve ever done is tell stories. And you’re as obsessed with stories as you are with death. For all your scientific progress, all your understanding the material universe, its still just stories all the way down, isn’t it? One story on the back of another. After all these millennia you haven’t changed, even though you believe you’re at the cutting edge of humanity, as if the last few years are obviously the most wonderful and incredible of all the eons. As if the billions of sunsets and sunrises between the dawn of time and now meant nothing, right? Because now, you imagine you’re finally the most sophisticated of all time, as if time were some self-help book and you’re just getting better and better as the years pass, closer and closer to perfection. Ha, the truth is you haven’t changed at all. Not at all. It’s just the stories you tell yourselves that have changed.
You see the real battle raging in the living world has never been between life and death, that has always been decided. Death is the price of life. It’s a balance. End of story. The real battle is within yourself. The ever-flowing river of concepts and ideas and thoughts and voices that you imagine is yourself. The battle between pride and humility, greed and generosity, rage and vanity, you know, the evils nurtured and worshipped by the farmers, the deceit, the pretence, the snake in the garden, the stuff your made up gods are always going on about. The stuff you are always going on about. The stuff in the darkness at the edge of the firelight were your fear taunts you. The beautiful internal chaos that is life.
And you can still face down this beast raging inside of you. You can still have a beautiful and righteous death. You can still walk the path that returns you to being a Human Being. You can still embrace this shimmering illusion of life and death and never relinquish or surrender to the meaningless void. You can still return to Love.
2.
The farmers flint tipped arrows were made perfectly, I’ll give them that, they hadn’t turned their backs entirely on we Human Beings. The sculpted arrow heads bounced off my ribs and pierced my heart like curious stones kissing modern flesh. Look what has happened in a billion years, hello old friend. The dog too had been hit in the chest and lay sprawled upon the flattened clay path.
His eye was seeking mine as rivulets of our blood streamed toward each other in the morning sun. The farmer’s aggressive shouting and the woody pungent odour of the horses, and the symphony of crickets, and the distant howling calls of the grey wolves, and the circling eagle in the pale blue sky, and the bubbling trail of ants crossing my leg, all of these impressions slowly dissolving until there was only the dog’s light brown eye and my own eye peering back as we both faded away to join the spirits dancing across the canvas of light and shadow, fluttering along, emerging from the darkness darting and scampering and I was glad they were there with us as we left this world.
And then they too blew away like dandelions on the wind as the glorious presence of Death appeared like a concerned parent and then my ancient self and Death embraced and I realised I had always been waiting for Death to return and take me home and Death and I smiled and laughed as Death returned to me that majestic perception that life was just theatre, a construct, a grand human illusion, a dream of sorts, and this beautiful and extraordinary life and this beautiful and extraordinary death were always one and the same, and then ego and fear and judgement and identity all fell away and I became nothing but pure attention floating above a never ending pattern where landscapes and time and faces and feelings and memories and thoughts all merged and flowed like a river below and above and through me as I became all of the words and deeds I have ever spoken and done unto others and had done unto me like an infinite soap bubble in a gentle wind and then there was nothing and then there was everything as I expanded into all of time and space.
You can live a thousand lives but you only die once, and death casts a long, long shadow. I was murdered. The farmers built a civilisation on the blood of those who did not choose their life. Death is a generous giver. We all receive Death’s kiss. But life and death are in a fine balance and it is not the role of the Human Being to do Death’s bidding. Human Beings should be on the side of Life. That is the balance. But the farmers tipped things in the wrong direction, they became disciples of Death even though Death did not want them. They took it upon themselves and they broke the world.
And in my own death I was full of anguish for these farmers even though they killed me for they know not what they do. So I did not return at Deaths bequest to the Great Plains of balance, but instead I became a ghost and watched to see what would happen and I saw, so maybe, just maybe I can somehow reach through the shimmer from this side and reach toward the living to let them know, somehow, let them be reminded them that they too were once Human Beings.
Can anyone hear me? Can you hear me?
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Welcome back Jonathan….
“ And then the farmers came with their certainty and arrogance and began dancing about and flirting with the very same dangerous, feverish ego that we had held at bay, merrily nurturing their greed and envy and vanity and desire, embracing their insatiable lust for power, building their ego-driven ravenous societies, until, well, you know what happened, what’s happening, what will happen.”…..so timely.
I am later than expected but here to give silent applause nonetheless.
Just as I hit send on a last message to you, there was a commotion in the chicken house, then the sheep bleating under an almost full moon - signs of not normal goings on. I tore out to the field, bare feet kicking up dust in the immoveable heat of an August evening still doing its best to suffocate all brave enough to move and found a half starved pine marten attempting to chew through the wire mesh on the open window of the coup. She barely had the strength to hold herself up yet she continued while I watched, also unusual but a undoubtedly a sign of her desperation.
Pine Martens are a beautiful creature, it is said that were they to be the size of a tiger the human race would be in mortal danger, so masterful is their ability as predator. But, this was small, a youngster exhausted by lack of food and water and eventually she slumped, panting hot air (I have never seen a pine marten pant) and she slunk off, back towards the woods, a sad picture of defeat.
I couldn't help feel her desperation, her hunger, so I closed the window on the coup and went in search of food and water which is how I found myself, barely clad (don't imagine that if you are eating your lunch) in the middle of a stifling night, rummaging in the freezer for a small morsel of something, anything that might sustain her, defrosting it and leaving it raw on the ground by a bowl of water in the woods where I know she has often left her traces.
This morning it was gone, of course, another starving creature may have happened by, but I far rather hope it was her.
Anyway, all this to say, I may be a semi-farmer, but I hope I walk the path of a human being, I hope along the way and beyond into death, I will always reach through the shimmer.
I hear you, I am listening... 🙏🏼