Today I’d like to tell a story that has been rolling around in my imagination for a while. It’s short but it’s a little thing I came up with while looking very intently at the mountains.
Eons ago the world was completely round. A perfect sphere inhabited by perfect beings. A race of giants. That for all their complexities in thought and language had never once really looked up at the stars. They focused on each other learning the depths of sympathy and understanding.
They lived like this for ages. Developing continually more and more sophisticated languages and means of conveying what they felt. They would indulge in week long sentences, unfurling in spiraling words, during unions that would last years. This is how they sustained themselves, they never ate. They didn’t build structures, at least not more than huts they slept in. They were solely focused on relating to one another through sound and through empathetic eyes.
But there came a day when one of these creatures came into existence that didn’t quite get it. He had trouble sustaining himself on the substance of the union and was often seen as a child with his neck craning back (this quickly corrected because it was deemed harmful).
This filtered doubt through the rest of the world. How can we not understand him? Thoughts and ideas that had never occurred before during years and years of hurtling forward unhindered were now constantly discussed. They wondered, what did we not understand? Not like they had before that made them push for more complexity, but because now they felt they left something behind.
That was until one night during a union between the boy and the elder of the community. The elder, or wise man, had a reputation for being very generous and willing to go to unexpected places in conversation. And during this union with the boy, after a long silence, he gestured to the giants to crane their necks like the boy used to when he was young. The boy smiled widely as the entire race of giants around the world craned their necks back and looked at the stars for the first time.
The world was struck with awe. Looking out in all directions from the perfect sphere the giants together could see the entire universe. And with such a complex language of sympathy they could each individually perceive the entirety of it. They let out a collective sigh.
The giants fell to the ground their faces looking upward at the beauty of the universe. They understood this boy. They had never once realized the beauty outside of their connection. The beauty in the connection with the whole. They cried tears of bliss that ran rivers down their faces and formed great puddles in the valleys they had created.
They stayed this way for eons. Their faces, turned to stone frozen in reverence looking upwards, became the hills. Their tears became the oceans from which we crawled out of to learn, as those who came before us, to hold a special place in us for what is beyond us.
I think about this when I surf and look at the mountains inland, or when I’m on a long drive through the hills. It definitely keeps me thinking about what’s out and beyond the stars.
I have two pastel pieces I would like to share that kind of fit with this story. More so in the vibe and the world I though of these giants in than the content. Something about it seemed to fit. The feelings of the story that were meant to be conveyed are in these.
‘A Firey Woman’
‘A Thoughtful Man’
So true, it only takes one being to change the world, to help us see beyond ourselves and awaken our awareness of things outside of our immediate.
I think it was Thoreau that said that “It’s not what you are looking at that matters, it’s what you see”. Love the story. JR