A small number gathered around to offer final words.
They had journeyed across oceans wide, through deserts burning , over rugged, steep, pretty worryingly Tolkienesque mountain passes tortuous, to share this, their, the, story.
Many were they who had fallen by the wayside...tragic, unmourned, minor, footnotes.
The court reception rooms filled to the beams with murmuring impatience.
The moment of truth had come.
The last guardians of the flame were present.
NO! SHHH!
There was not a whisper to be heard in the court receptions rooms filled to the beams with silent impatience.
"SHHH!"
A HUSH of expectation.
Noone, would interrupt this, their, the, narrative now.
HUSH...
We fell silent.
They told this, their, the story.
"We, WE, were a group, a collective, a community, a pack, a huddle, a gaggle, a congregation, a fellowship , we were never quite sure..."
Indeed, WE was never ever sure!
A HUSH...
"BUT now, but now, more importantly we are here as the last witnesses to our, OUR, Odyssey."
The boundaries of WE were never quite clear.
The boundaries of WE had never been less clear than now.
No matter, WE mattered.
A WE was necessary for a good story.
The audience sat listening approvingly.
They loved stories told thus.
The pictures painted were appropriately illuminated, the framing was tasteful, the timing immaculate.
The scribes so skilled made precious notes on their unrolled parchment scrolls illuminatively.
"Bullet point. NOT a HIVE."
"Bullet point. NOT a CLAN."
"Bullet point. NOT a NETWORK."
"Bullet point. KNOT a KNITTING club."
They loved nots, knots told thus.
"Shhh, oh those knots..."
Hours, they envisaged unravelling those...
Would there, might there be, might there be a perhaps, or a maybe, or anything lovely to debate?
Yes there were mights.
Yes there were lines.
Yes there were boundaries.
GOD! there were boundaries.
They loved boundaries, boundaries marked thus.
They could take sides, they could choose lines, they could choose a side of a line to stand...
God! A line to straddle ambiguously.
They had grasped the story as told.
[No, actually, he had not cared two hoots.]
[THEY were greater than he.]
"SHHH!"
WE need a good THEY for a story.
And THEY mattered more.
It was theirs, this, the, that, story matter, now.
They had recorded the story as fact matter...now.
The story unwound another round of twine.
A we short-lived.
A we short-lived.
A we short-lived.
"It didn't matter two hoots."
.
Image credits
"Odin's last words to Baldr" by W.G. Collingwood (1854 - 1932) - The Elder or Poetic Edda; commonly known as Sæmund's Edda. Edited and translated with introduction and notes by Olive Bray. Illustrated by W.G. Collingwood (1908) Page 39. Digitized by the Internet Archive and available from http://www.archive.org/details/elderorpoeticedd01brayuoft This image was made from the JPEG 2000 image of the relevant page via image processing (crop, rotate, color-levels, mode) with the GIMP by User:Haukurth. The image processing is probably not eligible for copyright but in case it is User:Haukurth releases his modified version into the public domain.. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Odin%27s_last_words_to_Baldr.jpg#/media/File:Odin%27s_last_words_to_Baldr.jpg
We might be a knitting club ;)
ReplyDeleteKNIT on your life am I a member of that. I knitted a scarf for my Action Man once. Does that count?
DeleteThe people behind the sail look like Hoda in the closing picture at Maha's blog taking it all in. Speak softly and knit a big club.
ReplyDeleteHmm a new take on Knitting clubs. I like that :-)
DeleteIt's really beautiful Simon. In a sad way of course but I have an appreciation of beautiful death having lived with this metaphor.
ReplyDeleteThey become the legacy of the we. At least they can. If we are so lucky.
"We now return our souls to the creator,
as we stand on the edge of eternal darkness.
Let our chant fill the void
in order that others may know.
In the land of the night
the ship of the sun
is drawn by the grateful dead."
-- Egyptian Book of the Dead