enjoy,,Krystal
An Historical Overview
of the Whereabouts of Gnomes,
Elves, Faeries, Goblins, etc., Past and Present
A long, long time ago, the Earth belonged to the
creatures of the wood. By creatures of the wood I mean
gnomes, elves, faeries, etc. They tended it and took
care of it, played in it, danced and sang in it, cared
for wounded animals, worked out disputes between
species, sat on mushrooms discussing matters of
importance and drinking Labrador tea, rode down
streams on leaves and bark, parachuted from trees on
dandelion seeds. This was the world into which mankind
was born. These early days, when man was but a newly
arrived dinner guest who hadn't yet taken over the
house, are fairly well documented in the literature
and folklore of the world, so there's no need to go
into it here. What I am interested in, and what I am
asking you to be interested in, is the question,
"Where did all the gnomes, elves, faeries, etc. go?"
The friction between man and the wood creatures began
with the discovery of agriculture. With this discovery
civilization arose and spread. The forests were
cleared to provide wood for shelters and fields for
pastures and crops. Mankind had set up camp. No longer
just a visitor in someone else's world, he pushed the
wild back from his newly built doorstep. At first,
this wasn't a problem. There weren't that many people
and everyone else felt that it was only fair to allot them their own half-acre to do with as they wished.
Some of them even decided to help out. Gnomes moved
into the barn houses and helped with the gardening
chores. The devic spirits of the vegetables helped
humans better organize their crops and plan rotation;
taught them the correlation between planetary and
lunar cycles and the agricultural year. They taught
them to plant radishes when the moon is in Cancer,
harvest when the moon is in Taurus. Many trolls felt
that the heaping piles of manure were a change for the
better, and decided to stick around too. The rest of
the wood creatures just backed off into the wood,
occasionally playing tricks on the new settlers, like
turning the milk sour, rearranging furniture, tipping
cows, tickling people's faces in their sleep and once
in a while stealing babies and leaving bundles of wood
in their place.
But man's dominion spread (and spread and spread and spread...) and the forests got smaller and smaller and
smaller. Things got real crowded in the woods, and
things were getting worse in civilization. Most
farmers weren't listening to the devic spirits
anymore. People found they could increase their output
by disregarding the needs of the earth. They were
raising productivity and killing the soil.
Petrochemicals were just a step away. Most of the
devic spirits and gnomes fled. The trolls stayed.
Today, they live mostly under bridges and in the
shallow mucky ditches beneath the metal grating on
farm roads that cows are afraid to cross. Be sure to
honk your horn before driving over one of these. A
troll may be hanging from the grate, swinging over its
living room, as they are apt to do after rolling in
muck and manure. If you don't give a warning honk, you
may run over its fingers, and it's not a great idea to
get either your name or your license plate number on a
troll's shit list...
Now, there is little wild land left at all, and even
that is shrinking at an unprecedented rate. There is
simply not enough wild space for all the gnomes and
elves and faeries, etc.
So where are they? Are they dead?
No. So, where did they go?
The answer is a bit surprising. They didn't go
anywhere. We did. Early humans had an intuitive
knowledge of their role in nature, just as bears and
raccoons and mice and every other critter does. They
understood, from the ways of the wild around them,
that nothing ever comes from nowhere and nothing ever
just disappears. Things change form. Death is
necessary for life to continue. They offered up their
kills as sacrifices to the gods of nature. They
offered praise, prayer, sacrifice and song to the
spirits of the wild, to brother buffalo, brother deer,
and brother tree. Now we know that everything that
ever existed continues to exist, in one form or
another, and as far as we can tell, they were more
aware of that back then than we are now. So, the
sacrifice, song and prayer did not ensure the
immortality of the slaughtered, either in body or
spirit. That was already taken care of. What it did
ensure was the continuance of the connection between
the spirit of the slaughterer and the spirit of the
slaughtered.
Killing is risky business. The membrane separating
the internal from the external is not necessarily as
thick or as clearly defined as we have come to
believe. Every time we kill, we risk killing the
reality of that thing inside ourselves as well as
outside. We risk breaking the connections that lead
in and out of the membrane. Taking a life to feed
life requires a keen understanding of the natural law
of give and take. When we lost that understanding,
gave up the songs, the sacrifice, the prayers, we lost
the connection. Saying grace is not enough.
When we lose those connections, everything becomes
dead - fish, rivers, frogs, mice, even each other.
There is no way they can reach inside us any more.
The five senses we are left with are not enough. We
have given up those connections in exchange for the
freedom to clear-cut forests with skidders, turn cows
into milk machines and chickens into egg factories.
We can experiment with animals, club seals, wear fur,
and exterminate entire species. Not a twinge of
guilt. The lines have been severed. And we are all
under the impression that it is the forests, the
creatures, the spirits and the wild lands that are
disappearing from the universe and not us. This is
not so. Thinking like that is like thinking that if
you stand on the end of a limb and saw that limb from
the tree, that the tree will fall and you will remain
standing. Bugs Bunny might be able to get away with
that, but we can't. It is we who have fallen away
from the real world into a world where we may carry
out our twisted sterile dreams without threatening the
earth and its inhabitants. Ever wonder why the trees,
stones, rivers and streams, birds, bears, frogs and
snakes no longer talk to us as they did in the early
tales of Native America, the Hindu, the Africans, the
bible? It's because we're not around to talk to
anymore.
Every clear-cut, every vivisection, every mechanized
slaughter of cow, pig or chicken moves our dream world
further and further from the tree, making a
reunification, which is still possible, more and more
difficult.
Somewhere not so far from here, in the real world, the
ancient forests are still standing, the buffalo roams
the prairies, the sky is full of condors, the deer and
the antelope play, and dodo birds still wander the
sandy beaches, bumping into things.
Where there are still wild lands in our dream world,
strong connections still exist. Bridges, tunnels,
portals. Occasionally a traveler will get lost in the
wilderness and find himself in the real world,
returning the next day to find that a hundred years
have passed, or never returning at all. There are
more ephemeral connections as well - brooks and
waterfalls where you can still here voices from the
other side, if you listen carefully enough... When
they sit by these waters, they hear loud clanking and
screams. When they eat magic mushrooms, everything
STOPS glowing and condos rise where forests stand.
Our children can see their world in their dreams.
Their children see our world in the nightmares.
And there is another connection. Sometimes agents
from the other side infiltrate our world in an attempt
to expedite reunification. Believe it or not, they
miss us over there. Sometimes - more often than you
might think - they send souls over to our world to be
born as human babies. There are quite a lot of them
actually - gnomes, elves, faeries, sprites, etc.
running around in human bodies, doing crazy things
like writing on walls, working in co-ops, running inns
in the mountains, talking to themselves in the
streets, making pottery, practicing witchcraft. They
are planting biodynamic gardens, sitting in the back
yard naked, arguing with satan. They are in asylums
pumped full of Thorazine, in a classroom on Ritalin
and lithium. They live with Indians. They run
recycling centers. They are starting revolutions,
corrupting the young, inventing paranoid conspiracy
theories, making up religions. They're directing
movies, gobbling acid, drinking heavily and writing
poetry.
The transition from their world to ours is not an easy
one. It's not easy on the soul and much is lost.
They may have no idea who or what they are at first.
They may or may not find out. They WILL know they are
not like other people. They will know that this world
is not theirs. They will faintly remember something
better, where things made sense and worked like they
ought to, where love and magic had the power to heal.
They will know what makes other people happy does not
make them happy, and that what makes them happy makes
them happier than anyone else alive. They will see
things others cannot see, hear things others cannot
hear, feel things others cannot feel, and know things
others do not know. They will laugh a great deal or
cry a great deal or both. They will love humans
individually, but have a hard time with humanity as
whole, and that will occasionally approach loathing.
They will have a handful of very close friends, and
often be very lonely.
They will be unhappiest when forced to act like a
human and do things that humans do, want what humans
want, or when convinced that they really are human....
Things will not be easy for them. Because of their
memories of the other side, the world will seem to
them a wondrous calliope with just a few teeth missing
on one of the cogs. Because of this tiny deficiency,
the music is off key, the horses are crashing into
each other and the children are frightened, bruised
and crying....
The solutions will seem obvious, but no one will
listen. They will repeatedly be punished for shouting
FIRE! in a crowded theatre, when the buildings really
are in flames but no one else can see....They will get
slapped on the wrist for pointing to the EXIT signs
when everyone else is running around screaming and
trampling one another. They will be zealous, fanatical
and didactic in their beliefs. They will feel utterly
confused.
They will have ecstatic visions and babble
incoherently. They will be extremely articulate. They
are prone to long periods of silence. They have no
idea how to say what they really mean. They spend a
lot of time with children and animals. They will
become drunkards and dope fiends, organic gardeners,
Soap makers, carpenters, madmen, magicians, jugglers
and clowns. Lunatic physicists, painter and
scribblers, travelers and wanderers...>
They will dress in bright colors, frumpy sweaters or
all in black.
They will smoke too much and drink too much.
They will eat only macrobiotic foods.
They will develop addictions to Mountain Dew.
They will often be accused of living in their own
fantasy world.
They will make great lovers. Yeah, even the trolls...
They will spend too much time either making love or
thinking about it.
They will speak to inanimate objects. They will have
much brighter eyes than everyone else. They will
expect their magic to work in this world and their
love to heal, and will be crushed by this world, and
often won't expect it. It will come close to killing
them...
They will visit the places where the connections still
exist: the waterfalls, the mountains, the oceans, and
the forests. They will draw on all the power they
have, and sometimes, sometimes, the magic will work.
And everything will be wondrously easy. The teeth will
grow back on the cog on the calliope, the tune will
right itself, the horses will bob gracefully up and
down, around and around, and the children will giggle
and sing with cotton candy stuck to their cheeks and
noses.
They will spend their days trying to reconnect a
branch that millions are busy sawing away at. Often it
will be more than they can bear. While the rest of
humanity is busy working on new and more efficient
ways to lay waste to the Earth with the push of a
button, they are saving it. A handful at a time.
They will share a common conviction that they are the
only sane individuals in a world gone mad.
They are right.
(Copyright by Buck Young)
______
"After love, food is the most important thing in life, and whoever thinks
politics more important should ponder the fact that politics would not exist but
for a lack of food and love."
---J. F. Federspiel, "The Ballad of Typhoid Mary"
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