Move this mountain
I don't know to this day what she meant when she asked me to move this mountain.
Before us was a mass of rock and moss and goats and flowers. I wanted to move nothing except maybe my legs to get around the place. I wanted to become a goat, to jump about among the rocks and nibble on the grass and the flowers.
The old lady asked me to move this mountain. But the hill was stationary, it wasn't going anywhere.
Rather than ask the obvious I chose to ignore the request and revel in my healthy, airy dreams of being free between the earth and the air. I tried to whistle at a frequency which would twitch the air around our faces and finish the whole feel of the place of with light magic. The whistle failed, the old lady sighed to show her disappointment and I felt my breath was smelly.
We turned and took the short route back down to her cottage. She said, as we arrived, that she thought it was best I left that day. Nothing more, no explanation. "Just go," she said. "You are not a great man, you never will be. I have no time for you. I can spend my last years with somebody who has potential. You are too lazy and you have niether talent nor charisma. Pack your silly little bag and leave now."
Well. I was crushed as you can imagine. I had come here to learn from one of the most revered living beings. I had been told I would make it, that I'd live at the peak of the world and be admired. Now I was stripped of my pride and left for dead in the barren wastes of Low Self Esteem.
It was a pretty awful time. For many years after that I couldn't face the world. I lived in a basement flat just on 53rd street, eating spiders, flies and the occasional rat. I collected and drank the rainwater leaking into my window from the street above. It was dirty, sluggish water.
Then one day I dropped a brick on my bare foot, on my toe, to see if I would still feel pain. The brick broke the big toe on my left foot. I mean it crushed it, so that the toe was hanging loosely on the foot. I squealed and some people came in from the street and arrested me.
That's how I ended up in this place. That was fifty eight years ago next March.
Neat huh?
Before us was a mass of rock and moss and goats and flowers. I wanted to move nothing except maybe my legs to get around the place. I wanted to become a goat, to jump about among the rocks and nibble on the grass and the flowers.
The old lady asked me to move this mountain. But the hill was stationary, it wasn't going anywhere.
Rather than ask the obvious I chose to ignore the request and revel in my healthy, airy dreams of being free between the earth and the air. I tried to whistle at a frequency which would twitch the air around our faces and finish the whole feel of the place of with light magic. The whistle failed, the old lady sighed to show her disappointment and I felt my breath was smelly.
We turned and took the short route back down to her cottage. She said, as we arrived, that she thought it was best I left that day. Nothing more, no explanation. "Just go," she said. "You are not a great man, you never will be. I have no time for you. I can spend my last years with somebody who has potential. You are too lazy and you have niether talent nor charisma. Pack your silly little bag and leave now."
Well. I was crushed as you can imagine. I had come here to learn from one of the most revered living beings. I had been told I would make it, that I'd live at the peak of the world and be admired. Now I was stripped of my pride and left for dead in the barren wastes of Low Self Esteem.
It was a pretty awful time. For many years after that I couldn't face the world. I lived in a basement flat just on 53rd street, eating spiders, flies and the occasional rat. I collected and drank the rainwater leaking into my window from the street above. It was dirty, sluggish water.
Then one day I dropped a brick on my bare foot, on my toe, to see if I would still feel pain. The brick broke the big toe on my left foot. I mean it crushed it, so that the toe was hanging loosely on the foot. I squealed and some people came in from the street and arrested me.
That's how I ended up in this place. That was fifty eight years ago next March.
Neat huh?
posted by yumen at
10:43 pm
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