lakewatcher
22nd May 2013, 17:57
The allegory which forms the basis for this story has been knocking around in my head for over ten years, and collecting dust in my mental attic. Then the comments of enfoldedblue and Fred Steeves in enfoldedblue's great thread "Caught in Our Feedback Loops" inspired me to dust off the old tale and finally write it down. It's final form turned out to be very much influenced by enfoldedblue's OP in her thread, and by Fred's comments, as well as by enfoldedblue's great story "The Sacred Garden - a story".
This story is an allegory, a fable, that expresses only my personal opinion on a number of the spiritual matters that were discussed in the previous thread. What its actual value is, I'm not sure. But I hope it will at least be interesting to some here.
Since it is fairly long, over fifteen manuscript pages, the full story is uploaded as a pdf file attachment to this post. I'll just quote the first section here to give folks an taste of it:
The Mountain at the Center of the World
-A Fable
Dedicated to Everyone
but especially to
Lorraine S. Frazier-Earle
and to Cristina Lavers
and Fred Steeves
***
My name is not important. You can call me John Doe, if you want.
I’m just here to try to share a strange story with you to the best of my memory.
There was an old scroll, written in several languages, found in a cave -- I don’t know where --and
lost track of, in the basement of the university library. I stumbled upon it while cleaning out old boxes as
part of my student janitor job one night. Well, I took it to my professor in the archaeology
department and he translated from it the following myth. I asked the professor if I might have a copy
of his translation once he had finalized it? He said, "Sure." But, when I asked him how it was
coming along about a week later, he apologized and said that somehow he had lost both the scroll
and the translation! Hum ... strange? Anyway, here is the myth as I can best remember him relating it to me:
Long ago there was a very large valley that was completely encircled by high mountains.
Square in the center of this enclosed valley stood the highest mountain of them all, rising
majestically, by itself, from the valley floor, next to the lake that kept it company. It had other
natural companions as well: forest to its north, plains to its east and south, rocky outcroppings to its
west.
There were many animals that lived in the valley, and also there were some people. Yes,
people. How did they get there? They did not know. They only had some legends that their
ancestors somehow came to the valley over the barrier mountains that encircled them. It was so long
ago that they believed it was just a myth. The people, most of them, now believed that they had
always been in the valley and that actually there was nothing beyond the barrier mountains.
About once a generation or so, someone would try to find a way out of the barrier mountains.
They were never heard from again. Always. I mean,if these adventurers could find their way out,
they could find their way back in to tell the others about it. Couldn’t they? Of course. So, this was
taken, by almost everyone, as proof that there simply wasn’t anything ‘out there’.
The people lived in several villages around the valley. The hunters and carpenters lived
mostly in the north, by the forest. Those who mined ores and quarried rock lived near the rocky
outcrops. The farmers lived mostly in the south and a few were in the east. Most of the other
craftspeople and the merchants lived in the east portion of the valley. The people traded with each
other and lived for the most part in peace. But there were some bad problems. Yes, there were.
Those problems centered around that large mountain that was at the center of these people’s world.
They were afraid of the mountain. There was reason for them to be. Strange things had long been
associated with that mountain ...
______________________________
Nonexclusive, nontransferable rights to this version of this work (of June 5, 2013) is hereby granted to Project Avalon. This grant does not include the right to make derivative works, or to use this work for any commercial purposes. All other rights to the work remain with the author.
This story is an allegory, a fable, that expresses only my personal opinion on a number of the spiritual matters that were discussed in the previous thread. What its actual value is, I'm not sure. But I hope it will at least be interesting to some here.
Since it is fairly long, over fifteen manuscript pages, the full story is uploaded as a pdf file attachment to this post. I'll just quote the first section here to give folks an taste of it:
The Mountain at the Center of the World
-A Fable
Dedicated to Everyone
but especially to
Lorraine S. Frazier-Earle
and to Cristina Lavers
and Fred Steeves
***
My name is not important. You can call me John Doe, if you want.
I’m just here to try to share a strange story with you to the best of my memory.
There was an old scroll, written in several languages, found in a cave -- I don’t know where --and
lost track of, in the basement of the university library. I stumbled upon it while cleaning out old boxes as
part of my student janitor job one night. Well, I took it to my professor in the archaeology
department and he translated from it the following myth. I asked the professor if I might have a copy
of his translation once he had finalized it? He said, "Sure." But, when I asked him how it was
coming along about a week later, he apologized and said that somehow he had lost both the scroll
and the translation! Hum ... strange? Anyway, here is the myth as I can best remember him relating it to me:
Long ago there was a very large valley that was completely encircled by high mountains.
Square in the center of this enclosed valley stood the highest mountain of them all, rising
majestically, by itself, from the valley floor, next to the lake that kept it company. It had other
natural companions as well: forest to its north, plains to its east and south, rocky outcroppings to its
west.
There were many animals that lived in the valley, and also there were some people. Yes,
people. How did they get there? They did not know. They only had some legends that their
ancestors somehow came to the valley over the barrier mountains that encircled them. It was so long
ago that they believed it was just a myth. The people, most of them, now believed that they had
always been in the valley and that actually there was nothing beyond the barrier mountains.
About once a generation or so, someone would try to find a way out of the barrier mountains.
They were never heard from again. Always. I mean,if these adventurers could find their way out,
they could find their way back in to tell the others about it. Couldn’t they? Of course. So, this was
taken, by almost everyone, as proof that there simply wasn’t anything ‘out there’.
The people lived in several villages around the valley. The hunters and carpenters lived
mostly in the north, by the forest. Those who mined ores and quarried rock lived near the rocky
outcrops. The farmers lived mostly in the south and a few were in the east. Most of the other
craftspeople and the merchants lived in the east portion of the valley. The people traded with each
other and lived for the most part in peace. But there were some bad problems. Yes, there were.
Those problems centered around that large mountain that was at the center of these people’s world.
They were afraid of the mountain. There was reason for them to be. Strange things had long been
associated with that mountain ...
______________________________
Nonexclusive, nontransferable rights to this version of this work (of June 5, 2013) is hereby granted to Project Avalon. This grant does not include the right to make derivative works, or to use this work for any commercial purposes. All other rights to the work remain with the author.