Chains broken

A storm in the Caribbean. A terrible storm. The slave ship was thrown from one wave to another.

"This ship will go down. A hole in the hull. Chains broken."

"We'll swim free. Slaves no longer."

"We'll settle on an island. We'll start our own place ..."

"We'll call ourselves the Garifuna."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"I don't like it."

"The Trayorays."

"Yuch."

"The Jabartays."

"Never."

Then there was a fight. Tooth and nail. Blood and murder. Ears bitten off, eyes gouged. As this was happening the storm ended. The ship sailed free and continued on under a calm moon. The fight faltered. Calm, calm and depression, settled over the hold.

"The Garifuna then."

Silence.

"I still don't like it."

Music

A Kazakh man began to play his dombra indoors.

"That's an outdoor sound, like a galloping horse," said a visitor from another country who had dropped by to observe the native customs. "Why don't you play outdoors?"

"That would be overkill."

"Then," the visitor said, "why don't you find an indoor instrument and play it out of doors?"

"Put my hat outside."

The visitor did.

"There," said the musician. Then he continued to play the dombra.

Modern inconveniences: greedy griots

The woman gave a griot money and in exchange he sang a song in her honour, telling her that she was wonderful, that her husband was handsome, and that her son would one day be rich and take care of his mother in her old age.

So it came to pass.

The griot, hearing that his song had come true, returned to the woman and said: Give me twice as much money again or I'll sing the opposite.

No.

So the griot sang the opposite. Then the son lost all of his money in an email scam, the husband fell into a vat of boiling beer, and the woman woke one day to discover that she was not wonderful after all.

Arrest that griot! she told the authorities.

But the authorities backed away, saying, No, thank you, no, he might put that curse on us as well, no.

The woman roared.

You modern men! How can you believe in that superstitious rubbish!

Here!

She gave the griot his money.

Now piss off!

He did.

I'll never believe in the authorities again!

She never did.

The History of Polar Bears

1500
There was a polar bear.

1600
There was a polar bear.

1700
There was a polar bear

1800
There was a polar bear

1900
There was a polar bear.

2000
There was a polar bear

Experimental production of emotions, continued.

"What's that noise?" they said in the new South Africa. People of all races were united in puzzlement.

It was the elves, come to complain that they were being exploited and underappreciated: they wanted a slice of the economic pie, they wanted good houses, fair treatment, and dignity in labour.

"Look: they are doing a toyi-toyi," one old ANC man said. "That's so cute."

"Meat not milk!" the elves shouted. "Dignity for elves!"

"So adorable. Give them a toadstool, see what they do."

"Oo!"

The elves sat on the toadstool and the protest was over.

Now there was a toadstool in the street blocking traffic.

"Bloody elves."



-----
The end of apartheid, the employment of the elves.

Islands

The Wodaabe man with a stripe painted down the centre of his face stood by his friend looking extraordinarily slender, elegant, and smooth.

At the same moment a tortoise stood on a rock in the Galapagos Islands looking extraordinarily squat, blunt, and knobbly.

Nature, sensing that the co-existence of extreme opposites created something like a vacuum of meaning, sent a vision of the Wodaabe to the tortoise, and a vision of the tortoise to the Wodaabe. But the tortoise had never seen a Wodaabe before, and the Wodaabe had never seen a Galapagos tortoise, so each one saw the other translated into a physical language they could understand. The tortoise saw a tall, thin female tortoise with a stripe marked on her beak, and the Wodaabe man saw a warty Wodaabe woman under a basket. They spent the rest of their lives searching for this being, which, they felt, was the only thing that would make them whole.

Proof

"Moa are easy to kill," boasted the Maori warrior. "I smacked one on the head and it died."

"That's nothing. I smacked one on the head and the one next to it died."

"Ha! I just have to look at them and they die."

"They do not."

"They do so."

He proved it.

"Well fiddle dee dee!"

Pestilence

"The Black Plague has not been of advantage to me, mother."

"You're dead! Stop talking! You're dead! Oh God help us!"

"I need say no more."

Extreme sports

A certain religious flagellant got his start as a boy when his mother died of cancer slowly and in agony. He saw that she had set herself against him and he was enraged. "From now on," he thought, "I will be the person in the most pain. I will not be surpassed." As well as engaging in flagellation he starved himself and lived in a cave and occasionally on top of a pole in the desert. He believed, he said, that the Lord was interested in diversity.

Fishing

"What are you doing friend?"

"I am fishing for cod. Fishing for cod in this cold northern sea."

"A virtuous occupation."

"Aye. There's no sin in fish."

At that moment he caught a fish with sin in it.

He dug it out. The sin was a small nugget.

"Wickedness has afflicted this cod."

"Quick," suggested the other. "Throw that little nugget-thing back into the sea. That way no one will know that it was you who found it."

"I must not. If I do that then all the brine will be infected with free-ranging sin." A thought occurred. "I know who you are. You are the devil. I was wondering how you got out to my boat."

"I walked," the devil said. "I've learnt a few tricks. Are you sure you don't want to throw that away? Someone might find it on you."

"That I won't, hell-king. But you can eat the cod if you like."

"If that's my only option," said the devil sulkily. He ate the cod.

Wonder-worker of Ireland

St. Kevin was kneeling with his arms outstretched to honour God when a bird flew up and built a little nest in his palm. After its children were grown it sold the nest to a developer who turned it into two townhouses, double-brick, priced at seventy-five thousand each.

"Oh, the weight," said St. Kevin.

"What was that?"

"Hush," murmured the real estate agent. "It is the sound of the market talking." He closed his eyes and experienced the rare ecstasy of a new St. Teresa.

Neptune's Son returns

The job had been dragging on for weeks and Neptune's Son was tired of it.

"Too much plaster. Plaster's a dry medium ..."

"What's wrong with that?"

But he couldn't articulate it. When his friends tried to press an answer out of him he began to howl.

"It drains! It dries! It absorbs! It sucks at the soul of the world!"

"Calm down mate. Eat your cheeseburger."

"I'll drink my Coke first," he shouted. "I'll drain this milkshake dry. Excelsior!"

Wrenched with tempestuous emotions he shook his fist at the Golden Arches.

"Damn you! Damn you!"



-----
Neptune's Son's earlier post.

A method for the experimental production of emotions

It was good to have black people who could do all the laundry, but why couldn't they just vanish when the work was finished? The South African government pondered the problem. They held meetings about the matter and titled them, "The vanishing African -- why not?" It was at one of these meetings that Mr Van Der Merwe came up with the solution.

"Brownies. Elves. Remember the story of the elves and the shoemaker? They did the work at night and went away ..."

The next day the president made an announcement. "We will remove apartheid on one condition. Tonight, everyone has to go to bed early and leave a saucer or bowl of milk by the door. People who run mines will leave milk by the mine entrance. Don't do any housework."

The next day all the housework was done, all the day's ore and gems had already been extracted from the mines, and the country was cleaner than anyone had ever seen it. Even the cattle were polished. Apartheid was repealed.

"Oh good."

Everyone went to the beach and played volleyball.



-----
This post is getting too long. I'll write the second part of the story later.

Service rendered

Dostoevsky would have liked to have had Tolstoy's commitment to the peasants but he preferred to gamble instead. "If I had any peasants I'd only gamble them away," he said morosely. "Don't give me any peasants."

The peasants overheard him and began to chase him down the street.

"Have us! Take us!"

"No! No!"

"We're yours!"

"Save me!"

"Hee hee hee!"

They were happy for the first time in years.

Naturwissenschaften

"Where's the baby ... there's the baby!"
"Where's the baby ... there's the baby!"
"Where's the baby ... "

This game was known as Schrodinger's Baby.

Cruelty to animals

They rode through the forest on an elephant, hunting tigers.

"It would be easier to hunt an elephant," the Balwan mahout suggested. "Since it is right here."

"We don't want an elephant. We want a tiger."

"We could adjust our expectations."

"We do not adjust," the other man said, looking down his nose.

"Look! There's a tiger."

"That's another elephant."

"No, I assure you --"

"It is large and grey and it has a trunk. That is an elephant."

"But it has the soul of a tiger."

"You're just lazy."

The elephant leapt towards him. It snapped his neck with its front feet and then carried him up a tree to devour at its leisure.

The Balwan shouted after him --

"The soul of a tiger, sir! The soul of a tiger!"

Fear Sta

Fires burned at Tierra del Fuego. "Don't let them go out." They threw everything onto the fires: leaves, grass, sponge mattresses, yesterday's newspapers. The newspapers burned beautifully. The photographs seemed to move as they curled and flexed in the blaze. More and more newspapers went onto the fires. They ran out of yesterday's news and used last week's news as well, then the month before's. There was no news left except today's news. People had trouble remembering anything that had happened earlier than breakfast. Finally they burnt today's news as well, at first waiting until the owner of the newspaper had finished reading, then growing impatient and ripping it out of their hands before they could get past the first headline.

"Fear Sta --"

But the headline was gone.

No one knew what was happening anywhere. All they knew were fires.

Prophecy

Marie Antoinette chuckled with her friends.

"Then let them eat the good bread."

The mob outside raged. "She taunts us!"

"Oh dear." She went onto her balcony to address them. "I didn't mean today, sillies. I meant your descendants. In the future good bread will be common. And --"

She tried to think of the most exotic food in the world.

"Pineapples. Pineapples will be available to all."

"She is a prophet!"

"Yes. So you see, it is not I who taunts you. It is the future."

"The future taunts us. Kill it!"

They tracked the future down to a small house on the border where it was cowering in a cupboard disguised as a shepherdess. Then the mob led this whimpering thing to the guillotine and chopped its head off.

Heathrow

He told a joke.

"Three holes filled with water!"

They waited for the punchline.

He put the punchline on a bicycle and told it to ride there.

"But they are in Somalia."

A boat then.

"No, it'll take too long. Give me a plane ticket."

The man sighed and bought the punchline a plane ticket. But Terminal 5 was in trouble. Flights had been cancelled. The punchline slept across a pair of chairs in the passenger area. It felt strangely ashamed. Its luggage went missing. Depression set in. The punchline bought a small plastic bag of peanuts from a shop and ate them slowly.

"Well well well," it mused. "Well well well."

Agenbite of Inuit

A ball of lightning descended on the chilly northern tundra and enveloped a woman briefly, giving her shamanic powers of healing.

She healed everyone's colds. She healed a dog. She healed a seal that someone had just stabbed to death and it rolled itself back into the water and swam away.

"Hey!"

She healed a crack in the ice. She healed a fishing hole.

"Stop that."

She healed an igloo and it turned back into natural ice, leaving the inhabitants shivering in the open air.

"Knock it off."

She healed the sea, which was wounded by the land, and the whole world became sea. She healed the land, which was wounded by the sea, and the whole world became land. Everyone was drowned then buried.

"Right, that is it."

"Sorry! Sorry!"

There was no end to the healing.



-----
The very brief story of Uvavnuk.

Temperance

Prohibition! Speakeasies! Hidden dens of vice!

Knock Knock.

"We don't know you."

"Joe sent me."

"Come on in."

Music.

"Get me a beer and put beer in it."

But the police were shutting these places down. They had uncanny successes. People were desperate. Unable to find processed barley, they began licking the grain in the fields.

The farmers went to the president and complained. "Stop people licking our crops. Look at them out there. It's disgusting! Lap lap lap .."

"What can I do?" said the president, sighing and sucking a potato. "It's a free country."

"Sir, you're sucking a potato."

"I used to like vodka. Leave me alone."

Burke and Wills and Timothy Jones

Why all the sugar? Burke denied that he had brought it, and so did Wills, but there it was, sacks of it, weighing down the camels. "Who brought this?" they asked the rest of the team. Everyone shrugged. Who knew? They argued about sugar all the way across Australia and back again until one man put up his hand.

"It was me."

"Who are you?"

"Timothy Jones."

"There is no Timothy Jones." Burke checked the list of names. "We didn't bring a Timothy Jones."

"That's right," Timothy said. "You didn't."

The terrible naked desert whispered on all sides.

Birds and fish

People in the Amazon jungle ate fish from the river and birds from the tree. In other rivers birds swam; in other trees fish flew. But no one would touch them.

Tut

The Nile went up, the Nile went down, and so the crops were watered.

"Marvellous," said the Ancient Egyptians. "It happened again. Hooray for the king."

They believed it was the king doing it, with his godlike powers. The king believed it as well. Everyone did. Even the crocodiles believed it. One crocodile believed that the regular motions of the water were making his teeth hurt, and he went to the king to ask him to stop.

"I'll tell you what I can do for you," the king said, leaning down graciously. "I can have your brains pulled out of your nose with a hook. Then we'll stuff your internal organs in jars and you can stay in my pyramid with me after I'm dead. How does that sound?"

"No thank you."

"You're very picky."

"I'm not picky," the crocodile said. "I like my privacy, that's all."

The Blood Countess forgets

The widowed Countess Elizabeth Báthory bathed in the blood of young women to keep herself youthful.

"Pass me the soap, János."

"Mistress, we are out of soap."

"Who neglected to buy soap?"

"Ilona."

"I will bathe in his blood too. That will teach him to buy soap."

But it didn't. Instead she was infected by his forgetfulness.

"Whose blood do I bathe in again?"

"Young women."

"Ah yes."

She made a note of that and stuck it on the wall.

"Don't let me forget."

Tolstoy and the peasants, again.

One year later Tolstoy tried again.

"Would you like justice and social equality?"

"Yes."

He was delighted.

"By this we mean we want to moon the Tsar."

He dressed a dog in a velvet suit and stood it on a chair. "The Tsar."

They mooned the dog and harmony reigned on the Tolstoy estate thereafter. The dog got in the pie tin and flew away.



-----
The first Tolstoy post.

The Waste Land of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot worked in a bank. His friends came to him one day and said, "Look, T.S., here is some money to support you. You need to leave this bank and devote your time to poetry."

"Ah, my friends," he said. "This bank has been an inspiration to me. One afternoon before I worked here I came in and heard the bank clerks singing, each to each. I asked them if they would sing to me and they said, "No." Out of that incident I made a poem. More recently there was a manager who walked around with his arms full of hyacinths. They dripped water on the floor. We called him the hyacinth manager. Another poem."

"We're sorry T.S., we didn't know."

"All great poets work in banks. A little-known fact. Keats handled hedge funds. Byron dealt with loans and interest rate adjustments. Ezra Pound, he is planning to fake his death at the age of eighty-seven and take up residence here as a bank vault."

"Really?"

"Yes. In the future, when his poems have been forgotten, he will still be remembered for his e-z swing hinges and dependable locking mechanism."

They sighed with longing. "Oh tell us, where do we sign up to work in this bank?"

"Here, my friends. Here."



-----
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, for the singing.
and The Waste Land, for the hyacinths.

Thinke he which made your waxen garden

The Italian showman toured London with a garden made out of wax. "Gardens are very important," he said. "Adam and Eve were born in a garden."

"What else is born in gardens?"

"Moths. Spiders. Turtles, sometimes. Fruit, of course. Ants. Worms. Caterpillars. Cut-worms."

"In your garden?"

"Nothing."

"Pfh! Ha!"

"It has already given birth to everything," he explained. "Let it rest." Emotion made his eyes look wet. "Have some pity."

"It must be his mother," they said, feeling sorry for him in his distress.

"It is ... it is ..."




-----
Question: why is there an extra e in the title? Answer: it's a quote from John Donne's Satire 4. "I /Thinke he which made your waxen garden, and / Transported it from Italy to stand / With us, at London, flouts our Presence, for / Just such gay painted things, which no sappe, nor /Tast have in them ..." etc, etc.

How much spaceship does a man need?

Leo Tolstoy thought a lot about the peasants. "What can I do for you," he asked them, "to make your lives better? Would you like justice and social equality?"

"We would like a spaceship."

He bought them a spaceship.

"This is a pie tin."

"It is a spaceship."

"It is a pie tin."

He lost his temper. Ignorant peasants! Blind to social and material progress!

"What is the matter?" asked his wife, coming up to the group.

"He bought us a pie tin."

"That's nice," she said. "That's nice of him."

Eyak, 2008

The last person in the world who understood the Eyak language died in January. Nobody else knew this, but the common cockroach had its precise, true name spoken in only that language. On that day, all of its other names perished in sympathy.

Householders around the world stared at the oval insects in their kitchens and murmured uncertainly, "What are those?"

The people who manufactured the sprays that are used to exterminate cockroaches woke in their beds and found that their purpose in life had been cosmically mislaid.

"What did we do with ourselves before today? Something, but what?" It was impossible to remember.

"What will we do now?"

"Poisoning ourselves seems somehow natural."

"What will we use?"

"I don't know."

They crawled under the sink and hid behind the oven.