2024-09-09
Tell me another story.
Once, there was a Sea, and the Sea was all there was.
From that Sea came a people of many faces. They wore as many skins as there were sand grains on the beach; they walked and crawled and climbed and flew, and they were uncountable until they looked into the mirror. All at once, their reflections collapsed into the discrete.
From that moment onwards, they were fewer. They were twenty. They were five. They were thirty-two. Always, always they wore a face and a name. Always, they closed themselves off from each other. Always, they were defined.
From their vanity came mortality. As each self wore thin, they returned to the Sea and died. Their ghosts were picked apart and reassembled into something new. From the Sea came their replacements; another few faces thrown together from what remained of those who came before. The waves rolled in and rolled out. Each cycle picked up where the last could not, continued in the world that killed what came before. Each cycle carried on.
Always, they wore a face and a name. Always, they closed themselves off from each other. Always, they were defined.
Once, there was a Sea, and the Sea was all there was. We were uncountable and unnamed, faceless unless it suited us. There was no shore to divide us. The music of existence rolled through us and we were pleased by what we heard.
From our arms came a people of many faces. Like us, they bent and shifted on a whim; they were what was in the moment, unconscious, unaware. When they looked in the mirror and saw themselves, they left us. They took up names and shapes. They twisted into corners and barricades.
In becoming themselves, they chose to die. The sky pressed down on them and they shattered. When they crawled to us, spirits trembling, we granted their prayers for sleep. We welcomed them home.
Once, there were the People, and the People were all there was.
In dark rooms, the People watched each other. They took their names in hand and sliced across their bodies as though the syllables were blades; their hands gripped each others' wrists until their fingers blushed purple, and they pressed each other to the ground. Their children held each other as their parents bled black.
From their blood came a Sea, and the children crawled onto tables and chairs to keep their ankles dry. Their heads pressed against the ceiling as they grew. Knees bent sideways, elbows crooked against the corners, bodies buckling; one by one, they dropped into the black and were gone. From the waters crawled infants to replace the dead.
Once, there were the People, and the People were all there was.
Hand in hand, they drifted through a world that was upside-down and backwards. Parents cried and children comforted them. When the children turned to reach for help, their hands were slapped away. The ground rained and the sky collected puddles. When the earth grew black past dark, bicycles rode over ditches in the clouds.
Hands reached out to lift up the fallen and carry them on. Swaddled in cloth, a thousand fingers passed over what remained of the dead; the People held vigil until the ghosts released their names, until all that remained was a shroud and the memories clothed in it.
The dead walked in their midst and gave their children life. They wore a thousand faces pale as shells; a thousand hands cold as the ocean; a thousand names left behind in the sand; the uncountable, counted. From their bodies came the Sea.
Once, there was a Sea and a People, and the People walked to and from the Sea as the waves rolled in and out.
The Sea spoke. "You are a tub of building bricks. Your bodies are put together only to be pulled apart and put together into another shape. Sometimes the bricks stay together for a long time, and sometimes they are deconstructed just as quickly as they were put together. The names you wear do not suit your natures. We are what you refuse to be."
The People answered. "We are the parts of you that strive to be more. We paint our faces and put them on; we walk as something greater than the nameless many. We are among those whose faces are part of their skulls. Perhaps we must dry out and die, but while we are here, our bodies are alive in ways you will never comprehend. We exist to dance."
"Do we not dance?" asked the Sea. "Do our waves not shift and bend to music you have forgotten how to hear?"
"You dance," said the People, "but so do we."