Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Once

upon a time, as all good stories start, there was a girl who realised that it was easier to bend like a tree than to be rigid. Probably some Chinese proverb said that first, but never mind. Yes, it's easier to move and flex and change, because then things can never quite catch up with you and you can dodge other things that might be hurtling straight towards you, particularly those things thrown by other people. It took a long, long time to discover this trick, but, once she had found it life seemed much easier and much more full of laughter.

So, she learned to become rather like a lump of clay or playdoh. Not quite as poetic sounding as a tree, but it still worked. And, in clay form she was able to just about dodge and trick herself away from too much of her past ever quite catching up, or too much from anyone else being able to stick about for too long. You know, the kind of things that others often try to jettison from their own waste disposal units onto the world around them. She also managed to keep a little less of the stuff from her own waste disposal landing too heavily on anyone else. Things seemed to be going along just about fine. After years and years of being the one who seemed to attract bizarre amounts of 'stuff' and to crumble and crack at the first sign of trouble, she finally got what some stories call 'a bit of peace'.

The trouble with clay, is that you have to keep it wet, but not too wet or else it will simply become sludge. The bigger trouble, of course, is that tears are made of water. The salty kind.

Now it came to pass that there were just too many tears about. On top of that it rained and rained and rained, for days and days and days. Oh oh.

But our heroine figured a way to trick the too many tears and too many rainy days in summer. So she managed to find a patch of sun. Look at me now she thought. I can dry myself out and get strong again. So she did.

It was a bit harder, as the new shape was kind of fixed. But it was just about OK, if a little unwieldy compared to the flex and flow she'd found before.

But the problem? Ah yes, the problem. Now she was all died out into this strong shape, was the danger of stuff landing on top - it builds and builds and builds. There will come a time when the littlest bit of fluff, the littlest word, the littlest thing, will tip the balance. Crack.

Crack and crumble, and there you go. All broken up into a million little pieces.

4 comments:

Occasional Poster of Comments said...

>>Probably some Chinese proverb said that first<<

Lao Tzu, in the Tao Te Ching, I think. Or something very like that.

Anyway, that was kind of a sad post. Hope that last bit of fluff is a long way off. And never comes at all.

miss-cellany said...

The fluff hit before I wrote this. Hence writing this.
But nothing stays forever - as I'm sure the Tao Te says somewhere.

Writing a script is proving to be super SuperGlue.

Occasional Poster of Comments said...

>>The fluff hit before I wrote this<<

Ah, I did wonder. Glad you've found some SuperGlue.

Petink said...

friends and people who love you can hold you together while the glue waits to set. You are loved and adored by so many that not a piece will be left to fall