There was a village Old Jack told me about a while back. I’m not sure if I believe the story, though. Sometimes I’m sure it’s just a fable. Other times, I swear I’m in the middle of it. Old Jack says that severe weather and severe landscapes take their toll on the living beings they interact with, and severe villages and severe forms of governing and severe people are a common result. He says the land and the elements form the people and their beliefs.
This particular village was located in the far north, where
the snow and wind form walls of sheer ice.
Living there is peaceful but difficult.
The growing season is very short, and often rogue storms can sneak up
and destroy crops. The people living
there always grow much more than they need yet end up having not much extra. There is a great deal of work to be done
throughout the year. There is planting
and tending the fields, caring for livestock, hunting and butchering, food
preservation, gathering of wood for warmth during the long winters, etc. Everyone is always kept very busy and
everyone is expected to pull their own weight, and everyone does.
Almost everyone. You
see, once in a while a person came along who did not mix well with all the
stringent rules and regulations. It’s
not that these people didn’t understand the need to put food by and plan for
the future, it’s just that somehow they were born less severe than the
others. These less severe people were
often the artists, poets, and musicians among the people. But who has need for artists, poets, and
musicians when the winter is so severe and there might not be enough food to
eat? That is the question that went
through most of the minds of the people of this severe village.
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| The longhouse on the banished island. |
So the artists and musicians, poets and writers, actors and
dreamers often kept their nature a secret because it infuriated the other
villagers. The other villagers didn’t
want music and poetry and beautiful things.
They wanted hardier livestock and better crops that could withstand the
very cool springs. They wanted strong
bodies that could chop wood and carry water.
They wanted people who would work uncomplainingly and unquestioningly
and unceasingly. After all, isn’t that
what they themselves were doing? Why
shouldn’t everyone do it? So as I said,
the different people kept their nature a secret and did their best to fit
in. Often in time, they forgot their
true nature altogether and fit right in with the rest of the villagers.
Sometimes, however, a person would be so very different that
he couldn’t hide it, no matter how hard he might try. This story is about a young man, an artist,
who loved beautiful things. Like the
other different people, he tried to hide his nature for a while, but this made
him very angry. He knew he was different
and he was glad of it. He loved beauty
and saw it everywhere, even in the severe landscape. Eventually, he could no longer be false to
himself and so he decided not to hide anymore.
He painted beautiful pictures of severe and tropical landscapes, of men
and women working together, of beautiful animals, of waterfalls and sunsets and
mountains and starry skies. He painted
and painted and painted.
This sort of behavior didn’t go unnoticed for very
long. Eventually, a great deal of
grumbling and complaining took place among the villagers. If they had to work so hard, why didn’t
he? Of course, they did not consider his
painting to be work because to them work involved severity, sacrifice, pain, and
difficulty. Work never involved
beauty. Your eyes can’t see beauty if your
heart is not ready. Well, a meeting was
held and the young man in question was told in no uncertain terms that he had
better tow the line and work harder. If
not, he would be banished. The village
hadn’t banished anyone in a few years because it was such a severe punishment,
but they said it would be done if he did not change his ways. This threat of banishment is what had curbed
the passion of so many other hidden different people.
Did the young man listen?
Ha! Old Jack says he continued to
paint and then added textiles to the mixture.
He gave his paintings out for free to any villager who wanted one. Many villagers secretly accepted them and
hung them in their homes, although they would not publicly acknowledge this
man’s right to his art. One young lady
in particular, who was secretly different herself, gratefully accepted a
painting from the young artist. The two
had always shyly noticed one another, but now that he had given her a gift,
their affection deepened.
It wasn’t to last, though, because the young artist had
refused to follow the rules. He had
remained an artist. He had remained
unsevere. He did not fit in with the
harshness of the village, and the other villagers did not want to have to share
food with someone who wasted their time on painting instead of growing
crops. So I’m sad to say that they
banished this young man. He was given a
canoe and told to row out to an island far offshore. There he must make his life as good as he
could on his own, surviving with his own wits and his own hard work. They all believed, of course, that he would
die. Everyone knew that anyone who was
banished to the island always died. They
never returned.
So the young man sadly rowed away with a few
provisions. He waved to the young girl
to come with him, but she shook her head and looked down, and so he rowed on
out of sight. She did not have the
courage yet to be different, and he had worn out his welcome in the
village. The villagers went back to
their long day of work, and that was the end of the artist as far as they were
concerned.
Except that it wasn’t.
The young man got to the island and found a small group of people living
there. These were all people, and
descendants of people, who had been banished by the villagers on the mainland. They lived comfortably in small huts, and
their existence was unknown to anyone else.
They welcomed the young man when he arrived. He tried to tell his story, but they already
knew it because most of them had been through it themselves. Interestingly, they were very happy and
carefree for the most part, and they lived their lives in joy. They were not wealthy people by any stretch
of the imagination, but they were satisfied.
The first thing the young artist noticed was that the
weather was much warmer on the island.
He was told it was due to wind patterns blowing off the mainland and
protecting them. This made a less severe
landscape, and with a less severe landscape came less severe minds and
hearts. Oh, the people still worked,
just not obsessively. They planted
gardens and herded small animals. They
took care of the basic necessities of life and some of that did involve work,
but there was so much more to their lives than just work.
There were artists just like the young man, who worked in many
different media. There were singers and
songwriters, poets and playwrights, musicians and actors. Some of these banished people gave birth to
children who were not gifted artists, writers, musicians, etc. But somehow they still found beauty in whatever
they chose to do, whether it was farming, fishing, or hunting. They admired art and beautiful belongings.
Well, you can imagine how surprised the young artist
was. After all, he thought he was rowing
to his death on the island. That’s what
he had always been told, been threatened with--banishment meant death. Now here he was, banished and very
happy! He decided he would make a sign,
a symbol, for those on the mainland so that when they saw this symbol, they
would know that perhaps there was another life after all and perhaps not
everyone had to be so severe all the time.
He went to work on building a very large house, a house
where everyone on the island would be welcome to come in and perform their
particular art. Many of the islanders
helped him out. They liked the idea of a
communal building for making beauty. The
house went up very slowly because no one was obsessed with getting the work
done, but it did get done and it did get built.
It was a beautiful longhouse, and when it was finished, a great party
was held and everyone danced long into the night.
Late that night when everyone had gone to sleep, the artist
walked through the new longhouse. He
loved all the odd nooks and crannies in it, the odd shapes, the different
designs people had made while building it that somehow all worked
together. He thought of the pretty young
girl on the mainland and wondered what she would do when she saw it. Surely, she must see it as it was so big!
Back on the mainland, the young girl did see the house on
the island. She wondered about it. How could there be a house there? Was it built by the artist who was
banished? Was it all in her imagination? Whenever she got lost in thought staring at
the faraway island, someone would yell at her to get back to work and stop
being so lazy. Didn’t she know a severe
winter was on its way? Didn’t she know
that life was a vale of tears? Even when
she tried to point the house out to people, they would look at her as if she
were crazy. “What house??” they would ask. They couldn’t see a house. There was no house there to them. Their eyes were not yet ready to see.
As time wore on, the house would fade from the girl’s
vision. Now she would see it; now she
wouldn’t. She began to suppose it was
all a dream, and so it became a dream.
But the house was still there, whether the girl could see it or not, and
now other people who were deemed “different” could see it, too. It faded in and out of their vision as well,
according to their own belief and strength.
But Old Jack says that banishing now became a more frequent occurrence,
happening at least a couple of times per year.
The villagers were adamant about the severity of their life. The more they banished people who were
different, the more severe their lives became, which only reinforced their
beliefs.
The house is still there, and if you look at the island in
just the right way, you can see it. It
might fade now and then, but it’s there.
Anyone who is brave enough to be true to themselves can sail out to the
island and find the house. Anyone who
believes what they are told and accepts their indoctrination will see
nothing. The eyes can only see what the
heart is ready to see.
