stays crouching behind open jaws. Rising in this lassitude of awakening, unhindered by the call to burden or duty, was the Beggar and the family he had stayed with for the night.
At about dusk last night , he had passed in front of this one hundred square foot square brick and clay slab dwelling erected amongst a thousand others.
A man of stained, darkened complexion , with a wildly locked head of hair had sat before a tiny fire. He was clothed only in a short pant made from some cloth of a sack or bag. Near him sat the
children, so tiny, so dirty, so bagged of rags that their sex was impossible
to discern at a glance. Yet their inner
condition was still unmarred for they had watched the beggar with enormous eyes dancing as his coloured turban went by. Their limbs not so weak that they did not enjoy the timeless sibling game of poking into each other and giggling nods of agreement.
Hushing at them was a woman dressed a little better than the man in that more
of her stature was covered. A lighter look but perhaps more stained. Pretty but the lines veiled by dirty wisps of hair and
smears of a constant care with the three waifs. She gazed at this strange Beggar too, yet in less an open view, her eyes shifting from man to children to outside world, as if her vision was a necessary glue for the setting to remain intact. The intricate look drawing towards, holding, a web of belonging, her eyes, perhaps the hinge upon which the world swung sane. Did not fall shattering in the hard clay or ride torn shreds into the Wind. Her eyes the hinge to keep all within, within and all without, without. Her eyes to soothe children's cries to not wield such dinning blows to a father's skull; her eyes to beseech a man not to run killing into the streets, raging like a dying child's fever.
In all this, she, being woman, was the closer to Seek, to Seek as a purpose, a duty. For her eyes sustained the
destitution, that is offered embrace not
caging. Like Seek, she would change all if she could but she could not,
So her eyes gather and hold what cannot be changed. Love infinite in its futility and the more perfect for it.
Love unencumbered in her eyes with destiny.
The man himself had not seemingly taken a glance upward from the fire as he spoke: "Stranger of the Valley, have you eaten?"
The Beggar stopped and replied:
"How do you know I'm a stranger here?"
The man looked up, his eyes the cleanest, purest, intensity of
greenish depth and answered:
"Your club of need you carry. Strangers to here bring two things, fear and sticks for that fear. Those of dwell have no fear since they have so little to fear for."
Beggar: " You have erred, my friend. Though I carry burdens,
none I would fear to lose since the less of these burdens the lighter
would be my load. This stick I carry as a reminder of a past failure."
The Man: "Then of that load, stranger, you may lighten yourself.
Here in the Valley of Dogs one needs no proof of failure; an empty hand swings heavy enough in its own guilt."
So the Beggar had joined them. For the meal. For a long conversation with the man. Slept in a corner tucked away from the rest, which means inches away from the rest.
At first he had refused bread. When surrounded by eyes and mouths larger than even a beggar's, since a beggar alone is not the plead of five.
But the man was insistent. The children were hungry (did such
things need to be said?) and the bread was of nimble descent, made from the seeds of fleeting sow. Stolen.
The man said he belonged
to a "clan", a tribe which had a rule that none could eat stolen food unless a portion was shared with another member of the tribe. In this way thievery was a shared occupation and treachery
unknown. As none of the tribe were around, he would be obeying the rule if the young beggar ate, since whoever the man allowed to eat at his fire became a clan member.
Thus the clan, the gang, is bound by want and secure; need and divide. Each man is made more by the additions of other men; so different from the places where additions of men make each man less.
There a man was less for what he hid from men, here a man had only himself; hovels and pocket less rags could hide nothing. Spirit shared is never halved. It was an assembly before Seek. Though not a worship, at least a knowing homage. Each Seeker equal in the priesthood, no one's truth elite since who could know all the thousand alleyways of Seek?
After the meal, the children played, fought, cried, laughed the forever sibling war in the hovel.
The mother worked on the
molding of cups from water softened clay. With remarkable artistic skill, these cups were slowly formed into unusual shapes and designs.
Alas , with no oven to give them a resilient hardness, their brittle yet artful forms sold for little to a travelling merchant.
Still it was something out of nothing. Creation exchanged for a
jar of goat's milk soured in its curd. The Creator of the goat more clumsy in his wares than the delicate pottery hands of the cups' creator. An uneasy comparison handled somewhat reluctantly by Seek.
This new commerce of art and singing bellies, of gods and woman and creation for the need of need. The gods of a goat which would be dust in ten Years, jealous of a cup which , if preserved, if kept
sacred would live ten thousand years.
Yet a cup useless to licking lips if empty of milky curds.
Yet why feed eyes to only look upon goats, their fly bitten udders, their cut
horns, the bell their neck toiling to follow. An awkward territory for Seek thisbarter of priceless and common creation . As if begging with a golden bowl. .
The Beggar had watched spellbound as the woman made the bowl. Finger tips moving rapidly, mouth to bowl, for the woman
moistened the clay by rolling a piece of it round and round inside her mouth. Tiny pieces added, bit by bit, pressed, welded into joining. Watched it created, as the base as back legs, a tail curling the sides, front paws, head curled up away from the rim as a handle. A jackal on a cup smaller than the woman's fist.
Detailed to a row of tiny teeth from an open jaw; carved with a wood
sliver. An hour's labour. Ten cups for a jar of milk, the milk enough for a meal.But a meal nonetheless. Woven from dirt and spittle and a creator.
The Beggar spoke to the man of this: " Would that the gods had laboured so for their sustenance while creating , perhaps they would not be so careless in its use."
To which the man replied: " Gods or no gods the deed is done. My wife created a bowl handsomely, yet does she concern
herself of a fly which drowns later in its fill?"
Beggar: "But surely all this poverty is not to be excused upon the forgotten will of a god and the desperate throes of flies?"
The man: "Look upon the bowl my friend. The Answers dwell sloping
in its curves.. Halfway up the bowl becomes an impossible climb; a
vertical cliff face just before the edge of escape. Even long before the steep, such a arduous climb of curving slope drives a weakened man tumbling back to smaller portions below. I say small
portions because any one can see the bottom half does not equal
the top half. There is less at the bottom yet more crowd there imprisoned by the side.
Thus is this valley, a bowl of little for the many, yet its empty walls stand high indeed.
Simply a bowl, my friend, simply a bowl seething in emptiness."
Beggar: "Surely, a way can be found outside or in to lay justice soundly against the walls and crack away hindrance. Open escape in the shattering of barred slopes. That the people may spill out and find plenty in the gatherings."
Man: " A spilling out of the people has always gathered plenty but it was not bread they swallowed but their own teeth. It is the nature of the bowl you do not see, my good friend. It is not formed of clay but dust. Carved from th
e inside, not out as my wife has pieced her cup. The Valley's bowl was borne as thus: Once there was no valley, all men equal unto prosperity, need, secure, want. Then a
man, some man, became unequal in his want. Call him the Creator of the Bowl. For his unequal want resulted in the loss of secure in another. This man succumbing to the poverty of his secure fell to the ground. Throes of despair as he wept alone, for was he not the First of the unwanted? All else looked upon him to say we cannot help for we are equal from want to secure.
Let he who took his to have more help him. But that one could not or would not help him either. Daily the dust flings gripped in his beseeching reaching above. Gods, man, no one heeds. The hole grows.
More men are greedy in their wants, more men unlucky in their secure.
Destitute follows destitute. Falls into the hole.
In time, a valley drinks a veil of silt before the sun. A place cast in its own carve, gnarled hand by gnarled hand . The more that pour in the deeper is the empty curve.
Hence, my friend, for the walls of the bowl to be shattered, one must crack away the entire earth. Who empties the jar by flinging it to a wall?"
Beggar: " Then bring down into the bowl all that is needed to
fill the bowl. All would be equal as before.
The Man (after a good long laugh): "Forgive me, my friend, your
ideas are food for the poor but poor in goodly thought.
Remember the fly? Drowned to the fill of the cup. Such would
men argue that the flow of plenty would destroy all in the bowl.
Or worse, breed more. As if you had a fly in a empty bowl, to
save it you add flies! A swarming, seething mass to allow
your fly to crawl out! But many are still