A Seeress by the name of Sylph Morningstar predicted it – the flood. Over cinnamon and talks of myths, the writing witch talked of the flood that one day will bring down the cruel king. Sylph has always been known for her unwavering energy hidden in her love for ellipses. Her followers tracked her reading of nature, i.e., rains and storms, and culture, i.e., dynasties and dynamics, which were flashed onto clouds that were always bidding good-bye. It was a requirement therefore for her followers to be fast, to be critics of the cryptic, to be expert of the elusive. The followers knew that there was something else about the “flood.”
One day, thus, the flood came. The water rose above the consciousness and limited point of view of the cruel king and his supporters, who are known for their infinitely crude mind and obtuse though shifty manner of answering any accusations hurled at the king they so loved and adored.
The water covered all seats of learning. No school or lyceum or academy was spared. If you were the kind of teacher who taught about freedom and freedom of speech, the flood swamped over your podium and ruined your lesson plans. If you were the kind of lecturer who did not believe in the freedom of students and pupils to talk back and question lessons about histories and humanities, the flood still came to wet and flood your toga and your concept of togetherness.
The churches of all denominations were not spared from the water that first gurgled and then gurgled some more until all faith and pretensions became wet and sticky. It was as though some gods were making fun of those who were using them to fool people, or at least, earn something from telling stories about them, the gods. Remember, these were divinities who lived far, who did not hear us and did not listen to us. The kind of god that can easily be manipulated because they used silence in a wily way. The gods had patent on religion and woe to those who dared breach the contract and use their products like love for others, selflessness and sacrifice, without giving the necessary payment, the mandatory sacrifice.
This cruel king became like those gods. He sought refuge in silences.
As the metropolis became flooded, the cruel king was nowhere to be seen.
His supporters were waiting for him to make an appearance. They were waiting for him to speak, to spit out venom, although he was no snake. His ways always made many of his supporters happy. They knew that, if he came, they would forget about the flood.
The supporters of the cruel king belonged to the Tribe of Forever-Laughter. They laughed when they were happy; they laughed when they were sad; they laughed when someone was born; they laughed when someone died. They were ready to laugh when the flood came.
The whole world praised them for that laughter. When the Gathering of Nations met to come up with indicators about growth and development, they looked to these people of Forever-Laughter for inspiration. From that meeting, they came up with the decision to
quantitatively define the evolution and civilization of the human groups using Laughter as Index.
When the flood came, the people tried to laugh first. Then, a young woman named Romana of the Cross from the small Tribe of Terrific-Gripes, had the strength to question the laughter. She had attended some academies in the West, and there she was taught how cruel kings can cause people to stop thinking. This woman who came from the Tribe of Books-We-Love-to-Read started to move around the big city. She commandeered a big boat, loaded it with books and started to distribute it with the help of Christian the Good Shepherd, a young writer who once was part of the Discalced Disorder of Priests.
“Read!” Romana of the Cross screamed at the flooded towns and cities. The pearls from her neck trembled with her tremulous voice. “Read! Read!” Christian the Good Shepherd shouted with all his might, the verses in his soft voice threatening to make poetry of dirty politics.
People became afraid for the life of these two crusaders. Maybe, the cruel king will sing a song to them and then kill them (for the myth spoke of that, the king’s soldiers would play the flute and lull you to death). Those, however, who followed the path and tongue of Sylph the Morningstar knew better. No one would touch these two crusaders. Not the cruel king, not the fouled flood. The flood was something else.
Indeed, as people started to read the books, and as they began to question the wisdom of laughter—laughing when there was storm, laughing when there was murder, laughing when there was violence, laughing when love was being annihilated —the sun started to shine upon the head of the people.
With the flood, and the sun, the people came to the wisest decision, the very first time these people started thinking seriously and thinking about thinking. They would stop laughing. They would start thinking.
This made the cruel king also think. Not the flood but the thinking. The king became deathly scared that the people he ruled were beginning to think. Thinking is always dangerous, his ministers told him.
The flood made the people think. The flood was not really a surge of water, but a surge of serious thinking.
Thinking can kill.
The flood had subsided as I write this part of the epic. The cruel king, as far as I know, is nowhere to be seen or heard. Like the gods. Divine apathia, divine athambia, was how the Poet of Absurd-Life put it.
Presently, the people who love predictions and oracles are quiet. It is an eerie silence before the storm.
I, the self-appointed bard, pause at this point. Meanwhile, Sylph Morningstar is contemplating cinnamon and myths, a combination that I told her is legal and lethal.
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Image credits: Jimbo Albano