Love Letters to Earth by Henry Quicke - HTML preview

LOVE LETTERS TO EARTH

 

Henry Quicke Love Letters to Earth

 

Priestess and anthropologist, 1

Bag People, 5
Dancers, 10
The Mystery of the Spectacular Ending to the Story of the World, 14 Instructions for Creating the Earth, 18
The Reason the World has Ended, 22
The Afterlife, 26

Priestess and anthropologist , 32
Swakes, 37
War, 42
Weather, 47
Wind, 53
Streams of Conscience, 58
For Love, 62

Priestess and anthropologist , 68
Fishing for Lost Souls, 73
The Two Sighs of God, 79
The Town Fool, 83
A Great Victory, 89
The People Who Retreat from Themselves, 94
Actors, 102

Priestess and anthropologist, 109

 

A pair of tattooed warriors grips the anthropologist’s arms and leads him up a
hillock to a small round hut. Inside, the priestess, nude as always, shifts her raised knee
to keep her hammock swaying.
“Leave him,” she says. The warriors release their grips. One of them throws the
anthropologist’s frayed and bulky backpack to the dirt.
“Why the rough treatment?” The anthropologist has been here for months and
speaks her language fluently.
“You’ve learned too much,” says the priestess. “We’re going to have to kill
you.”
“I don’t understand. You gave me permission to stay as long as I liked.”
She shrugs one shoulder, a habit of hers. “Now you can stay even longer.”
Hers is the only naked body that has not lost its effect on him. “I’ve been
planning to write all good things about your people,” he says, “if that’s what you’re
worried about.”
“All lies,” she says. “We’ve been putting on a show for you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“We know the most child-like tribes get all the government benefits.” She clucks
her tongue. “Believe me or not as you wish. You’ll be killed either way.” She opens her
hand and invites him to pull up a mat. “Don’t worry, you have until the rain stops,” she
says. The anthropologist looks over his shoulder. The warriors are gone and, she’s
right, it’s raining again, one of those light-switch rains that could quit just as quickly. “That’s one of our customs,” she adds. “Don’t you have that scratched into your
big black notebook somewhere?”
“Execution rituals. I must have missed that one.”
“I don’t know how. You scratch all day long in your ugly notebook, and for
what?”
“It’s my job.”
“That notebook! How old is it? Why don’t you ever make a new one? Why don’t
you at least paint something on the cover? It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen an
anthropologist carry, and that’s saying a lot.”
“I’m not really an anthropologist,” he confesses. “I’ve lapsed. I don’t study. I
don’t write papers anyone will read.”
“Then what do you do?”
It’s a question he’s been avoiding. “I travel and observe…I’m collecting my
thoughts.”
“Into what?”
He’s not sure how to respond.
“If I find a pile of your thoughts lying around, I will carry it out to the shitting
place before someone steps in it.”
He starts to laugh, then remembers she’s about to have him killed.
He folds his arms. She taps the edge of the hammock
He stares through the doorless entry. It’s pouring now. The rain cascades
through the rain forest’s leaves, overfilling those like cupped palms, spattering those like
spatulas. The puddles swell and join hands, climbing toward the hut. His legs are tired and a little wobbly from nerves. He decides to take a mat after
all. He sits at an awkward distance from the priestess, near the entry. For a while, they
observe each other out of the corners of their eyes.
The priestess pushes her toes against the hammock cords to get it moving again.
The anthropologist puts his forearms on his knees and lets his head sink. He rubs the
back of his stiff neck.
His back hurts, too. After all his travels, his endless observations, he wishes he
had a comfortable chair for what now appears to be his last hours on earth. He’s owed
that, at least, isn’t he?
He raises his head. “Isn’t it also a custom to allow the condemned to live like
kings, to bring them food and drink and women, or whatever?”
“You must have us confused with some other people,” she says.
“So you expect me just to sit here quietly?”
“I never said you had to be quiet.”
“Maybe I’ll run.”
“If our warriors don’t catch you, the jaguars will. You needed three guides just
to find us, remember.”
Outside, the rain hastens the dusk. After years of moving on, taking leave at the
first sign of entanglement, his worst fear has at last been realized. He’s overstayed his
welcome.
“It is raining,” says the priestess. “Soon you’ll be dead. Now would be a good
time to show me what’s in your very ugly notebook.”
The idea angers him at first. He doesn’t deserve a death sentence for notetaking. So why should he entertain his killer? After a few minutes of silence he reconsiders.
She’s right: he’s going to die soon. Why harbor a grudge? He doesn’t want to spend his
final hours in boredom.
Still, he waits long enough for the silence to register his complaint.
It is dark now, and the rain falls steadily. The anthropologist takes a deep breath
and lets it out slowly. He unzips his backpack and pulls out his ugly notebook. There’s a
small flashlight in there, too. He has sealed it with duct tape and used it sparingly. It
still works.
He opens the notebook and clears his throat.

 

Bag People

 

There was a time when the Jooga tribe were notorious collectors. They took

 

everything they could get their hands on, whether natural or man-made, and put it into

 

piles. They even raided the villages of neighboring tribes, harming no one but stealing

 

everything that interested them and some things that didn’t, simply to add to their

 

collections. To outsiders, their village looked like a garbage dump, piles surrounding their

 

huts, some taller than the huts, some on the huts, some in the village commons, others

 

stretching out well beyond the boundaries of the village, strangling trees and providing

 

homes for some animals, playgrounds for others.

 

At first, the Joogas had a system of classification that allowed them to put like

 

items in like piles. Spear-shaped objects went in one pile, egg-shaped objects in another.

 

Flexible objects in one pile, brittle objects in another. Daytime objects in one pile,

 

nighttime objects in another. When an object fell into more than one category, the

 

village’s Collector-in-Chief would weigh the factors and make the call. The system

 

worked for centuries, until the nearby river became the bearer of a new variety of objects

 

that seemed impossible to classify. The Joogas found floating down the river and

 

amassing on its banks objects which appeared egg-shaped when first discovered, but could become spear-shaped simply by pulling on the ends. Then there were objects that seemed

 

both flexible and brittle depending on the direction you tried to bend them and on other

 

factors, like the weather. There were also many objects that could be used in both

 

daytime and nighttime, and some that seemed useful at no time. Such objects caused a

 

breakdown in the classification system, and the piles, once neat and orderly, became

 

chaotic and cluttered, and the sheer numbers of items found floating in the river threatened

 

to overwhelm the village.

 

Then one day it began raining, so hard that the Joogas were driven into their huts,

 

where they watched out their doorways as their treasured piles collapsed in the downpour.

 

The storm continued for days, and soon the banks of the river overflowed, and the Joogas

 

were forced to climb into trees like monkeys just to prevent themselves from being swept

 

away. When the flood surged through the village, all the collections of the Joogas were

 

washed away, as were their huts, leaving them with nothing. Finally, as the waters began

 

to recede and the rain began to slow, the heavens provided them with the greatest object

 

yet invented, an object so useful and well-suited to the Joogas, it had to come directly

 

from the gods. The rain turned from water into bags, and the whole sky was suddenly

 

checkered with falling bags. Some of the bags caught their handles on the branches of the

 

trees and hung there like new fruit, while others turned upside down and landed on the

 

heads of the frightened Joogas. When the rains, and the bags, finally stopped falling, the

 

Joogas climbed down from the trees (some with bags still on their heads, afraid to touch

 

them), sank their feet into the muddy ground, and wept at the loss of their cherished

 

collections.

 

The Collector-in-Chief called a meeting, to which he requested that everyone bring one of the bags that had been given to them by the gods. The bags were large, made of

 

plain beige cloth, with egg-shaped wooden handles that opened wide.

 

“The gods have sent us both a message and a gift,” said the Collector-in-Chief.

 

“The message is that our collections had become too heavy and threatened to break the

 

back of the earth, so the gods decided to wash them away. To replace our collections, the

 

gods have sent us the gift of these new containers, which are objects from their own

 

collections. ‘May we suggest you try these?’ the gods are saying, and as usual we will

 

follow the good suggestions of the gods.”

 

Thus it was decreed that from now on each person’s entire collection must never

 

exceed the dimensions of his bag.

 

Almost overnight, the Jooga culture changed dramatically. They rebuilt their

 

village and lived as before, but now they were much choosier about the items they

 

collected, knowing that only so much could fit in one bag. Their lives felt lighter and

 

more concise, and their collections sometimes surprised them with meanings that would

 

have been smothered in the era of great piles.

 

The Joogas still raid villages, but now they take very little, and if they take more

 

than they can fit in their bags, they return what they don’t use.

 

“I won’t be needing this,” a Jooga will say, handing a stolen cup back to its owner.

 

“Oh, so it’s not good enough for you?” the owner will say knowingly.

 

Almost every Jooga’s bag is full, even at an early age, so that an addition to its

 

contents also means a subtraction of something already bagged. The young Jooga’s bag is

 

often full of flashy items plucked from the river, while an older Jooga replaces such items

 

with subtler ones, more personally and less conventionally meaningful. Household items used daily--cooking utensils, clothing, personal grooming items-

 

are exempted from the bag’s contents. All else is part of the collection. When a Jooga

 

obtains a new and interesting item, he may carry that item around the village for a day or

 

two, showing it to everyone he meets. At night, though, it must be returned to the bag,

 

which is kept in a corner of its owner’s hut.

 

The entire collection is brought out only for special occasions, such as the

 

beginning of a new friendship or marriage. When two Joogas strike up a conversation for

 

the first time, one will suggest an oog, a meeting in which two people display the contents

 

of their bags to each other. Sometimes old friends will renew their friendship with an oog,

 

too.

 

At an oog, two or more Joogas will take turns pulling out items from their bags.

 

The owner will describe each item, where and when it was found, what it might be used

 

for, and will then tell any stories connected with it, which are often embellished to make

 

the item more meaningful and important.

 

“This is a nut that fell on my head when I was a boy,” said one Jooga man, twisting

 

the nut between his fingers and weighing it in his hand.

 

The man’s wife, a woman well known for the beautiful black beads she’d worn

 

around her neck, had recently died, and his friends had suggested an oog to help him

 

overcome his grieving.

 

“I was walking in the place where the parrots feed,” said the man, “and it was the

 

first time I was allowed to walk in the trees alone. The nut frightened me and left a bump

 

on my head for many days. When I picked the nut off the ground, I looked to see who

 

had dropped it. There was a parrot high in the tree above me, looking down at me, first with one eye and then the other. ‘I suppose you want this back,’ I said to the parrot. ‘I

 

found it first,’ replied the parrot. ‘But when you dropped it on my head, it became mine,’

 

I said, ‘so go find another.’ ‘I’ll scratch your eyes out,’ said the parrot. ‘You’ll have to

 

catch me first, stupid parrot,’ I said and then ran swiftly back to the village and put the nut

 

in my bag, swapping out the eye of a fish I had recently found on the river bank.”

 

“No wonder the parrots don’t like you,” joked another Jooga. “Word gets

 

around.”

 

“That doesn’t bother me,” said the first man, now pulling out a mummified parrot,

 

the next item in his bag.

 

The others laughed, until they noticed that the parrot’s eyes had been replaced

 

with two of the softly glowing black beads that had once rested snugly in the hollow of his

 

beautiful wife’s neck.

 

They said nothing, out of respect for this mystery, and then they looked away,

 

searching their own bags for a story to tell. Dancers

 

It is said that the Lakas are natural dancers because when they walk from hut to

 

hut or village to village they must spin, shuffle, and slide over treacherous, cliff-hugging

 

paths and the knife-sharp rocks that stipple their jagged island. So rarely do the Lakas

 

encounter flat earth that when they do their knees bow and their feet roll over onto their

 

ankles and their torsos sway and totter until they finally collapse to the dirt and struggle

 

for hours to regain their feet, like turtles flipped on their backs. The skips and twists in

 

the Lakas’ walk form a kind of dance, and one they must learn early or else risk tumbling

 

down spiked hillsides into the gnashing surf. But that is only part of it. For the Lakas, life

 

itself is a dance, one to be shaped and practiced until it achieves a form so marvelous and

 

real it will survive its dancer.

 

Every important event in a Laka’s life gets expressed in a common language of

 

dance steps. Because of this, a Laka may recall his entire life by joining these steps into

 

one continuous life-dance. The dance embodies the history and personality of its dancer,

 

so much so that Lakas make no real distinction between a person and his dance. If several

 

Lakas long for the company of an absent friend, they may elect someone to perform part

 

of their friend’s life dance. Then, magically, the performer seems transformed into the friend. This ceremony brings comfort to the families and friends of loved ones on long

 

journeys and those who’ve passed away. It brings back ancestors for the delight of

 

descendants who never knew them and raises long-dead chiefs, whose dance steps still

 

edify and inspire.

 

A Laka’s dancing life begins when its first step is recorded in front of the entire

 

village. The child’s father holds its arms while music is played, speeches are made, and

 

fires burn at the cardinal points, the shadows creating new geometries on the rocky earth.

 

Finally, haltingly, the child lifts a knee and steps into a life of dance.

 

“Let the dance begin!” shouts the village chief.

 

“And let the dance be named Rakbu!” shout the child’s parents, announcing for the

 

first time the name of their child--and his dance.

 

As the child grows older, his life-dance grows longer and more complex. When he

 

travels, he will add movements to recount each of the islands and peoples he visits. When

 

he marries, a great ceremony will be held in which bride and groom adopt one dance step

 

from each other’s life dance, the more sentimental couples choosing each other’s first step

 

to signify a new beginning. If the child is foolish enough to grow into a criminal, his

 

crimes, too, will be recorded in the life dance. And the dance steps for crimes are not ones

 

that any dancer would choose to perform: the dance step for stealing is to spank yourself

 

repeatedly on the bare buttocks, and the dance step for adultery is to lie across jagged

 

rocks while others walk over your back.

 

When a Laka dies, his life dance is performed by friends and relatives in a funeral

 

ceremony that can take hours, with mourners bursting into tears as the dance recalls for

 

them the poignant moments of the deceased’s life, though the mourners take solace in knowing that the deceased’s life dance lives on, and that a Laka is never really dead until

 

his life dance is forgotten, which may take several generations or more, depending on the

 

respect and affection he generated and the skill with which he danced.

 

This is the reason the Lakas are such perfectionists. If they wish their dance to

 

survive them, they must make it memorable, and a memorable dance must have both

 

interesting choreography and skillful dancing.

 

The choreography of every Laka’s dance is determined solely by the important

 

events in his life. For this reason, the Lakas often seem to base their life decisions purely

 

on the dance steps that follow. They’ll visit a certain island just to add that island’s dance

 

step to their own dance. They’ll build a new hut just to add the building-a-hut step to

 

their dance. They have even been known to trip and fall on purpose, breaking an arm just

 

to add the wrist-swinging, thigh-slapping motion of an arm-break to their dance. When

 

spouses fight, they accuse each other of marrying solely to steal their dance step.

 

This is how the Lakas give shape to their lives and why, for them, every life event

 

is experienced not just for its own sake but also for the sake of its effect on their dance.

 

Some would say that the Lakas’ real living takes place only when they dance, so that for

 

them life and art are reversed, and living is worthwhile mainly for the life it brings to art.

 

But perhaps this is the price they pay to fulfill their deepest desire: that upon their deaths

 

they will have shaped their lives into a dance so inspiring and beautiful that future

 

generations will long to dance in their steps, bringing them back to life, leap by leap,

 

shuffle by shuffle. The Mystery of the Spectacular Ending to the Story of the World

 

The Ahala believe that before the earth was created, all of the gods gathered

 

around the great campfire for a feast, and Agwan, the god of contests, suggested that they

 

celebrate the plentiful feast with a storytelling competition. Agwan began, and each god

 

in the circle of gods took a turn telling an astonishing and infinitely complex tale, far

 

beyond human comprehension. When all of the stories were told, a heated discussion

 

arose which lasted perhaps thousands of years in human time, but which was of course

 

very brief in the life of a god. Finally, and by the narrowest of margins, it was resolved

 

that the story of the goddess Ma’hal, the silver-tongued goddess of words, was the most

 

interesting, particularly because of its spectacular ending. Thus it is that Ma’hal’s story