For those who’ve acquired the taste and skill, there’s a uniquely rewarding pleasure in a book’s well executed ending. In great works, themes are introduced, developed or hidden, and in the end, a masterful author pulls it together in a way we didn’t see coming. But in retrospect the unfolding was altogether obvious and inevitable. This may come in the form of a plot twist, a revelation, a reversal of fortune…Whatever the mechanism…if the ending is compelling, and launches the reader into a new realm of contemplation or appreciation, it’s a thing of beauty.
With this idea as a reference point, I found a certain train of thought barreling down the tracks of my mind this week. But the story is too vast, and my skills too paltry to pull off the literary feat. However, for the sake of discussion, I’ll pitch the main motif here:
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Our tale begins, en media res (mid-stream in the story) with Early Man gathered around a fire pit. We can almost smell the burned fats from a freshly killed beast filling the air. The heat from the embers reaches a cold place in our psyches, and we bask in the comraderie found as a result of the blaze.
The story moves along, we progress from hunting and nomadic living to settled cities and agriculture. Languages, governments, masses of population come and go. Fill in the blanks here…I’m speeding towards the climax.
Now it’s deep into the tale. The protagonists and antagonists are all too familiar; the well meaning but powerless individual, the docile masses, the scheming despots, the sacrificial victims…Everywhere we look, on every continent, in every age, despite beautiful outbursts of creativity and kindness, there are monsters in human form, greedy and controlling.
In this tale we’ve seen that some tyrants act out of a base nature and barbarism (invoking a quick flashback).
Another type of villain uses cunning, crafts laws, forces collusion, twists ethics, manipulates currencies, and creates climates of paranoia to maintain their grip on power.
The collective, innately sentient and ever sympathetic, casts about for a solution. Will a hero rise from the ranks to save the day? Is it too late?
Ever thus, the chain of events set in motion from the original Promethean gift becomes ultimately manifest in an overheated planet. Each year the temperature rises, and all the pieces of our mosaic shift with the melting of ice, C02 saturating the atmosphere, swings of ocean salinity, and the ensuing planetary changes.
Despite efforts to reverse the damage, it seems the human race is powerless to turn the tide. It’s happening too fast, the forces of darkness are too entrenched. But in the final pages of our book- perhaps revealed to a child staring into the flames of a fire on a family camping trip- the warming planet itself, containing all the myriad life forms we so arrogantly claim dominion over, made hot by our unrelenting ambition, purges its body of inequities and iniquities. The dictators, slave traders, corrupt corporations, too-big-to-fail banks all are consumed in a cleansing fever.
It may not be a happy ending, but there is a twisted logic in the ring of fire coming all the way around. With some fleeting satisfaction found in hubris overcome and justice served, no matter the cost.
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Epilogue: agents for the scribes of the Book of Revelation sue me for copyright infringement. My lawyers stall for a negotiated settlement in the afterlife.
From campfire to campfire
This sounds like one of those stories you write as you go along or one that has many contributors…kinda like iBrattleboro…
Because history repeats
Because history repeats itself in one form or another, you in fact may have copyright infringement issues to face when you revisit the fact our earnest humanity is once again eclipsed by the unmistakable, hardened, primal core unavoidably reemerging right back at us from center mirror to out stare what we may hope our appearance to be.
Things are out of control with the world, the worst of us who’s single minded self interest supersedes the best of us trying desperately to even the score seeking resolution and balance with our backs up against the pressing distortion so our planet doesn’t slip off it’s axis spinning out of control churning up the heat into one indistinguishable, blemished ball of shocking friction. Instead of perpetual sync and humming revollutions, it begins to wobble out of kilter less recognizable from the once sharp contrast and vibrant definition like the fixed precision of a sharp shooter’s Ace marble or gyro.
The difference from now back to an age of innocence is there lacks the essential wiggle room of womb for such bankrupting allowances and misplaced kicks to be offset or absorbed but is now stricken with irredeemable damage that infringes on earth’s actual fragility like a devoured appetizer.
To some, this reoccurring nightmare fuels those few who continue the protraction and longevity of domination their narrow pipe dreams demand taking precedence until our planet will be spent of it’s once shared wonder. Taking this current course drains the goodness and compassion so many of us try to keep in circulation long enough to make a difference before it is viciously stirred up again diluted in the mix like crude oil.
tiny hero
Go further back.
I’ve been reading about string theory, the big bang, Calabi-Yau shapes, the pre-big bang, black holes, and such.
According to current physics, everything is made up of tiny vibrating strings. Change their frequency and they change form. The same strings at different vibrations become different things, such as a photon or gravity.
And, although we can’t see them, we are living with multiple other dimensions beyond the up/down, right/left, forward/back, and time that we can see. The extra dimensions are curled up into tiny spaces. Strings vibrate differently partially depending on these other dimensions.
So, it stands to reason that by using physics and changing vibrations, the entire structure of something can be transformed. It might also be moved into other dimensions.
That somewhat wraps physics back around to some rather new age approaches to things. If we say we are trying to alter the vibrations of something, most people don’t say “Oh, how nice, you are doing physics.” They consider you to be out there, far away from science, despite being close to the core.
Maybe the hero is small, vibrating, and able to move to other dimensions.