faller chapters 1 and 2

faller

Chapter 1

okwari- the bear

There was this bear.

This okwari.

A long time ago.

Way back.

Before there was too much of everything.

This bear.

Not a good bear or a bad bear.

Just a bear.

For most of her life this okwari had it alright.

She was the only bear around.

I don’t know if she was the only bear in the whole world or anything, but she was the only one around in those parts.

Nothing messed with her.

She just went around doing her thing.

Being a bear.

But then one day people started to show up.

Everybody knows how that goes.

Not so many at first. One or two. And then more and more. The way they always do.

The people did their own thing at first. Hunted and fished. Planted some corn. Stayed away from the bear.

But then, when there was enough of them to do something they started to talk about the bear.

She was dangerous they said. She was stealing their food.

They said all kinds of things because they were scared of her. She never did anything to them but she was an okwari and they were just people.

Okwari don’t exactly have to put up with a lot of crap.

The people got together and made their plans and then they went after the bear. They went out into the woods and tried to kill her but she fought and she was a bear.

The ones that survived ran away.

Now the people had a good reason to be scared of the bear.

They made more plans. New plans.

They dug a pit and managed to trap her in it.

She put up a hell of a fight. Dragged some of them down into that hole with her. But in the end once the bear fell down in that hole it was over.

People came from miles around to look at her. Stare down at her.

She put up a big fuss at first. Kept trying to get out of that hole.

But after a while she just gave up.

Whatever it was that made her an okwari went away and all she could do was wait down there in that pit to die.

They threw down food but she wouldn’t eat.

They threw rocks at her and she wouldn’t move.

After a while the people stopped coming to look at her.

Everything about her that was okwari everything that used to scare them was gone.

So they just left her in the pit to die.

It took a long time. Even bears that don’t remember how to be bears don’t die too easy.

She rotted there in that pit for a real long time.

When she finally did die the people barely noticed.

She was so skinny by then they couldn’t even get any meat off her so they piled dirt to fill in the hole to cover over the smell and got on with their lives.

They forgot what it was like to have an okwari around.

To be scared.

To be in awe.

To have something be bigger and stronger than them.  

The people didn’t know it but they lost something when they dug that hole and trapped the bear in it.

They never even knew what it was they lost or why they lost it.

They never knew anything got lost.

Just some dead skinny bear stinking up a hole in the ground.

Far as they could see the world was a safer place a lot easier place without that okwari lurking out there in the woods.

They slept better at night.

They didn’t have anymore nightmares. They didn’t jump at every sound.

They felt safe.

That’s all that mattered they thought.

It’s not like their lives fell to pieces or anything.

The sky and the sun and the stars stayed right up there where they always were.

The world kept right on moving.

But they lost something. The people.

Something that was supposed to be a part their lives.

Their dreams.

Their nightmares.

When the people trapped that bear they lost that thing whatever it is that makes stories worth telling.

Maybe stories don’t seem too important.

Maybe dreams don’t seem important either.

Not as important as being safe or maybe living a little bit longer.

Not things you can hold in your hands or trade or sell.

Add up in some book.

Figure out on some computer.

But that okwari belonged.

She was supposed to be there.

When she was gone everything was different.

Cleaner maybe.

Brighter. Safer.

But not nearly as…

Not nearly so…

What.

I don’t know.

I can’t remember that part.

I can’t remember it.

The ending.

How it ends.

I can never remember the whole story.

It happened a long time ago.

Just some story that happened a long time ago.

I still remember bits of it though.

I don’t know why.

But I remember little bits of that story all the time. I can’t tell it all the way to the end not the way that I heard it.

But I remember pieces of it.

I forget a whole lot of things but I’ve still got pieces of that story stuck inside me.

I don’t know why.

I don’t remember why.

Just those pieces stuck inside of me.

It means something.

I used to know it all the way to the end but I can’t remember enough of it to put into words anymore.

I used to know all the stories and now I don’t know any of them all the way to the end anymore.

I remember them being told.

The way that people told it.

But chunks of them keep rotting away.

Decomposing.

That bear though.

Something about that okwari.

I never forget about that bear…   

Chapter 2

silence

there is the story.

the telling of the story.

there is the listening.

and there is the silence. when no story is being told.

there is the making of music.

there is the dancing and the singing and the listening.

and there is the silence. The silence that lies beyond the reach of any music or any voice.

this thing, this third thing is not known by many.

it is forgotten by even more.

and that is what gives it its power.

some are born with this thing, this silence, swimming with them inside the womb. their spines do not straighten up as easily as others and they find it harder to walk and when they do walk they fall down again and again. if they find the strength to stand then this thing, this thing that even they cannot see or know that it is there, but they suspect is there, has always been there, they have some hidden thought that perhaps this is the way that the world must be, that this thing would knock them down or drag them down and if they crawl back up then it will do the same thing again and again.

and again.

and again.

for some of these people if they open up their mouths to speak then they will find that the words have been strangled. mangled choked and smothered, deep deep down inside of them even before these words could be given birth. and so they, these people, most of them, fall silent, remain silent, for this hint of a feeling inside of them tells them that it is useless and fruitless to even try, because the words will never be able to leave their mouths fully alive or alive in any way that matters.

when the black robes came they had with them a book that said that the word was the beginning. and yet this book also said that their god was too large, too vast and unknowable for mere words to encompass.

there are some things that are too large for the minds and mouths of mere human beings to grasp.

the black robes had that much right.

but it is not just their god or anyone else’s gods that live beyond the words. it is other things too.

it is those things that make us silent. not in awe or in reverence, but because the silence is so much larger than we can understand and because the words and the music have been taken away, strangled stillborn inside of us, and we fall silent because we have no other choice, because we have nothing at all to offer the world that has not already been offered in a better and more truthful and more substantial way.

that emptiness also is too large for words or understanding or meaning.

we stay silent. we fall down or we do not even ever rise up, not because we feel the power of things moving through us but because we feel nothing at all, because our throats and our legs and our hearts and our stomachs are numb and frozen and horribly unspeakably empty.

i know.

i know.

i can feel it just out of reach, too large for any words. and my thoughts can form but they will not survive. they desperately seek some kind of shape, but the shapes that will not hold in fullness or declination, mere ghosts of the stories that desire so very much to be told.

i know.

i cannot speak these things.

but i know.

i try to stand and i fall down again and again because my body and my brain have been beaten down by men.

but also because i was born to fall down.

i was born with part of me already long ago dead and i can wrestle down these dead words, but they will never be enough.

they will never be the story.

not the whole story.

i know.

those others see only the mangled form, the scarred and wordless form that is my body today, a man far older than his years, who stumbles and stutters and falls down on the ground frothing at the mouth. but they cannot see the rest.

they cannot see me and they cannot hear me.

they cannot hear the hidden me or see the hidden me because he was strangled mute and contorted in the womb and so he hides so deep down inside of this scarred, stumbling and stammering shell.

this is not the telling of my story.

this is not the music, the song or the drumming of my song.

this is what is left of me when everything else, all the stories and all the music have gone silent, have been taken away from me.

this is the voice of a dying animal in its cage.

strangled.

numb.

too small and starved and desiccated to be anything like the real thing.

this is not the telling of my story.

it is dead words on a dead page, on dying leaves of paper, on dead bits of light, with the stink of death still upon them.

this is all that there is left to my story.

there may be no one there to listen.

there may be nothing left inside me to be worth the reading reading of it.

but i will tell what i can.

i will stumble and i will fall and i may never escape the confines of this thing, or of my trapped and bitter mind.

but i will tell it.

i will try to tell it.

i will try again and again and fail and fall again and again, hurl my body against the walls of this cage that i am trapped in, until this dead or dying thing has been told.

it may signify nothing at all.

in the end, after all the sound and the fury, it will almost certainly signify nothing.

but i will tell it.

i will try to tell it.

it is not the telling of my story.

but it will be something.

it will be something like the telling of a story.

and that, even that, even will be better than the silence.

anything will be better than the silence.