101. THE VILLAGE OF CLUES

THE VILLAGE OF CLUES
The voice was distant yet defined.
'I am Adam in Eden, supremely bored,' it said.
The distended words held themselves forward as a
plea to an executioner all set with the cleaver's edge.
'Help me please. Remove me from this torrid place.'
-
No bondage could be worse. He had spoken;
no situation more removed from joy and happiness.
The love of Paradise was the love of ease, which could
not be continued endlessly, forever. 'I remain Adam in
Eden, superbly bored, who takes his leave now to set forth
into the world I do not know, alone. Eve has kept the
serpent for replacement.' So said, he moved forth.
-
Like wind upon the water, form upon the void, the entire
sensate world was stretched before him. 'You must take
from this all that you can use,' a new voice said, 'for I
have given it here to you, alone. You, named Adam, have
been banished by request from what you deemed too much
a Paradise. Your hand now shall know the work of toil and all
of its constructions.' Such was the frame when vision entered.
-
Adam could see; unknown to him, the newer Paradise
had opened. He recreated Eve, in his image.
It was he now who moved upon the stillness.
His outstretched arm built form and time and space.
He had arrived.
-
'Eve, we will work. We will build on land these things
we need, for shelter, warmth, water and food. I shall
amend the world to my own sight, changing and replacing
the old with meanings fresh and new. We shall build
a land from which to wonder; we shall build a land
on which to wander.' She nodded an assent as they
then moved along the way.
-
Reminders riddled their sleeps.
Lines of reasoned draft and formulas unknown
bedeviled their new-formed brains. Angles and
declensions haunted them. They spoke a newer tongue,
and time passed. They found a need for grouping thoughts
and acts. Field and hollow, plain and valley filled
with them and theirs. Every act they did led them to
somewhere else - after the first broad move, with
their clues amassed and their worlds transformed,
they sought to harness place and power.
Concepts grew from this.
-
'Man gave names to all the animals.'
That merely scratches the surface,
that merely suggests the whole...