Vimoh's Blog

Once upon a time, on a world not very different from this one, there lived a race of people with very short memory spans. They remembered nothing of yesterday, and only very little of what had happened a few hours ago. Their view of the world therefore, was mostly limited to what was happening now.

One popular debate that raged among the people was about the existence of the sun and the stars. During the day, one group sang praises of the sun and laughed at those who spoke of the night sky and the stars. They said that all that needs to be seen can be seen quite clearly in the light of the sun. Anyone who, in spite of the sun’s very real presence, insisted on believing in fairy tales about a so-called star-studded night sky, was clearly delusional.

After sunset, the other group praised the stars while singing and dancing under the beautiful night sky. They ridiculed the sun people and asked them where their sun was, now that the glorious stars had appeared to prove them wrong. Revelling under the starry sky, they denied the importance, and even the existence, of the sun. They declared that the stars were all anyone should ever need and that no sun could ever stand against the sheer awesomeness of the night sky.

There was a third group on this world, a relatively small minority of people. This was composed of those who knew of dawns and twilights. They knew that while it was true that the sun lit everything up when it was out, it also blinded people to the beauty of the stars. They also knew that even though the night sky was beautiful to behold and brought them much joy, it wasn’t really much of a light source, especially when compared to the sun.

They did their best to point this out to the day people and the night people, but nobody much listened to them. And thus, the quarrels went on as surely and as frequently as the sun rose and set.

Suddhodana, king of the frogs that lived on this side of the well, was backed up against the mossy wall. Kalia the snake, hood raised, stared at him with unblinking eyes.

“Leave me alone Kalia,” Suddhodana pleaded.

“I am hungry king,” Kalia said, “I need to eat.”

“You have eaten my family and all of my people,” Suddhodana wept as he spoke. “You have been the death of all that I loved in this world!”

“I was hungry,” said Kalia, licking his lips. “Besides, it was you who invited me into this well. You showed me the way to your world.”

“I brought you here so you would destroy my enemies,” Suddhodana cried. “You were supposed to eat the other frogs. Those on the other side of the well. The evil ones who challenged my authority.”

“You are all just frogs. I could never tell the difference,” Kalia said before he lunged forward and swallowed Suddhodana.

This is an old folktale and I lay no claim to its authorship. I just converted the narrative into a scene and gave the characters names and dialogues.

The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we’re afraid. We fear we will not find love, and when we find it we fear we’ll lose it. We fear that if we do not have love we will be unhappy. — Richard Bach

Once it rained real hard. A river swelled and washed over its banks. Entire villages and towns were submerged and their people fled.

Many were stranded on rooftops and waited for help. Days passed. One day at around noon, a young woman atop an old school building saw a man swimming by. He wasn’t doing too well though. He looked exhausted and on the verge of giving up.

The woman called to him but he didn’t seem to be able to hear her.

Just as the man was about to lose to the water, the woman jumped in for him. Read the rest of this entry »