27 November 2006
Working the System
She got the summons by hummingbird. It came to her one afternoon, dipped its beak in incandescent ink, and wrote in the air: The honor of your presence is requested at the council of elders. As the message dimmed and faded, she mulled over the request and decided to remain at home. The council was displeased. They sent more hummingbirds with more messages. The council wants you. Now. She laughed. Tell the council I’d rather be a mountain. They say she rumbles now, and lofts lava and ash skyward periodically. She has the best time of any in her range.
# posted by Mario @ 9:10 AM 
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It is lovely.
Having spent a lot of time in the last year and a half asking 'how high?' every time a dysfunctional council summons me to jump, this was a timely reminder that not all summons must be answered, and mountains are happy - so I'm going for the mountain.
The hummingbirds are welcome to the flowers I grow there, of course.
I love how your writing illustrates so well the principle of (good, useful) projection - archtypal templates onto which we cast our own stuff, then we understand something we needed to understand in a new way.
Writing-as-therapy, sure, but more than that. My friend Eric Darton once said:
“Projections are part of the game. The audience members use what they take in to make the story they need at the moment.
But the story-making process of good drama or literature can knock us off our center because the language opens us up, unwittingly, and sometimes unwillingly, to truths we’d rather not engage.
So it’s at the level of language that political power receives its marching orders.”
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Having spent a lot of time in the last year and a half asking 'how high?' every time a dysfunctional council summons me to jump, this was a timely reminder that not all summons must be answered, and mountains are happy - so I'm going for the mountain.
The hummingbirds are welcome to the flowers I grow there, of course.
I love how your writing illustrates so well the principle of (good, useful) projection - archtypal templates onto which we cast our own stuff, then we understand something we needed to understand in a new way.
Writing-as-therapy, sure, but more than that. My friend Eric Darton once said:
“Projections are part of the game. The audience members use what they take in to make the story they need at the moment.
But the story-making process of good drama or literature can knock us off our center because the language opens us up, unwittingly, and sometimes unwillingly, to truths we’d rather not engage.
So it’s at the level of language that political power receives its marching orders.”
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