Unremembered History of the World, part four-B

SHORT STORY MONDAY

If you have not been following along, que lastima. A prophetic utterance three centuries ago has led to an altered history, a world without war, where humankind is a human family. This segment brings us within ear shot of the story's conclusion.


Unremembered History of the World, part four-B

Judith Remington-Olney stretched out on her back beneath an enormous oak tree. She studied its wrinkled hide and asked it questions. Her eyes traced the knots and gnarls that make an old tree fascinating. She pondered the questions she might ask the tree, and it was then it happened. A reverberation in the earth had begun, so subtle that had she not been attuned to it, she would never have felt it. But there it was, and it made her fearful with excitement.

She, too, trembled and, standing, went near to the tree to feel its fractured and furrowed bark. As she put her arms around the trunk, her fingertips discovered and caressed the scarred X which had been carved into the tree's side twenty-five decades ago and she remembered a story which had been told to her in childhood about an Indian that had been turned into a tree. It was a fable, a tall tale, she had been led to believe. Her parents always said it was something like the stories of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill and all the rest of those early American mythologies that evolve with the frontier.

Now she wondered. These were the blue hills. Could this be the place?

She tried to remember how she had gotten here. One day she would return to this tree and unfold its power.

For two years she gathered together all the family stories, trying to understand her roots. She read with great interest the many books about Olneys in history. She was especially interested in their motivations. Why had her family gone so far in making a mark on the world? What event could have transformed a frontier family into one of the leading families of their time, in every time in which Olney were found?

Judith Remington-Olney re-read the old diaries, and weighed the words carefully.

For another five years she researched the rituals and myths of every culture seeking any and all tales of transformation, and especially transformations pertaining to trees. And as she uncovered the buried histories of our earliest ancestors she found echoes in each of the tale of trees. Even the Holy of Holies in Yahweh's Temple was engraved with cherubim and trees. "I am like a green palm tree," the Psalmist wrote.

Like the story of the flood, which is repeated in a hundred different traditions, so she found the image of the tree as a core image in nearly every culture.

But even still she was not satisfied. She must release the man in the tree. And for this, a deeper ritual would be needed. And so it was that she beneath a stack of books at a library sale she unearthed that rare volume of prophecies called Flight of Gypsies.

Judith became dizzy and lightheaded when she found it. Though she opened it with care, the binding broke when she opened the book. The page before her was titled, "Spell For Turning Trees Into Men". The book nearly dropped from her hand.

In very large letters there had been printed a warning:

"History will revert
to the moment
the man became a tree.
Beware:
This is a Fifth Circle event."

The story concludes here

NOTE: If you have not been following along and wish to begin at the beginning, you may wish to start here and when you catch up to this section, you will either be stoked to continue to the end, or wish you'd experienced a different history.

Stonehenge

I guess I learned something new today. When we look at photos of Stonehenge, we're not seeing the unaltered relic of ancient days. Rather, we have been seeing a "restored" Stonehenge, an "artist's rendition" as it were.

The photos here tell the story. The first shows us how the monuments appeared in an 1877 photo of their original disarray, ravaged by the centuries. The second shows how the British re-shaped and stabilized the pillars to give it the form they believe it once might have had in the mid-twentieth century.

History is probably a lot like this. Historians give us neatly packaged stories that attempt to explain everthing so that it is orderly and understandable. But the real histories are quite a bit messier because life is just a bit more complicated than what historians can effectively reproduce. People are simply too complex, with complex motivations and drives, both rational and irrational.

Makes it all the more fascinating to wonder what future historians will write about our place in history. Let's work together to make the story something good.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If you think you might enjoy a strange piece of historical fiction, you might be interested in my story An Unremembered History of the World which also has its beginning in rural England.

The Dark Arena

Nearing the finish of Mario Puzo's The Dark Arena, an early novel written before his fame. He must have been dealing with his own inner demons here, after going through the war. Was Puzo (the character) Mosca? The book is dedicated, "for Erika." Written in 1953. He was writing for almost two decades before becoming a mega-blockbuster with The Godfather. Years of discipline and development, unseen in the womb of dark struggle, where the writer is formed: The Arena. Only the best gladiators will survive... the rest are washed away and forgotten. We remember not their names. "The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but time and chance happen to them all."
April 20, 1998

I wrote this journal entry upon completion of my short story Unremembered History of the World, and as I neared the end of Puzo's book which I was reading at the time. In my youth I remember vividly the reading of his compelling blockbuster The Godfather. One evening I could not put the book down, and when my mom got up in the morning I had been reading all night.

The power of good books is revealed in this anecdote which I remember from a Puzo interview years ago. He had been a struggling writer for years, but with the success of The Godfather he suddenly had more wealth than he could have ever dreamed of. For a year he did everything money could buy, went everywhere, exhausted himself in his pursuits. At the end of it all, he was bored by everything... except his books. Reading, he said, was the one thing that he never tired of.

Here is a link to my Unremembered History. I tried to create a non-linear experience with several asides utilizing the unique capabilities of hyperlinks. But in point of fact, a written document can accomplish the same through footnotes. Nevertheless, I consider this one of my most interesting stories, though somewhat slow to develop for some modern tastes.