Part 3
As she whirled and spun on the strange winds,
beneath the Great Cloud,
the Curious Snowflake gazed upward at what had been her home
and beheld that it was but one cloud among many
neither the largest
nor the smallest,
nor the darkest
nor the lightest,
and she saw that it was right, that it was good.
As she approached the Ground Below
she saw that, instead of the smooth, flat surface she expected
it was instead heaving, surging, rippling beneath her.
For a moment, the Curious Snowflake was afraid,
but a small voice in her heart,
the very one that always told her that other’s ideas about Falling were wrong,
seemed to say:
“Fear not. All is as it should be.”
She felt that it was right, that it was good,
so she let go of her fear
and touched the Ground Below.
But instead of landing on it, the Curious Snowflake sunk into it.
And not only that,
but her beautiful, crystalline body was disappearing,
dissolving into the very substance of the Ground Below.
It wasn’t painful, or even unpleasant,
but she was so surprised that for a moment, the fear returned,
stronger than before.
But once again, the small voice returned, also stronger than before.
“Fear not, child. All is as it should be. You are safe.”
She felt that it was right, that it was good,
so the Curious Snowflake let go of her fear once more,
and her body faded away into nothing
and she was the Curious Snowflake no more.
But her Curious Self remained.
She seemed suspended in a void
neither hot nor cold
neither moving nor still.
Her body was gone, but who she was, what she knew, remained.
“So,” she thought, “the star-shaped ones were wrong.
We do not disappear when we Fall.:
“Of course they were wrong, my Dearest Child,” came a voice.
“You always knew that.”
It was the same voice from her heart again,
but it was no longer small, and no longer just within her.
It was not sound, it was not thought.
It was not loud, it was not soft.
It came from nowhere and from everywhere.
And while it was strong as hurricanes and deep as night
it was also perfectly gentle and infinitely kind.
“Who are you?” thought the Curious Self.
“I am the Ocean, Dearest Child.
From Me, you came, long ago
to Me, you now have returned.
Welcome home, Beloved.”
“I do not understand,” thought the Curious Self
“Then I shall explain, Beloved,” said the Ocean,
“for I know you as I know Myself
and you shall not be content until all is made plain.”
“Long, long ago, so very long
that the time your Great Cloud exists is but a single puff of breeze,
I was all there was.
My singleness was perfect, but I knew there could be more,
things other than Myself.
So I withdrew from some places and deepened Myself in others,
and thus the Ground Below rose up from within me,
and it was good, for now there were things other than Myself
and I could understand Myself even more.”
“Now I wished to explore this new Ground Below,
so, using the warmth of the Great Light in the Sky Above,
I caused some of Myself to rise up into the air
and then thicken, condense,
into beautiful crystalline shapes in the coldness of the sky.
Thus the first Great Clouds were born from me
and the first snowflakes from these clouds,
separate from Me, but of one substance with Me.”
“And I let these first clouds loose,
freeing them to float upon the winds of the sky,
and as they passed over the new Ground Below
I caused some of these new snowflakes to Fall
so that they may explore these new places.”
“Some flakes Fell back upon Me, as you have
and were rejoined to Me to tell tales of floating in the sky.”
“Others Fell as rain to run upon the ground,
to trickle and gather together in streams,
which gather into greater streams and then into great rivers
which then are rejoined to Me to tell tales of running brooks
and meandering currents.”
“Still others Fell as flakes
and covered the Ground Below in still whiteness
for a time or a season,
only to then change under the warmth of the Great Light
back to water, to follow the paths their brethren took as rain
rejoining to Me to tell tales of winter winds
and still crystal nights.”
“Still others Fell also as flakes, but upon mountaintops
to stay there for many turnings of seasons,
grinding the slow grind of glaciers,
until, at long last, giving in to the warmth
they follow their brethren’s path back to Me
to tell tales of rock and ice
and the slow flow of Time.”
“Thus, every flake of every Great Cloud,
no matter how long the journey,
(for some are stranger still than these)
will return to Me, for they are Me
only changed and sent forth
to explore and return with tales of all they have seen
so that I may better understand Myself.”
As the Ocean told this tale,
the Curious Self saw each thing and felt each journey.
She was the drops of rain.
She was the babbling brook.
She was the snowy field.
She was the creeping glacier.
And she looked into her heart and saw it was all true.
“So,” thought the Curious Self,
“the needle-shaped flakes were wrong.
We do not exist to whirl and twirl.”
“Of course they were wrong, my Dearest Child,”
replied the Voice of the Ocean
“You always knew that.
But you do return to the clouds again, if you wish.”
“And the pebble-shaped ones were wrong too,”
thought the Curious Self.
“We do not exist to be cold and perfect,
and you do not judge us.”
“Of course they were wrong, my Dearest Child,”
replied the Voice of the Ocean.
“You always knew that.
But you do return to Me to view your time apart,
and during your time within the Great Cloud
it is by coldness and perfection that you define
who you are and what you learn.”
“Likewise, the star-shaped ones were both right and wrong.
Your perfect Self does not disappear,
but your unique shape and form are gone
and never again shall there be a snowflake
in just that shape.
“Each are right and each are wrong,
and such is as it must be,
for while each flake is unique,
like is drawn to like in form and thought and truth.
Their only mistake is the belief
that only their truths are true.”
As the Voice of the Ocean spoke
the Curious Self remembered all she had learned
of beauty from the star-shaped flakes,
of knowledge from the needle-shaped flakes,
of goodness from the pebble-shaped flakes,
and of wisdom from the First Flake,
and she felt in her heart the truth of what she was told.
“Now, my Beloved Child,
I am sure you have many questions for me.
Is there anything you wish to know?”
“There is one thing,” thought the Curious Self.
“If I have been to other Great Clouds in the past,
why don’t I remember anything from them?”
The Ocean laughed then, and the sound
made the Curious Self think of her old friend the First Flake
and how he would shimmer with it.
“My dearest and most wonderful Child
why do you think you forget?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Think back, Beloved,” replied the Ocean
“when you heard the partial truths
which the other flakes believe
how did you react to them?”
“Well,” said the Curious Self
“I would look inside my heart and then I would know
whether they were true or not.”
“And what else would be in your heart, Dearest Child,”
said the Ocean,
“but the truths you brought from the flakes you were before?”
The Curious Self looked into her heart just then
and saw for herself the truth
of what the Ocean told her.
For there, shining in her heart like stars,
were all of the truths of every flake she had been.
One truth seemed greater than all the others
surrounding and binding all she had learned before
into one Great Truth,
and as the Curious Self gazed in wonder
at this, she realized what this One Great Truth was,
and the joy she felt at this
was greater than anything she had ever experienced before.
“Yes, my Beloved. Yes, my Dearest Child,
now you see and understand it all,
for this Great Truth that lies within you
is that you and I are One.
From Me you came, to Me you return
endlessly turning and returning
and ever bringing me more and more to know of Myself.
Within your heart, I dwell
whispering the truths you need whenever you need them,
for I long for nothing more
than your happiness and understanding.
For your happiness is My happiness
and your understanding also Mine.”
This great new understanding burned within the Curious Self,
changing her yet again,
for now she understood all, and was curious no more.
So she fell into the awareness of who she truly was
and spent a glorious and timeless time
at one with the Ocean from whence she came.
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Okay I have read all three parts and I love it! This is really great writing Jim! I'm proud to call you my nephew (in law?) lol
ReplyDeleteIs this the end of it? or is there more?
really good - i loved the whole thing
ReplyDeleteWell Done!
Oh, not done yet. Still one more part to go. Still have to tie it all together.
ReplyDeleteCS
I'm not sure you are keeping to the level of your audience with this one. If this is for a childrens book I think you have lost that focus.
ReplyDeleteReading this I can picture lots of good ideas for drawings for the pages. Really good job Jim. I'm loving it! =)
ReplyDeleteSam,
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know. Problem is, there's no way to "dumb down" what I've written. It was never really going to be for the Dr. Seuss crowd anyway, though I read Elliott the first two parts and he really liked it. Go fig. Honestly, though, I wrote this thing so bloody fast that it was more like taking dictation than creating. Maybe I was. :-) The best ideas are always like that.
*nods* Let me start by saying that all this is meant as constructive criticism. Clearly others appreciate the path you have taken so interpret the follow as nothing more that my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI think that "dumb down" is not a great way to look at the process. The first two parts were a wonderful allegory with the CS exploring what it meant to BE. The introduction of the Ocean as a character was where I felt the story faltered. At that point we were no longer exploring and identifying with the CS. The central character becomes the Ocean who explains existence and purpose.
*side note* A slight philosophical rub point came for me personally in the idea of a god-like entity like the Ocean but I'd like to remain focused on the Story structure.
The Curious Snowflake is who the reader identifies with throughout the first two parts. We explore and learn with her. I would have liked to have seen that same style of story-telling remain throughout. Allow her to discover that melting into the ocean is not the end. That the shape disappears but the self remains. Allow her to go through a few explorations, like the talking to the other snowflakes, and have those adventures be what teach her what the Ocean was to tell her.
If your target is children then I think that you had a perfect start. Clear identification with a character to draw them into the story. An adventure to keep their excitement. Repetition to make the points clear. I'd like to see that carried through the rest of the story.
First, thanks for the real criticism. I appreciate that you have the chutzpah to comment something other than "nice job"
ReplyDeleteSecond, as to your comments. I agree that it was the third part where things got... thicker, so to speak. But how can that be changed? Remember, above all else this is an allegory, a parable. Truth of a particular kind has to be revealed in the course of the story, and the truths that have to come out are "what happens when we fall", and that one snowflake's beliefs in that are only important in shaping their "time in the Great Cloud", not in what comes after. The entire point of the story is that no one in the "cloud" knows the complete truth of the afterlife, only parts of it. Without Falling and meeting the Ocean, this can't come through.
Third, I'd like to know what your "slight philosophical rub" is. What's the point of writing a controversial, idea-based story if you can't have a nice disagreement about it?
Oh, BTW, give your mommy-to-be a Happy Mother's Day hug from all 5 of us.
Life has gotten in the way of my giving you a response here but I do plan to. Worst case I'll deliver it in *dun dun dun* person.
ReplyDeleteI can however give you an extremely condensed version of the "slight philosophical rub". It has to do with the middle ground that is the Ocean in your story. It's *almost* a deity without actually being so. It struck me more as an entity that was capable of sending parts of itself out to explore a universe that was beyond its ken. It suggests that there is something greater again than it, which has a sort of layers of the onion philosophy which I liked. A snowflake to cloud to ocean cycle. But then its dealings with the snowflake struck me as being, this is hard to quantify, superficial perhaps. The Ocean is placed as being both this transitory state and having it's own conscience.
ReplyDelete... perhaps I can't do this in a condensed version. I'll have to get back to it.
*hugs*
I guess the simplest is that my personal philosophy doesn't include an overseer entity in any conventional sense and the Ocean comes across as that in your story.
ReplyDelete"Overseer Entity"... I like that choice of words. Of course, it really depends on whether you mean overseer in the simply watching over sense or in the Old South plantation sense :-).
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though, the ideas I'm trying to get across are mighty esoteric, so bear with me. A big part of my idea, and my philosophy, comes from the Conversations With God books. They aren't perfect books, mind you, but they have influenced my thinking a lot, especially when it comes to the nature of the Divine and the true purpose of existing. They come as close as I've found to getting it right.
So, as simply and quickly as possible, here is what I think "God" is like. We'll use my favorite term "Oneness" instead of "God" because it is a better description. The Oneness is simply that: Everything. All actual, possible, and impossible realities and times. I have an earlier post titled "God in 10 Dimensions" which has a link to a Wimp.com video that describes it pretty well. Sounds impossibly vast and impersonal, right? Wrong. Because if the Oneness is everything, then it is YOU as well. When it comes down to it, there is no such thing as "souls" per se, but instead there is Soul, one Spirit manifesting in everything. Think of it like a fractal pattern: each tiny piece, no matter how far "down" you go, contains the pattern in it's entirety. Each of us, everything around us, the keyboard we type on, the monitor we look at, the air in-between, everything is a "fractal" of the Oneness.
So the question then is "why?" If there is a Divine, there must be a Purpose, right? Well, obviously the traditional Judeo-Christian "earning of Heaven" is blown right out of the water in this philosophy, because if we are all One, then why would the Oneness punish part of Itself? Makes no sense. Gone also is the traditional New Age idea of life being a School for Souls, because if we, at the soul level, are indeed the Oneness, then there is nothing for us to learn. The Oneness, being what it is, already knows all. So what's left?
ReplyDeleteExperiencing.
Let me explain. Imagine being in a sensory deprivation tank. No light, no sound, no input. Now, take away your internal senses as well, heartbeat, breathing, body awareness and such. Now, imagine you have always been in this tank. No internal imagery, no words, no memories of anything but this senselessness. Now, how can you prove that you exist in such a state? You can't! Existence can only be proven in comparison to something else.
Now imagine you are this Oneness. How can you know anything? Only by creating that which You are not. This is very much like the famous stanza from the Tao Te Ching. "First there was the Tao, from that came the One, from the One the Two, from the Two the Three, from the Three came the Ten Thousand Things." The Oneness manifested Creation from itself so that could be a point of view, a perspective. To know something is not enough, you must experience it in order to truly become One with the knowledge. So it is through physical reality that the Oneness experiences Itself, and thus we, as fractals of the Oneness use life to experience as well, and the Oneness also experiences it through us.
I could go on (lord knows Neale Donald Walsch has, he's up to about 7 or 8 books on this) but that's enough to go on here. You can now see how my story grew out of this: Ocean as Oneness, land "rising up from within" the Ocean as Creation, snowflakes, one in substance with the Ocean, being us, one in substance with the Oneness. The Oneness/Ocean is not really an "overseer" exactly, more like a co-experiencer and co-creator. The universe is not "beyond it's ken", but is instead a point of reference, or more precisely an infinite number of points of reference, each splintering off multidimensionally into an infinite number of possible other points of reference. Physical reality is not separate from the Oneness any more than your hand is separate from your hair, but instead offers you the perspective that you have a body made up of these parts.
Put it another way. We are 3-part beings (some philosophies break it down more, but this is enough to go on), Body, Mind and Spirit. Physical reality is the Body of the Oneness. Conscious beings are the Mind of the Oneness. The Oneness Itself is the Soul. Make sense?
I know I've probably opened up more questions than I've answered, but I suffer from diarrhea of the blog enough as it is, so I should probably stop. Hey, think of how much more in depth we could get if we actually got together (wink wink, nudge nudge, subtle-hint subtle-hint)!
Seriously, miss you guys amazing bunches. Want to see you sometime before your silly wife pops. At the very least, you need to come get that carrier and double stroller we have, remember?