Environmental Fiction: Wherein the Accelerating Disappearances are Addressed, and a Decision is Made

The Third Meeting

Wherein the Accelerating Disappearances are Addressed, and a Decision is Made.

Third Meetings are special. In every WEarth Cycle, things change as a result of third meetings. There is even a special Presidential salutation, the Triune-Tetrad Testament, (or T to the Third Power as it is commonly known) to mark this momentous occasion.

During Cycle CCCXCVI, Madame Lion sat quietly on the Speaker’s Rock, beaming down on the congress of animals like a golden flame, waiting for the proper moment. When the crowd had settled and anticipation ran through the animals like an electric current, she spoke the words that would focus their energy and yield the Power of the Third:

May the flow between our minds be a spring river
making the world fertile
then refinding its own way.

May ideas build one upon another
like the summer-soft loam feeding
season after season of flower and fern.

May our merging thoughts beget a form
lucid as the seed of autumn,
holding life, a covenant in its heart.

May our minds be ever open to the winter sky,
to the end, the beginning, the paradox,
the wisdom of dormancy,
and the power that lies within.

May the magnet of our desire attract Abundance
to dwell now and forevermore
within our Sacred Sphere.

This we ask for One.
This we ask for All.

The animals heard her words and repeated them in their own tongues, creating a cacophony that spread in waves well over the face of the earth and up into the lair of the stars, who sought (and failed) once again to capture its quicksilver power.

When the last ringing echo had receded, Madame Lion resumed.

"We Animals of WEarth know that many creatures no longer quicken our Mother’s fair body, no longer multiply within her manifold flesh, no longer add their stories to her eternal tale. This, the Third Meeting, will address these Disappearances and Their Acceleration (DATA). For the purpose of properly approaching the DATA, I call upon the services of Grey Elephant, Story-Keeper for Cycle CCCXCVI.”

A shiver of anticipation rippled through the congress of animals. A Storykeeper! Truly this would be a meeting to remember!

At the beginning of every cycle, the animals choose not only a President but also a Storykeeper, although more times than not the latter is never called upon. Indeed, many cycles come and go without any assistance from the Storykeeper, leaving meetings to be remembered or not, as is each animal’s wont.

But Madame Lion’s decision to enlist Grey Elephant’s services meant that all of this cycle’s events would be remembered, coded and stored in the WEarth Reservoir of Knowledge, the WROK, upon which all animal life is built and sustained. All happenings during this meeting would become an integral part of the animals’ past, present and future.

"Let me introduce to you the Storykeeper of Cycle CCCXCVI, who is Grey Elephant, a most excellent animal. He will fulfill his obligations admirably, and will, I predict, be the best Storykeeper ever to grace our beautiful WEarth,” said Madame Lion. These were no idle words--there was in fact great weight behind them. Compared with former Storykeepers in former cycles, Grey Elephant was a beau ideal--not in looks, perhaps, (although his mates might argue that point) but regarding his memory.

All animal-memories are like rivers; our current Storykeeper’s being a rich, wide, winding flow from past to future that picks up everything and carries it along, depositing loads of animal lore on shores where growth and life thrive in its fertile mulch. The elephant’s memory is large, comprehensive and accessible--attributes appreciated by Wilds who have learned from long and sometimes bitter experience that while the equality of animals may be debatable, the inequality of memories is beyond dispute.

Just return for a moment to the reign of Saber-Tooth Tiger (a painful journey for some) whose powers of persuasion were such that he convinced the animals to name him both President and Storykeeper. Tiger’s memory ran through his mind like a cataract--fast, narrow, deep and full of dangerous whirlpools that swallowed up stories and left them spinning with no beginning nor any end. But during his cycle, large animals (far outweighing even Grey Elephant) ruled, and they considered Saber-Tooth to be a fine leader for such fine times. Tiger demanded the big picture, and during his cycle big stories were told and even bigger decisions were made--sweeping decisions that dispensed with details not worth hearing, much less worth remembering.

His Bigness had no patience for small animals and their turf reports. When one of these lesser creatures dared to speak about weather-changes, trees migrating to new home grounds, rivers forming new paths, or any of the daily details that together form the patterns of life in WEarth, Tiger would roar “Insignificant!” And after a few swats from a claw-studded Presidential limb, the hapless animals learned to keep their own council.

But a plethora of grandeur cannot make up for a dearth of wisdom, and Tiger’s rule ultimately led to a period of grave crisis for many animals, especially the big ones. Indeed, Saber-Tooth Tiger and all his mammoth companions now reign in memory rather than reality.

Sadly, such are the dangers of a Storykeeper with such a memory.

On the other hand, omniscience isn’t everything. One has only think of Blue Whale, with a memory broad enough to contain both past and future, to know this is true. In the whale-mind all things--their watery home, familial relationships and communications--are made of resonating patterns and wave-like phenomena, common territory to both sea creatures and birds. Land animals also communicate through seismic messages, but trying to maneuver within the whale’s multi-dimensional mazes wore new grooves in many an animal head. All agreed that while Blue’s vibrations were good, they were a bit mind-blowing to those without wings or fins.

Certain birds took it upon themselves to translate for their land-locked fellows, puffing up their breasts and singing Blue-notes as if there were no tomorrow. Swallows wove in and out of whale-songs so intricate that (if one is to believe the tales) they flew into other dimensions, at times becoming invisible. Certain creatures, lemmings for example, were so taken by this new song that they left familiar land paths to brave the deep waters, grooving along with their brothers and sisters in the cool blue beckoning waves until the sea claimed them.
With Whale in charge of remembering, everyone sang the blues!

But it is safe to say that elephants are less prone to imaginative flights than the more mobile whales in their fanciful environments. Gravity-bound, big-footed lives have made elephants practical beings who espouse plain-dealing, fairness to all, accuracy and attention to detail. They also maintain (whenever elephantly possible) a deep reverence for the fine art of storytelling, whether through the drum beat of their nimble feet, or through their many and varied voices.

Madame President was not exaggerating when she predicted our big-eared, grey-skinned Elephant to be a fine Storykeeper, perhaps the finest ever. But then, such times call for such an animal.