HARBINGER
The brother and sister have grown up together; everything they are, they have become as a pair. They have survived the same challenges, heartaches, illnesses; they have treasured the same meanings in songs and poems and chilly sunrises. If one prefers the crusts of bread, it is because the other favors the soft core. Whenever one feels, suffers, triumphs, it is for them both.
A day comes when they decide to part and seek their separate fortunes; between the two of them, they reason, they can chart the world, and share it when they meet up again. The sister sets out with a simple pack on her back, and doesn't stop to sleep until she is many leagues from their childhood home. She continues this way for many weeks, entering regions vastly different from their homeland. There, she encounters wondrous animals, witnesses new cultures, strange customs, exotic religions and value systems. She learns to charm cobras, to dance flamenco, to speak a few of the infinite languages in which the grandeur of the cosmos is written.
Years later, as agreed, she returns home to meet her sibling. The two embrace, and sit down before a warm fire. The sister relates all her adventures, all the wonders she has experienced, one by one. Her brother listens pensively, hesitates, finally speaks.
He explains that all the marvels she has seen are little better than illusions: that there is only one thing in the world worthy of contemplation. He relates how he, too, set out from home, and stopped the first night at a monastery. When the monks inquired about the purpose of his journey, he told them of how he and his sister had pledged to chart the corners of creation together. The abbot informed him that they could assist in his quest, and brought out their holy book: a book which, the elderly man declared, held the truth about everything in the world, down to the last blade of grass.
The brother recounts how he spent the following years deep in study with the monks, and found that the whole of the world, all that can be felt or known or pondered, was indeed contained in this book, memorizing every word, learning to fit every detail of life, even the ones that seemed not to fit, into the system it contained.
Her brother concludes his story and implores his sibling to return with him to the monastery. But she politely takes her leave, and sets out again across the earth. She will find the single unaccounted-for blade of grass, the irreplaceable note from a french horn, the the one recalcitrant turtledove that will break the book's grip on her brother, so he will again be free to recognize the universe in all its diverse splendors - to perceive that the world is too big and too beautiful to fit in one million such books.
A day comes when they decide to part and seek their separate fortunes; between the two of them, they reason, they can chart the world, and share it when they meet up again. The sister sets out with a simple pack on her back, and doesn't stop to sleep until she is many leagues from their childhood home. She continues this way for many weeks, entering regions vastly different from their homeland. There, she encounters wondrous animals, witnesses new cultures, strange customs, exotic religions and value systems. She learns to charm cobras, to dance flamenco, to speak a few of the infinite languages in which the grandeur of the cosmos is written.
Years later, as agreed, she returns home to meet her sibling. The two embrace, and sit down before a warm fire. The sister relates all her adventures, all the wonders she has experienced, one by one. Her brother listens pensively, hesitates, finally speaks.
He explains that all the marvels she has seen are little better than illusions: that there is only one thing in the world worthy of contemplation. He relates how he, too, set out from home, and stopped the first night at a monastery. When the monks inquired about the purpose of his journey, he told them of how he and his sister had pledged to chart the corners of creation together. The abbot informed him that they could assist in his quest, and brought out their holy book: a book which, the elderly man declared, held the truth about everything in the world, down to the last blade of grass.
The brother recounts how he spent the following years deep in study with the monks, and found that the whole of the world, all that can be felt or known or pondered, was indeed contained in this book, memorizing every word, learning to fit every detail of life, even the ones that seemed not to fit, into the system it contained.
Her brother concludes his story and implores his sibling to return with him to the monastery. But she politely takes her leave, and sets out again across the earth. She will find the single unaccounted-for blade of grass, the irreplaceable note from a french horn, the the one recalcitrant turtledove that will break the book's grip on her brother, so he will again be free to recognize the universe in all its diverse splendors - to perceive that the world is too big and too beautiful to fit in one million such books.