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And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Dragonfly Lives

Once, in a little pond, in the muddy water under the lily pads, there lived a little water beetle in a community of water beetles. They lived a simple and comfortable life in the pond with few disturbances and interruptions. Once in a while, sadness would come to the community when one of their fellow beetles would climb the stem of a lily pad and would never be seen again. They knew when this happened; their friend was dead, gone forever.

Then, one day, one little water beetle felt an irresistible urge to climb up that stem. However, he was determined that he would not leave forever. He would come back and tell his friends what he had found at the top. When he reached the top and climbed out of the water onto the surface of the lily pad, he was so tired, and the sun felt so warm, that he decided he must take a nap. As he slept, his body changed and when he woke up, he had turned into a beautiful blue-tailed dragonfly with broad wings and a slender body designed for flying.

So, fly he did! And, as he soared he saw the beauty of a whole new world and a far superior way of life to what he had never known existed. Then he remembered his beetle friends and how they were thinking by now he was dead. He wanted to go back to tell them, and explain to them that he was now more alive than he had ever been before. His life had been fulfilled rather than ended. But, his new body would not go down into the water. He could not get back to tell his friends the good news. Then he understood that their time would come, when they, too, would know what he now knew. So, he raised his wings and flew off into his joyous new life!

12 comments:

nicrap said...

Salut! To the new world! :)

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Personal redemption sometimes supercedes the social variant. The prisoner need not always return to Plato's cave...

nicrap said...

I would agree but for the "sometimes" part. ;)

Thersites said...

...then I fear for the possibility of social "progress".

Thersites said...

...for I suppose that one who might succeed in such an endeavor would rightly be labelled "wise" and one who might fail, a "fool".

A toast to the foolish, and all the fools who might admire them! ;)

Zarathustra succumbs to his "greatest temptation".... feeding the leviathan.

Thersites said...

Job 41

1 Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope?
2 Can you put a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook?
3 Will he keep begging you for mercy? Will he speak to you with gentle words?
4 Will he make an agreement with you for you to take him as your slave for life?
5 Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls?
6 Will traders barter for him? Will they divide him up among the merchants?
7 Can you fill his hide with harpoons or his head with fishing spears?
8 If you lay a hand on him, you will remember the struggle and never do it again!
9 Any hope of subduing him is false; the mere sight of him is overpowering.
10 No-one is fierce enough to rouse him. Who then is able to stand against me?
11 Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.
12 I will not fail to speak of his limbs, his strength and his graceful form.
13 Who can strip off his outer coat? Who would approach him with a bridle?
14 Who dares open the doors of his mouth, ringed about with his fearsome teeth?
15 His back has rows of shields tightly sealed together;
16 each is so close to the next that no air can pass between.
17 They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted.
18 His snorting throws out flashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn.
19 Firebrands stream from his mouth; sparks of fire shoot out.
20 Smoke pours from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.
21 His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from his mouth.
22 Strength resides in his neck; dismay goes before him.
23 The folds of his flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable.
24 His chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone.
25 When he rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before his thrashing.
26 The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.
27 Iron he treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood.
28 Arrows do not make him flee, sling stones are like chaff to him.
29 A club seems to him but a piece of straw, he laughs at the rattling of the lance.
30 His undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing-sledge.
31 He makes the depths churn like a boiling cauldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.
32 Behind him he leaves a glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair.
33 Nothing on earth is his equal— a creature without fear.
34 He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud.

nicrap said...

Why grudge the wise, though? He too had been a fool once. :)

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Grudge the wise? The laurels in the epitaph speak for themselves. I seek not to diminish the endeavors of fools. Whether or not Don Quixote brings down the windmill, or not, bears no honorific with it to the post hoc interpretation of the attempted deed. But whether I tilt at the windmill for my own redemption's imagined sake, or to its detriment for the imagined sake of others, Tilt, I must. For as you say, even the wise man was a fool, once.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Time is merely an artifact experienced during a reduction in life's "velocity". Just ask the dragonfly... or Einstein. ;)

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

The less active the life, the more heavily it weighs.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Trek on!

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

...it's balaclava time! ;)