Archive for the ‘Kat Beyer’ Category
The Diplomat Complains about Rice
Friday, December 14th, 2007
The Diplomat didn’t like rice. He told me why in the first village we stopped at, the first village that didn’t know my village had exiled me, and that didn’t call him “Gaia rat,”–the first village that feasted us instead.
He said that rice reminded him of growing up in the monastery back on Gaia. He was adopted into the monastery like many other hungry boys. There was little else to eat but rice.
“Earth was having some population problems,” he said, which was odd, because by now I knew that he called each thing what it was, and what had happened on Gaia had been a disaster. Maybe my village had feared that he brought the disaster with him.
“The rice was never very good. It always had maggots in it.”
I love rice, one of the few foods from Gaia that we like here. It’s an honor-food. But I hate maggots. Now I could understand.
“We were desperate for the protein, so that was not so bad.”
I didn’t understand again.
“Except for the boiling,” he went on. “I hated taking those little lives. It wasn’t their fault that they looked exactly like rice grains.”
He turned his bowl round in his hands.
“They reminded me of the soldiers always marching through. Soldiers like those little lives, caught up in a rice bag that wasn’t their fault.”
He paused.
“My metaphor is not good. Of course rice is a living thing as well. But for me eating rice is like eating grief.”
He had never complained about anything before. At last I ventured, “Then why, Elder, are you eating it now?”
Together we looked down the rice in our bowls, the honor-food of the feast.
“Surely they would make you another dish if they understood?” I pressed.
“On the other hand,” he said, “Maybe I need to learn to eat grief. Maybe I could do with more patience. Besides, they are only trying to be thoughtful. I wish to be a good guest.”
I wish to be a good guest. I have spun those words around and around in my mind many times since. Sometimes I wonder if I was exiled for being a bad guest in my own home, perhaps being ungrateful when I was fed something I didn’t like.
“The maggots and the memories aren’t their fault,” he added.
A Mostly True Fairy Tale
Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
In the days when SUVs were small as doormice and organic vegetables were ugly, there lived a girl who could talk to machines. She had them bring her treasures: cappuccinos and camping stoves, software and silks. She taught them to make lovely things to sell that vanished the next day. But one day the machines came to her.
“Everything you make is gone the next day,” they told her. “And none of it helps other people. If you do not change this, your powers will disappear.”
Naturally she didn’t listen. So she lost her powers: no more silks and stoves. She sat alone in the dark, for she could not even speak to the machine that made the light.
One day someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” she said. In the doorway stood an old lady.
“I can’t stop long,” said the old lady. “Others to see about. Here,” and she held out a jewelry case.
The girl opened it and saw a necklace of strange letters. She asked the old lady, “What do I do with this?”
“You’ll either work it out, and get out of here, or you won’t and you won’t,” said the old lady, and left.
The girl thought this was really too much. First she cried, then she yelled.
Much later she took out the necklace again. She could only feel the letters in the dark. There were no “A’s” or “B’s” — not so much as a “Q.” They didn’t even feel like kana, or akshara, or anything like that.
Studying a long time, she found one letter that always spoke to her of birds, and another of mercy, and another of sunrise, and she learned that she could rearrange them without breaking the necklace, making letter-pictures that shifted and grew in the dark and did not disappear the next day.
One day she made a letter-picture that turned the light on.
After she got over her shock she noticed the door handle. It felt good to turn it.
Outside, the air was bright and smelled of coffee.
The girl lives out in the world now. Her letter-pictures pay off people’s debt and froth cappuccinos and do many other wonders besides. Machines and people like to come and visit her. If you have seen the old lady lately, maybe you could let her know the girl would like very much to thank her.