An
Historical Overview of the Whereabouts of Gnomes and Elves, Fauns and Faeries,
Goblins, Ogres, Trolls and Bogies, Nymphs, Sprites, and Dryads, Past and
Present.
by Buck Young
A
long, long time ago, the Earth belonged to the creatures of the wood. By
creatures of the wood I mean gnomes and elves, fauns and faeries, goblins,
ogres, trolls and bogies, nymphs, sprites, and dryads. They tended it and took
care of it, played in it, danced and sang in it, cared for wounded animals,
worked out disputes between species, sat on mushrooms discussing matters of
import and drinking Labrador tea, rode down streams on leaves and bark, and
parachuted from trees with dandelion seeds. This was the world into which
mankind was born. These early days, when man was but a newly arrived dinner
guest who hadn't yet taken over the entire house, are fairly well documented in
the literature and folklore of the world, so there's no need to go into it
here. What I am interested in, and what I am asking you to be interested in, is
the question, "Where did all the gnomes and elves, fauns and faeries,
goblins, ogres, trolls and bogies, nymphs, sprites and dryads go?"
The
friction between man and the wood creatures began with the discovery of
agriculture. With the discovery of agriculture, civilization arose and spread.
The forests were cleared to provide wood for shelter and fields for pasture and
crops. Mankind had set up camp. No longer just a visitor in someone else's
world, he pushed the wild back from his newly built doorstep. At first this
wasn't a problem. There weren't many people and everyone else felt that it was
only fair to allot them their own little half acre to do with as they wished.
Some of them even decided to help out. Gnomes moved into the barnhouses and
helped out with the gardening chores. The devic spirits of the vegetables
helped the humans better organize their crops and plan rotation, and taught
them the correlation between planetary and lunar cycles and the agricultural
year, plant radishes when the moon is in Cancer, harvest when the moon is in
Taurus. Many trolls felt that the heaping piles of manure were a change for the
better, and decided to stick around too
The
rest of the wood creatures just backed off into the wood, occasionally playing
mischievous tricks on the new settlers, like turning the milk sour, rearranging
furniture tipping the cows, tickling people's faces in their sleep, and
occasionally stealing babies and leaving bundles of wood in their place.
But
man's dominion spread (and spread and spread and spread), and the forests got
smaller and smaller and smaller. Things got real crowded in the woods, and
things were getting worse in civilization. Most farmers weren't listening to
the devic spirits anymore. People found that they could increase their output
by disregarding the needs of the Earth. They were raising productivity and
killing the soil. Petrochemicals were just a step away. Most of the devic
spirits and the gnomes fled. The trolls stayed. Today they live mostly under
bridges and in the shallow, mucky ditches beneath the metal grating on farm
roads that cows are afraid to cross. Be sure to honk your horn before driving
over one of these. A troll may be hanging from the grate, swinging over its
living room, as they are apt to do after rolling in muck and manure, If you
don't give a warning honk, you may run over its fingers, and it's not a great idea
to get either your name or your license plate number on a troll's shit list.
Now
there is little wild land left at all, and even that is shrinking at an
unprecedented rate. There is simply not enough space for all the gnomes and
elves, fauns and faeries, goblins, ogres, trolls and bogies, nymphs, sprites,
and dryads.
So
where are they?
Are
they dead?
No.
So
where did they go?
The
answer is a bit surprising. They didn't go anywhere. We did.
Early
humans had an intuitive knowledge of their role in nature, just as bears and
raccoons and mice and every other critter does. They understood, from the ways
of the wild around them, that nothing ever comes from nowhere and nothing ever
just disappears. Things change form. Death is necessary for life to continue.
They offered up their kills as sacrifices to the gods of nature. They offered
praise, prayer, sacrifice, and song to the spirits of the wild, to brother
buffalo, brother deer, brother fish, and brother tree.
Now
we know that everything that has ever existed continues to exist, in one form
of another, and as far as we can tell, they were more aware of that back then
than we are now. So the sacrifice, song, praise and prayer did not ensure the
immortality of the slaughtered, either in body or in spirit. That was already
taken care of. What it did ensure was the continuance of the connection between
the spirit of the slaughterer and the spirit of the slaughtered. Killing is
risky business. The membrane separating the internal from the external is not necessarily
as thick or as dearly defined as we have come to believe. Every time we kill,
we risk killing the reality of that thing inside ourselves as well as outside.
We risk breaking the connections that lead in and out of the membrane. Taking
life to feed life requires a keen understanding of the natural law of give and
take. When we lost that understanding, gave up the songs, the sacrifice, the
prayers, the praise, we lost the connection. Saying grace is not enough.
When
we lose those connections, everything becomes dead - fish, rivers, frogs, mice,
even each other. There is no way they can reach inside us any more. The five
senses we are left with are not enough. We have given up those connections in
exchange for the freedom to clearcut forests with skidders, turn cows into milk
machines and chickens into egg factories. We can experiment on animals, club
seals, wear mink coats, exterminate passenger pigeons, dodo birds, whales,
bear, dolphin and condor. Not a twinge of guilt. The lines have been severed.
And
we are all under the impression that it is the forests, the creatures, the
spirits, and the wildlands that are disappearing from the universe and not us.
Not so. Thinking that is like thinking that if you stand on the end of a limb
and saw that limb from the tree, the tree will fall and you will remain
standing. Bugs Bunny might be able to get away with that, but we can't. When a
marionette cuts its strings, the puppeteer doesn't collapse to the ground. When
a spider severs the lines that connect its web to the trees, the forest doesn't
fall away.
It
is we who have fallen away from the real world into a world where we may carry
out our twisted sterile dreams without threatening the Earth and its
inhabitants. Ever wonder why the trees and stones and rivers and streams, the
birds, the snakes, the bears and the frogs no longer talk to us as they did in
the early tales of the Native Americans, the Hindus, the Africans, the Bible?
It's because we're not around to talk to any more Every clearcut, every vivisection,
every mechanized slaughter of cow, pig, or chicken moves our dreamworld farther
and farther from the tree, making a reunification, which is still possible,
more and more difficult.
Somewhere
not so far from here, in the real world, the ancient forests are still
standing, the buffalo roam the prairies, the sky is full of condors, the deer
and the antelope play, and dodo birds wander the sandy beaches, bumping into
things.
Where
there are still wildlands in our dreamworld, strong connections still exist.
Bridges, tunnels, and portals. Occasionally a traveler will get lost in the
wilderness and find himself in the real world, returning the next day to find
that a hundred years have passed, or never returning at all,
There
are more ephemeral connections as well - brooks and waterfalls where you can
still hear voices from the other side, if you listen carefully enough. When
they sit by these waters they hear loud clanking and screams. When they eat
psilocybin everything stops glowing, and condos rise where forests stand. Our
children can see their world in their dreams. Their children see ours in their
nightmares.
And
there is another connection. Sometimes agents from the other side infiltrate
our world in an attempt to expedite the reunification. Believe it or not, they
miss us over there. Sometimes - more often than you might think - they send
souls over to our world to be born as human babies. Sort of like a socialist,
communist, or anarchist entering the American political arena and running for
office in an attempt to effect change from the inside. There are quite a lot of
them actually - gnomes and elves, fauns and faeries, goblins, ogres, trolls and
bogies, nymphs, sprites, and dryads - running around in human bodies, doing
crazy things like writing on walls, working in co-ops, running inns in the
mountains, talking to themselves in the streets, making pottery, illustrating
children's books, spiking trees and blowing up tractors. They are planting
bio-dynamic gardens, sitting in the back yard naked, arguing with Satan. They
are in asylums pumped full of thorazine, in the classroom on Ritalin and
lithium. They live with Indians. They run recycling centers. They are starting
revolutions, corrupting the young, inventing paranoid conspiracy theories, making
up religions. They're directing movies, gobbling acid, drinking heavily and
writing poetry.
The
transition from their world to ours is not an easy one. Intricate rituals and
incantations are involved. The transition is not easy on the soul. A great deal
is lost. They may have no idea who or what they are at first. They may or may
not find out. They will know that they are not like everyone else. They will
know that this world is not theirs. They will faintly remember something
better, where things made sense and worked like they ought to, where love and
magic had the power to heal.
They
will know that what makes other people happy does not make them happy, and that
what makes them happy makes them happier than anyone else alive.
They
will see things others cannot see, hear things others cannot hear, feel things
others cannot feel, and know things others do not know.
They
will laugh a great deal or cry a great deal or both.
They
will love humans individually, but have a hard time with humanity as a whole
that may occasionally approach loathing.
They
will have a handful of very close friends, and often be very lonely.
They
will be unhappiest when forced to act like a human and do the things that
humans do, want the things that humans want, or when they are convinced that
they actually are one.
Things
will not be easy for them. Because of their memories of the other side, the
world will seem to them to be a wondrous calliope with just a few teeth missing
on one of the cogs, and because of this tiny deficiency, the music is all off
key, the horses are crashing into each other, and the children are frightened,
bruised and crying.
The
solutions will seem obvious and no one else will listen.
They
will be repeatedly punished for shouting FIRE! in a crowded theater when the
buildings are in flames no one else can see. They will get slapped on the wrist
for pointing to the EXIT signs when everyone else is running around screaming
and trampling each other.
They
will be zealous, fanatical, and didactic about their beliefs. They will feel
utterly confused.
They
will have ecstatic visions and babble incoherently. They will be extremely
articulate. They are prone to long periods of silence. They have no idea how to
say what they really mean.
They
will spend a lot of time with children and animals
They
will become drunkards and dope fiends, organic gardeners, Essene soapmakers,
carpenters, madmen, magicians, jugglers and clowns, lunatic physicists,
painters and scribblers, travelers and wanderers.
They
will dress in bright colors, frumpy sweaters, or all black.
They
will smoke too much and drink too much. They will eat only macrobiotic foods.
They will develop addictions to Mountain Dew.
They
will often be accused of living in their own fantasy world.
They
will make great lovers. Yeah, even the trolls.
They
will spend too much time either making love or thinking about it.
They
will speak to inanimate objects.
They
will have much brighter eyes than everyone else.
They
will expect their magic to work in this world and their love to heal, and they
will be crushed by this world, and often they won't expect it.
It
will come close to killing them.
They
will visit the places where the connections still exist: the waterfalls, the
mountains, the ocean, the forests. They will draw on all the power they have,
and sometimes, sometimes, the magic will work. And everything will be
wondrously easy. The teeth will grow back on the calliope's cog, the tune will
right itself, the horses will bob gracefully up and down, around and around,
and the children will giggle and sing with cotton candy stuck to their cheeks
and noses.
They
will spend their days trying to reconnect a branch that millions are still busy
sawing away at. Often it will be more than they can bear.
While
the rest of humanity is busy working on new and more efficient ways to lay
waste to the Earth with the push of a button, they are saving it, a handful at
a time.
They
will share a common conviction that they are the only sane individuals in a
world gone mad.
They're
right.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The
actual author of the story, writing under the name of Buck Young, is Mat
Jacobson. Mr. Jacobson has contacted me, and let me know that it's okay to have
this up - he'd like to hear from people who've read this, and to get comments
and mails from them. You can click on his address to mail, or copy it directly:
mat.jacobson@wdc.greenpeace.org.
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