A True Fable
Poetry & fiction
Poetry & fiction
THE VERY BIG HEAD
Once upon a time (and why change the best and first of beginnings?) a long time ago, but yet not so long ago as you would like (by the time you have heard this tale) there was an island. A small island, a very long way from anywhere else. Far enough indeed, that with only manual boats, you could not reach, and would not know, that anywhere else existed.
On this island there where (as might be expected) trees, and birds, and a number of small mammals. The people that lived there had a good life, they cut the trees to make houses and boats. They caught and ate the animals and birds. They, in fact, built a civilization out of the island. They feasted, and threw away leftovers, they fashioned what they pleased. They came to build monuments to their excellent way of life. The monuments got bigger and bigger. One day they cut down the biggest palm tree that has ever been seen on the face of the earth, in order to make the biggest monument of all. Appropriately perhaps, it was a giant human head. A really enormous head. A head with a mouth so large, that if it had been a real head, it could pretty much have eaten the whole island within a week.
But after a while of cutting down the trees like there was no tomorrow, tomorrow came, and all the woods and forest was gone. There was nothing to make the beams for houses from, and nothing with which to build new boats. The buildings of course, deteriorated. They became patchier, leakier, more like mud huts of primitive days, than the well-fashioned houses of growing sophistication. The few boats that remained had to be patched and re-patched, anything not totally seaworthy being pulled apart to mend the best designed or most solid that remained.
Meanwhile, all the small birds had been eaten, and then the bigger birds, and then all the animals. Who of course, without any trees were hard pressed to find anywhere to live anyway. The people had taken to fishing much more, and after a time the small fish had run out in their fishing waters. Then they ate dolphin and whatever else they could get, until those too, were pretty much gone.
So with the mud huts came a new diet – as hunger got so acute, they turned to eating one another. And the people got thinner and more brutal. They hadn’t time for frivolities such as monuments (and nothing spare to make them with). Their great civilization had crumbled. Their numbers became preciously few. And eating each other had become habit.
Three hundred years later, some people from a larger landmass (one with a lot more trees and birds in it) arrived in big boats, ships in fact, and hence they could travel the seas for long enough to reach the island. The islanders launched their very few remaining much-patched and pieced together (and by now antique), boats, all shouting at the tops of their voices – ‘Construction materials! Construction materials!’ and proceeded to take over one of the boats, and eat as many of the crew as they could lay hands on. When a few of the visitors did make it ashore, and escape the pot, they were amazed to see that these savage and cannibalistic folk, lived amongst the remnants of some great and bygone golden age. All around, there were monuments, obviously from a time of plenty, indeed wealth, and culture. And one really huge human head, impressed them most of all. And a great mystery it seemed to them, that so splendid a thing could stand amidst all this barbarity. At first they thought that the original inhabitants had been butchered by the present people. But then, as they had no boats of any size to speak of, how had they got there? The mystery remained.
Until one day, a couple of centuries later, archaeologists reached the islands. And they dug and dug until they found cooking pots and fires and hearthstones. And the oldest had small birds. And then came the bigger birds. Later the animals. And later still the small fish. And then the dolphins and the big fish. And imagine their shock when they saw, as the last change – the human bones.
And today, here, now. We are on an island. Quite a big island, but not a huge island. With less than a twentieth of the trees there once were. And the floodplains built on, so the floodwater has no home. And some of the small fish have got very low. Some of the bigger ones too. And there are a great many - countless, monuments, of tall square towers and structures of every shape, and made of so many materials and with so much stuff in them! Perhaps the time has come then, for us to build, a very large head. A very large head indeed. A head so big, that with a mouth that size, if it were alive, it could eat the whole island, in six months.
This story first appeared in DogmaNet, online magazine of global politics, music & culture.
by S.V.Wolfland
