Earth People
by 
James Graham
|
Posted: Sunday, June 12, 2005 Word Count: 1317 Related Works: Homo dissimilis contemplates the natural world • |
Earth People
Selected Writings from the Book of Hujusmodi and the Pirate Manuscripts
Preface to The Book of Hujusmodi
Some time ago I was standing alone in a country place, when I saw beside every tree a ghost tree moving slowly sideways-up. The gate I leaned upon, the hogsback field, the rutted track into the field, and every head of buttercup, like images in a double pane, passed by me or through me, and away. I looked to see if my own ghost would part from me, and sure enough there it was, an image of myself as if in a receding mirror. But I was left behind. I remained here with this body and did not go away with the other one. I suppose I must have both gone away and stayed; but the 'I' who speaks now is not the one who has gone away.
It was sad for me to see the departure because I am one who, when this other Earth slipped anchor and sailed away to begin a new history, wished like the lame boy of Hamelin that I too had been taken. It is as if I am not a native of this world. I have fancied, almost to the point of belief, that I am one of the Hujusmodians, a descendant of migrants. I do believe it. All beliefs are vulnerable; the best we can expect is that our belief should survive doubt.
Our homeworld and its history survive for us only in shards of legends. We have seen the growth of this people who call themselves homo sapiens sapiens, repeating the word of wisdom as if to make it doubly true. We also have given ourselves Earth-names: homo (for we are human too) dissimilis - the different people - and Hujusmodian, the people of Hujusmodi, 'such a kind' of world. Our ancient language survives only in words and sayings, and does not run together as a whole language any more; and so, as Earth-people have done, we borrowed these names from that older language of Earth, a dialect of ghosts in which many aspects of life and death are so well expressed.
Over our many generations we have seen the knowing, knowing people change and grow. We have seen what wonderful and terrible things they have done with such materials as hard metal or the softest invisible waves. We have seen, too, the old street market and the journeys of journeymen traders grow into a market that is everywhere, like an atmosphere, especially in the weeks of the Great Market in midwinter, when so much waste is sold and bought. We have seen the most terrible waste of all, the withering of so many, the tearing apart of so many others, all sapiens, sapiens no less than those who destroy them.
In our generation, now so remote from the homeworld, we find our adopted world growing darker. We have seen the old empires, that burned living people over fires and threw babies to hungry dogs, finally pass away. But now again, now over the whole world as never before, there is the terrible waste, the people are not fed, they are given no remedy for their sickness, they cannot go where they please. This seems to me so grotesque that sometimes as I walk in the woods I expect to see basilisks, and return to the familiar town almost sure that the signs will be written in a strange alphabet and passers-by will speak a strange singing language.
After the departure at first we sadly wished ourselves away. We have asked ourselves again and again who we are. Either we are different because we are from elsewhere, or we have our myth of elsewhere only to explain why we are different. And if it is only a myth, and we are not from elsewhere, why are we so different? We asked ourselves about the departure itself, whether it was merely an illusion, though it was seen by more than one of us.
Our answers are unclear but out of these doubts we have become more knowing, much more knowing. Until the departure, we were like a flock of small birds that had flown into a strange room. Now, this room is becoming our universe. Whimsically, as if the name would crystallise the being, we are toying with homo sapiens dissimilis.
But since to play with names can never be enough, so we must adopt identities; in order to feel less alien, we must have cousins. There is a people who made their own departure, who for want of another Earth made their home upon the sea. Of all the strangers among humanity, we have looked most longingly to the pirates. And now we have approached them with flags of truce. They seem to welcome us. In spite of their misdeeds we admire them, and aspire to citizenship in their nation. And this is how we accommodate ourselves to this world.
From The Pirate Manuscripts
Our ancestors
Our ancestors were those folks who were always
seaborne, even on the land. We walk and ply
the asphalt crusts, we drive our wheelieboats,
we fetch our necessaries from the Super Market,
but we are always mariners, out of sight of nations.
Tree-branches carried out to sea by angry rivers
pass by on port and starboard. Other flotsam also,
paper, plastic, warn us we're too near the land.
And bottles with messages on the outside:
signals in the lingua franca of the land, lingo
of the wheedle and the common eulogy.
But whether we are sailing close enough
to touch and say sorry, or too far to see, we see
among the nations things going forward, inputs
producing outcomes, life robust and vibrant.
Landfalls
1. The Colours of the Earth
They abandoned the earth-chart with all its
shadings and colours, and mixings of shadings and colours.
Listen: we draw in sometimes close to Africa,
hard by the Horn or the Guinea Coast, and remember
the grand ambition of the House of Manowar
to dot-dash-dot and paint from sea to sea, from the tall
stout baobab on the highest part of the bank, at Number Five,
to the smaller baobab by the river, and on to the baobab
at Number Six, at the confluence of two rivers; dot-dash-dot
in heavy bold, and to every point the matt flat colours:
away to the south wild forest green, and to the west
pale sunkissed gold, and ancient terracotta in the north.
And the southern elephants were painted British
and the western camels French. And the good old
charts were lost, with their shadings and mixings of shadings.
2. The Real Thing
At nightfall too we venture sometimes close
to the harbours of America and Europe: close enough to see
the landfolk circumnavigating one another's courses, tacking
and heaving to, and saying 'Sorry'; we are near
but far, yet close enough to hear the thumping
from the streets, the steady thunk from windows
open to the dark, the strident incoherent song.
But soon we hoist glad sails and turn away
from these real things, into the loud Atlantic.
Gatherers
Ash-mountains blaze. Small boys
in dusty shirts that fill like sails
wait by the winding access-road.
They grasp at handholds, scale
the bulwarks, overrun the decks.
They yell and dig for tins,
one dollar for two hundred;
repulsed, they hunt instead
among unladen cargo. Every hour
come three new merchantmen.
To a pirate they seem kindred, and we wish
them keen-edged weapons and a brisk
lateener with the skull and bones. But no,
.
they have the élan of pirates and -
what goes with it - the bravery of hunters;
but they are gatherers. Like those before
what we call history,
like people of the golden
centuries between the ice
and the weary drought, they
gather acorns, wild wheat,
cranesbill roots. They mine
obsidian. There is abundance.
Selected Writings from the Book of Hujusmodi and the Pirate Manuscripts
Preface to The Book of Hujusmodi
Some time ago I was standing alone in a country place, when I saw beside every tree a ghost tree moving slowly sideways-up. The gate I leaned upon, the hogsback field, the rutted track into the field, and every head of buttercup, like images in a double pane, passed by me or through me, and away. I looked to see if my own ghost would part from me, and sure enough there it was, an image of myself as if in a receding mirror. But I was left behind. I remained here with this body and did not go away with the other one. I suppose I must have both gone away and stayed; but the 'I' who speaks now is not the one who has gone away.
It was sad for me to see the departure because I am one who, when this other Earth slipped anchor and sailed away to begin a new history, wished like the lame boy of Hamelin that I too had been taken. It is as if I am not a native of this world. I have fancied, almost to the point of belief, that I am one of the Hujusmodians, a descendant of migrants. I do believe it. All beliefs are vulnerable; the best we can expect is that our belief should survive doubt.
Our homeworld and its history survive for us only in shards of legends. We have seen the growth of this people who call themselves homo sapiens sapiens, repeating the word of wisdom as if to make it doubly true. We also have given ourselves Earth-names: homo (for we are human too) dissimilis - the different people - and Hujusmodian, the people of Hujusmodi, 'such a kind' of world. Our ancient language survives only in words and sayings, and does not run together as a whole language any more; and so, as Earth-people have done, we borrowed these names from that older language of Earth, a dialect of ghosts in which many aspects of life and death are so well expressed.
Over our many generations we have seen the knowing, knowing people change and grow. We have seen what wonderful and terrible things they have done with such materials as hard metal or the softest invisible waves. We have seen, too, the old street market and the journeys of journeymen traders grow into a market that is everywhere, like an atmosphere, especially in the weeks of the Great Market in midwinter, when so much waste is sold and bought. We have seen the most terrible waste of all, the withering of so many, the tearing apart of so many others, all sapiens, sapiens no less than those who destroy them.
In our generation, now so remote from the homeworld, we find our adopted world growing darker. We have seen the old empires, that burned living people over fires and threw babies to hungry dogs, finally pass away. But now again, now over the whole world as never before, there is the terrible waste, the people are not fed, they are given no remedy for their sickness, they cannot go where they please. This seems to me so grotesque that sometimes as I walk in the woods I expect to see basilisks, and return to the familiar town almost sure that the signs will be written in a strange alphabet and passers-by will speak a strange singing language.
After the departure at first we sadly wished ourselves away. We have asked ourselves again and again who we are. Either we are different because we are from elsewhere, or we have our myth of elsewhere only to explain why we are different. And if it is only a myth, and we are not from elsewhere, why are we so different? We asked ourselves about the departure itself, whether it was merely an illusion, though it was seen by more than one of us.
Our answers are unclear but out of these doubts we have become more knowing, much more knowing. Until the departure, we were like a flock of small birds that had flown into a strange room. Now, this room is becoming our universe. Whimsically, as if the name would crystallise the being, we are toying with homo sapiens dissimilis.
But since to play with names can never be enough, so we must adopt identities; in order to feel less alien, we must have cousins. There is a people who made their own departure, who for want of another Earth made their home upon the sea. Of all the strangers among humanity, we have looked most longingly to the pirates. And now we have approached them with flags of truce. They seem to welcome us. In spite of their misdeeds we admire them, and aspire to citizenship in their nation. And this is how we accommodate ourselves to this world.
From The Pirate Manuscripts
Our ancestors
Our ancestors were those folks who were always
seaborne, even on the land. We walk and ply
the asphalt crusts, we drive our wheelieboats,
we fetch our necessaries from the Super Market,
but we are always mariners, out of sight of nations.
Tree-branches carried out to sea by angry rivers
pass by on port and starboard. Other flotsam also,
paper, plastic, warn us we're too near the land.
And bottles with messages on the outside:
signals in the lingua franca of the land, lingo
of the wheedle and the common eulogy.
But whether we are sailing close enough
to touch and say sorry, or too far to see, we see
among the nations things going forward, inputs
producing outcomes, life robust and vibrant.
Landfalls
1. The Colours of the Earth
They abandoned the earth-chart with all its
shadings and colours, and mixings of shadings and colours.
Listen: we draw in sometimes close to Africa,
hard by the Horn or the Guinea Coast, and remember
the grand ambition of the House of Manowar
to dot-dash-dot and paint from sea to sea, from the tall
stout baobab on the highest part of the bank, at Number Five,
to the smaller baobab by the river, and on to the baobab
at Number Six, at the confluence of two rivers; dot-dash-dot
in heavy bold, and to every point the matt flat colours:
away to the south wild forest green, and to the west
pale sunkissed gold, and ancient terracotta in the north.
And the southern elephants were painted British
and the western camels French. And the good old
charts were lost, with their shadings and mixings of shadings.
2. The Real Thing
At nightfall too we venture sometimes close
to the harbours of America and Europe: close enough to see
the landfolk circumnavigating one another's courses, tacking
and heaving to, and saying 'Sorry'; we are near
but far, yet close enough to hear the thumping
from the streets, the steady thunk from windows
open to the dark, the strident incoherent song.
But soon we hoist glad sails and turn away
from these real things, into the loud Atlantic.
Gatherers
Ash-mountains blaze. Small boys
in dusty shirts that fill like sails
wait by the winding access-road.
They grasp at handholds, scale
the bulwarks, overrun the decks.
They yell and dig for tins,
one dollar for two hundred;
repulsed, they hunt instead
among unladen cargo. Every hour
come three new merchantmen.
To a pirate they seem kindred, and we wish
them keen-edged weapons and a brisk
lateener with the skull and bones. But no,
.
they have the élan of pirates and -
what goes with it - the bravery of hunters;
but they are gatherers. Like those before
what we call history,
like people of the golden
centuries between the ice
and the weary drought, they
gather acorns, wild wheat,
cranesbill roots. They mine
obsidian. There is abundance.