Metamorphosis 45/58: Book I ‘The Story of Grandfather Moses’ — Chapter II

or We Are The Weak Nuclear Force: Quantum Parables From Our Mitochondrial Ancestors

Let’s go together through a normal day

I wake up and we of King’s tribe are circled around the embers of the fire

Some of us will have stayed up late watching to make sure that animals stay at bay

But for this last night I was able to sleep well

My feet poking towards the fire

I am covered in the skin of a gazelle

And I feel warm

I feel cozy

And I look up

And I see the blue sky

The sun breaking / Just rising

And I stretch my arms behind my head

And I feel good

The world is a fantastic thing

The ground has been soft

I have next to me, on my left, Amen

Still asleep

Curled in sleep in her own gazelle skin

Slightly snoring

Then on my other side is Dallas

Who is snoring a bit loudly

But he’s the one who had been keeping the watch

And deserves to have more rest

I stand and see I am one of the first ones awake

I see Goliath in the distance on the far side of the fire

Also awake

Doing his morning stretches and his morning rituals

I walk over to a little stream that we are camping next to

I throw water on my face

Now, I feel more awake and more ready to start the day

It’s interesting how as the sun comes up

We naturally have our minds awaken

And know that it is the time to get the day started

We don’t need to say anything, we just act, we just move

We know that the purpose of the day

It is to have our stomachs well fed

And this place where we have spent the last night

It is not a place where there will be anymore food

So if we are going to be fed

It is time to begin moving

We pack up the small number of things we have

Our blankets, our wooden spears

There are a few odds and ends

A flute made out of horn that Grandma is very good at making beautiful music through

The special jewelry that we adorn ourselves in on festival days

We wrap them in our skins to keep them safe

In just a few moments after everyone is awake

We are very close to being ready to go

We have some small food that we collected yesterday

We eat to break the fast

Some wild berries

Some tubers we found in the ground

We are now sitting, waiting, munching on the food

Waiting for King to start

King

Who is the last one up

Lying under the skin of a lion

Eyes open staring at the sky

It is he we are waiting to give the motion that it is time to move

He puts his head up

He stands,

We all look him in the eye

And then, he starts moving

We follow

Nobody says anything

Later in the day we will be telling stories

Singing

Having fun

Camaraderie

As we take the pleasures we can of the journey together

But now,

It is still early

Our heads are still quiet

And we are just going

Going forward

We walk in single file

Behind King as he takes us wherever we are going to go

We have trust in King

This is his position

He has brought us safely so far

We are still here

When many others are not still here

And he is the one that makes the fire

And he who makes the fire is our leader

We swear allegiance to him

We call him our King

For he is our King

We would not have safety without him

We would not be able to have light in the darkness

Warmth in the cold

A weapon against predators

And King is a good King

He treats us fairly

He treats us with respect

Now,

As it is becoming the middle of the day

And the sun is becoming hot

We get a good view of our surroundings

It’s the middle of the day

When the sun is directly over our heads

Making our shadows almost invisible

This is a hostile environment

Wide open expanses

Dry grass scorched in the sunlight

Trees every here and there casting a limited shadow

Enough for a prairie dog to huddle under

But nothing to break the incredible heat

Desolation

As far as we can see in every direction

It is a scene of emptiness

And quiet

This is not a place of abundance

This is not Eden

We truly have been kicked out of Eden

Or else it has disappeared

For this is not an environment that our species was made to thrive in

But we will survive

And we have survived

And while Gravity brings us close to the surface

We still move forward, with direction

Following King

When the sun is at its absolute hottest

King stops

He says some of the first words that we have heard this day

“Today is a good day to hunt”

“We need meat in our diet”

“And I see on the horizon that there are animals”

“Gazelles”

“It is time to get busy”

Hunting is a challenging affair

The women stay with the children and try to keep them safe

This is not work for women

This is work for men

Death may happen

An animal kicks a hunter in the head

Women are more precious than men

Women can have children / While men cannot

If there were one hundred men and one woman / Then in a years time the tribe could be one hundred and two

If there was one man and one hundred women / Then in a years time the tribe could be two hundred and one

We men must keep the women safe

We take off the skins that we have been using to keep the incredible heat from the sun from breaking our skin

Our naked skin,

Without any fur

Exposed to the sun

White as a dogs underbelly

And we go

Us men

Goliath, King, Dallas, myself and a few others

We begin to jog towards the horizon

Myself, my eyes are not as good as Kings

I cannot see the animals he’s spotted

But he is an experienced hunter

And I trust him

And I follow him

We go towards the horizon

We go towards the horizon

We go towards the horizon

I now see a dot in the distance

This must be the gazelle that King is seeing

There are in fact five different dots

We keep going towards them

And they keep staying away from us

And we go and we go and we go

Unbreaking

The gazelles are still ahead, still ahead

We are not catching them

But they tire in a different way than we humans become tired

They’re not able to take the heat from the sun in the same way

I don’t entirely understand it

But we humans

We are not fast, we are not strong

But we can handle the heat differently

While we are burning in the sun

Our lungs are still staying powerful

Still able to make us move forwards, no matter the heat

Where the gazelles will have stop and pant / Their weakness

The dots are still on the horizon

But they are bigger dots than they were before

I turn my head around and I see that our own tribe

Are now dots smaller than the gazelles

They are far behind us

We keep going forward

Jogging forward

Moving forward

The sun is a terrific heat

It hurts

It’s burning our exposed flesh

The pain is acute but it will only be fully felt tomorrow

Ideally, when there is solid meat in the stomachs of our womenfolk and our children

All we have to do is outlast these gazelles

We come forward / We come forward

There is a tree

Something that provides very little shade

And we see the gazelles stop there

We begin to move faster

They try to be in the shade to cool down

But we will not give them this luxury

As we get closer

They move on

You can feel the gazelles reproach

Why are we tiring them?

Why can’t they just take a break?

They are faster than us

But still we keep moving

Unbroken

Unbroken

We are getting closer

We see them

I can see their shapes

I can see the markings on their rears

And as we get closer

They try to out race us

In a normal race they would be so much faster than us

But you can feel their exhaustion

We’re going

We’re going

The sun is beating down

Ahhhhhh

It is going to hurt tomorrow

But this is the hunt

All I am going to think about is the hunt

I become closer

We become closer

Finally,

One of the gazelles falls over

Exhausted by its own fight against the heat

The other gazelles keep moving

A-tribe-oning the fallen gazelle

And as we come closer

We know that the hunt is ours

King takes a wooden spear / And draws first blood

We give him this right

He takes his large stone knife

And with a swift movement cuts the gazelle’s throat

Now / We are going to have meat tonight

We take twine made from the sinews of past hunts

We make hand holds

So that we can share in the carrying of the gazelle

We begin the journey back towards our tribe

There are no dots on the horizon

So that while Goliath, King and myself are carrying the gazelle

Goliath using his hulk to carry an entire end

While I help balance out King

Some others and Dallas are scouting

Looking for the dots that will mean we have found our tribe

We’re moving

The sun is still so hot

But not as hot as it was before

The worst of the heat was used to kill the gazelle

Our friend in nature

Nature takes away, it burns, it hurts

But it gives

And human beings, weak that we are

We are still able to harness the power of nature

Together with nature we brought the gazelle down

And while the pain of the sun is acute

I feel gratitude

We are going to be able to survive better with meat in our bellies

Finally,

Someone says “Over there”

And we see on the horizon the huddled women and children

We come towards them

Our skin is no longer white but turned red

Blemishes will sprout tomorrow, some with blood

Pain is beginning to take form

The women see us

There is respect and cheers

The women make soft compresses

Made out of the leaves of trees filled with a gel that gives comfort

They begin to prepare the meat for the evening meal

This will be the first time that we have eaten meat in several days

It is rare to see animals on the horizon

It is rare for a hunt to go as successfully as this one

Often the animals get away

Often an animal injures one of us

We are going to cook this meat

It’s easier to eat when it has been cooked on the fire

Some days,

When it has been raining,

When it isn’t possible to have a fire

We will eat the meat raw

But it is challenging on our teeth

It is work to chew

Our old ones and young ones suffer

So with the fire

We are able to eat well

We’re leave many pieces of meat on the edge of the fire

Absorbing the smoke

And in this way

The bugs will not attack it

And we can keep it strong

So that it can feed us in future days

And as we sit around the fire

Ready to eat meat

We are feeling merry

It is always a great day when there is meat

Before we sit down to have the first bites

King stands

And says “It is your time to thank me”

“For bringing this meat”

And each of us sitting in a circle by his feet

One by one

Say

“Thank you King for giving us this meat”

“Thank you King for giving us this meat”

“Thank you King for giving us this meat”

And then

Once the final person

Goliath

Says

“Thank you King for giving us this meat”

King takes the first bite of meat

And says

“It is good, please enjoy”

And we begin to eat

Everyone is in a good mood when they are eating meat

Children are jumping up and down / Running around

Women are laughing

And we who hunted, even as our skin burns from the hunt

We are able to feel free and laugh

The sun has gone down

We keep watching the fire

We are going to need to stay up very late tonight

Dangerous animals are smelling the meat

They are going to prowl

The women have been successful in collecting small amounts of wood

We take fire from the main fire

And we make some small secondary fires / On the edge of our tribe

To keep the animals away

To give us the light to see moving shadows just beyond our edge

Ready to take a small child away

Or jump into the fire and take our meat

To stay awake, so that it’s not just one sentry, but all of us taking some of the work

As late as we can, into the night

To keep the beasts of the night at bay

It’s time to hear a story

Grandma takes her bone flute

And says

“Which story would you like to hear tonight?”

One of the children shouts

“Tell us the story of Adam and Eve”

“Tell us the story of the Garden of Eden”

Grandma has a bit of a smile

She goes

“Let me give you a deal”

“I’m going to tell you two stories of the Garden of Eden”

“One is true”

“And one is a lie”

“And it’s up to you to guess which one is which”

“I don’t want you to tell anyone which is the right one”

“But, I want you to hold it in your heart”

“And share with the people that you love”

“For the rest of your life”

“What is the true story of the Garden of Eden”

“And”

“Know that it is the true story”

“How you feel it”

“Is the truth of where we come from”

“But know that not everyone feels the same way”

“One story goes like this”

“It is the story of your great great great great great great grandparents”

“In the time before anyone remembers”

“We choose to call two of them, a man and his wife, Adam and Eve”

“They are our parent’s parent’s parent’s parent’s parent’s parents”

“Their blood is in your veins”

“During this time we were in a place that was paradise”

“Every tree was loaded with fruit”

“The ground was soft”

“There were no animals that would hurt us”

“Just animals that we could eat”

“And the fire was good”

“Every night we were comfortable”

“Every day we were at peace”

“All we had to do was enjoy the fatness of the earth”

“Everything was pleasurable”

“Adam and Eve would enjoy the bounty of this garden”

“Nothing to hurt their skin”

“Their stomachs never empty”

“Their children wild at play”

“Adam as a King”

“Eve and his children as his doting subjects”

“Worshipping Adam as a God”

“Half man half deity”

“But,”

“It was not to be forever”

“One day a voice came from the sky / And spoke just to Eve”

“And,”

“There had never been a lie told between Adam and Eve”

“But Eve chose to keep the voice from the sky a secret from Adam”

“The voice from the sky told Eve ‘You are the slave of Adam’”

“Eat this apple and you will be liberated”

“And the tree the apple comes from”

“It is called the Tree of Knowledge”

“And with its fruit”

“You will be free”

“And be able to be anything”

“And,”

“As Eve ate the apple”

“Eden fell”

“For she was not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge”

“Knowledge’s fruit being just for the man and not for the woman”

“Adam’s paradise could not withstand a woman eating this forbidden fruit”

“Eden was no longer perfect after a woman had tasted enlightenment”

“Suddenly that which was paradise was no longer paradise”

“Adam experienced her eating the apple”

“And his only solution was to carry them and their children out of Eden”

“He used his might to create chains around his family”

“And if Eve or his children disobeyed / Adam would whip them”

“Paradise was lost”

“Why was paradise lost?”

“Was it because of Eve for eating the apple from the Tree of Knowledge?”

“Was it Adam for his weakness?”

“Or was Eden already fragile? Its fall preordained?”

“And,”

“After Adam and Even and their children left”

“The good times of Eden were over forever”

“Now, we walk every day”

“Knowing that Eden can exist”

“Knowing that we have never found it again”

“If we were to find Eden again, would women again be tempted to eat from the Tree of Knowledge?”

“Knowing it will cast us from perfection?”

“Or would women keep their place?”

“Being the slave to man to stay in perfection”

“That is one story”

Grandma said

“Don’t think if it’s the truth, or a lie or something even different”

“Wait for me to say this other story first”

“Now let me tell you that it is true we were in the Garden of Eden”

“Just as I tell you this”

“My grandmother told me that her grandmother’s feet had touched the soft earth of a place that was indescribably perfect”

“There was fat fruit on every branch of every tree”

“The most delicious animals coming right to us / Basically slaughtering themselves”

“The ground so soft that as you’d go to sleep you’d wake up and the ground would form a perfect shape for your body”

“But it was not to be”

“The sky changed”

“The ground became less perfect, more hard, more brittle”

“The animals became rarer”

“The fruit became poisonous”

“The members of the tribe, who at the time were numerous”

“They became sick”

“From their insides liquid would flow”

“They would have death”

“Every day the tribe would shrink”

“The specter of death filled the air”

“Finally,”

“Adam and Eve stood up and said:”

“‘This place was perfection’”

“‘But it is perfection no longer’”

“‘Even though we know outside of Eden is not a good place’”

“‘We know that if we are to stay here we are surely to perish’”

“‘Any can stay,’”

“‘But I Adam’”

“‘’And I Eve’”

“‘We’re leaving here today’”

“‘If any will follow, we invite you, but we do not force you’”

“‘But today we fight our own extinction’”

“‘We don’t say we are correct’”

“‘But we say that we are taking action’”

“‘And this is the action we are taking’”

“And some followed Adam and Eve”

“They were our ancestors”

“So you are here today because of their actions”

“And others didn’t”

“And we don’t know what happened to them”

“Except we are sure of is this”

“In my grandmother’s days they would find other tribes who are like us”

“And then my parents spoke of meeting others who are like us”

“And then myself I saw many who are like us”

“But you young ones I know have seen very few who are like us”

“And I fear that we are disappearing”

“It’s a sadness because our line has potential”

Serendipitously soon after

We were to meet and bond with the first other tribe

Since the founding of myself in the blood of my parents