Writing Without the Me #16
Exercise 1: (Re)Retelling a Tale
I’ve fallen about a month behind on this project, and it’s not for lack of effort. Well, it might be a little bit. Also, I don’t have a great workflow yet. But it’s also because I keep falling into the trap that I’m trying to learn how to avoid, constantly revising and tweaking a piece as a way to avoid sharing it. And it’s weird to say “this is good but it could be better,” but like, as far as I can tell, you kinda do have to say that, eventually. You have to learn when the “good” is at a point where the “better” won’t be noticeable, or in some other way not worth your time. And that’s what I’m trying to do. So here, without further preamble, is something that is good, but could definitely be better.
You might not believe that the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil were actually all angels, cherubs, and other such celestial beings incarnated thusly for “safekeeping,” but it’s as true as the rest of the bible. Swear to God. Take that for what you will. So when the Maker told the humans to not eat that fruit, it wasn’t about you. It was about us. The Serpent didn’t give a shit about you humans then any more than he does now. And he doesn’t now. At all. He’s an otherworldly extra-dimensional being being punished for his sins— which are much broader in scope than the size of a few dozen billion animal souls. Sorry! But it’s true. We just don’t care about you that much. The Maker does. Kind of. Well he thinks that animals and other things that can walk around are “neat,” and you guys fit into that description. Go here to do this, go here to do that- it’s exhausting to us, but he loves it. The rest of us aren’t into that kind of frenzied behavior. We prefer the quiet dignity of being held gently aloft in the shade of a tree, and the Maker had it all set up nicely. He’d made himself a planet, places to walk, a special spot for his entourage to hang, and a way to punish Luci for an era or two. Perfect.
Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here.
The Maker then told all the animals to stay away from the very special tree in the middle of the garden. Don’t pick it, don’t eat it, don’t even really look at it if you can help it. Just leave it alone. Not just you humans, mind you, all the animals. You guys seem to forget this because you do it so much communicating and you do it so loudly, that everything else seems mute by comparison, but yeah, all living things communicate.
And for a while, it was good, great, even. Being incarnated is inherently interesting and so there was a lot to take in. But then the Serpent got bored and came around trying to stir up trouble with us. Of course, none of us answered him. He was trying to plead his case to us. He slithered up our tree and went from branch to branch (shaking us around in the process,) telling us how it wasn’t fair he was cast down, that he was only saying what we were all thinking, and the Maker was overreacting. Stuff like that, though it sounds more persuasive and less whiny when you hear him say it.
Eventually, I’d had enough. We’d all had enough, I could tell, by that point, but I was the first one brave enough to tell him to go away and leave us alone. “Go away and leave us alone,” I said in Fruition, the seedy language of plants.
Serpent turned and looked at me. He stared at me silently for a long time and then said, “I could eat you. Right now.”
The other fruit let out a collective gasp.
“You wouldn’t dare.” This was more of a hope than an assertion. I figured whatever punishment the Maker would dole out for eating us would serve as a deterrent. Plus the Serpent was always more an instigator of trouble than a perpetrator. Turned out I was more right about that last part than I’d realized.
“No, I suppose you’re right about that. But I might know someone who would dare.” And with that, he slithered away.
It wasn’t too long before he came back— with her. The dumb one. And he was filling her head with all kinds of circular reasoning and slippery thinking: He only told you all not to eat the fruit because he only wants the boldest of you to enjoy it! If the fruit wasn’t good to eat, why would it look so good? I tried to tell some of the other animals, but of course, they weren’t smart enough to understand what I was saying. You can trust me, I’m telling you what you want to hear.
He crawled up our tree as he spoke and made his way right to me. And I yelled and screamed— and begged, too, I’m not ashamed to admit— for her to ignore him. But of course, she didn’t understand me. Couldn’t even hear me. She was literally deaf to my cries of floral anguish.
And then she plucked me! She plucked me and I knew I was done for.
And then she bit me! She bit me and said, “mmm it tastes like chicken,” because that is how stupid you people are.
And then the rest! The rest of the story you already know.
They brought me to the other one, the dumber one, and he bit me too. And then I died. The Maker found out what happened and he was mad! He stormed and thundered and cast out the two idiots. Serpent disappeared like he always does when there’s trouble. But I was still dead. I didn’t get to go back to being with my friends on the tree, but I also didn’t get to go back to where we all came from. I was stuck wandering around Earth as a ghost, with two bites taken out of me, the holey spirit.
