The Root of Things
A Mythological Parable
Dear Reader,
Happy New Year! To kick off 2022, I send you a mythological parable. Thank you to everyone who signed up and supported this monthly illustrated short story newsletter. I’m thrilled to announce that after one year, this newsletter has over 700 subscribers.
My art show, “Shatterscapes,” is now on display at Northwest Community Bank (741 Hopmeadow St, Simsbury, CT 06070). Visit any time through the month of January to see them in person.
May this tale bring you amusement, and may your 2022 be filled with flourishing.
~The Root of Things~
If Atlas didn’t carry the world, the planet would fall into the DARK VOID and NOTHING. I imagine it would fall for a rather long time, until it crashed into SOMETHING and, well, we all know that wouldn’t be very good for anybody. Even as a young girl, before father called us muses, I knew there must be an audience for someone to appreciate my jokes.
My sisters thought I wanted attention, but the JOY of humankind fascinates me. It is why mother named me Thalia; I crave FLOURISHING. If gods and mankind alike disintegrated from EXISTENCE, who would have the last laugh? Who would remember us? It would be the DEATH of LIFE itself.
The gods on Olympus set Atlas to his task. History says it was a punishment, but I think it was a dare. Atlas is the competitive type, you see. Likes to prove to everyone he’s the best. He could have shrugged the planet off, like all his other hobbies, moved on to something less… heavy. But he stuck with it, or rather, under it. I think the work was meaningful to him. He knew no one else could do it, and he knew he was helping people, creating space for all our lives… god, fawn, human, animal —
So anyway, the gods felt a tremble on Mount Olympus. A chardonnay glass tumbled over or something. The mortals thought it an earthquake, that we gods were displeased in some fashion. Zeus thought it was the Titans, with their usual antics in Tartarus. But if banging against their prison walls was causing a quiver in the courts of Olympus, we had a problem of the god-tumbling variety.
Hermes darted down to investigate and found Tartarus locked, secure. None of the other gods reported something amiss, so Zeus called on us, his daughters, to identify the source. We have a way of inhabiting the world without drawing too much notice.
Eight of us dispersed and looked among the mortals for the source of the tremor, all except Urania who is forever looking up at the sky. She stayed in her chambers, gazing upon the stars and making patterns of dots on big pieces of paper. They’re quite lovely if you squint. Staring into the DARK VOID, she’s got a knack for knowing when things will happen. For myself, however, I like to go to the root of things. That’s where the greatest ironies of life tend to lie. While my sisters explored the earth, I visited Atlas.
A bead of sweat ran down his brow. He looked, of all things, TIRED.
“Atlas,” I asked, “shall I retrieve Hercules?”
“No, Thalia, the weight of the world has grown past even his might,” Atlas said.
Instead of insulting his ego (best not frustrate the strength on which the world rests) I brought the issue to my sisters.
Clio, Erato, and Calliope are always the first to speak, coming up with some story or other. Erato doesn’t have time for you unless you’ve got some spicy romance about a nymph or a satyr, and gossip about mortals is her favorite. Clio gets impatient with the other two when they get all dramatic and elaborate on details.
“That’s not how it happened!” she’s always saying to them.
“But that’s how it should have happened,” Calliope will retort, and on it goes.
I explained what I saw, the tremble in Atlas’s arms that shuddered through Olympus.
“There are too many people, we must purge the weight,” Calliope said. I could see her envisioning what great war she might stir up, to recount to the human remnant in later ages.
“There are more mortals now than have ever been before,” Clio agreed.
“No, you must not!” Erato objected. “The humans only multiply as they should.”
“I agree with Erato, mortals take the things of the world and transform them. They cannot change the weight of the world as was there to begin with,” Euterpe said.
She, perhaps more than the rest of us, understands that alchemy of VOICE. Her verses carry meaning in melody as much as word, transforming sound into song. Where she is, Terpsichore is always close behind, bringing the notes to life in her body. She nodded in relief to Euterpe’s defense.
They are some of my favorite sisters, making the mortals jump and spin and be ALIVE. For all the blessings of our divinity, the lives of humans can be so much more POTENT. I think that’s why we’re so interested in them, my sisters and I.
“It is against the GOOD to end the lives of mortals before their time has come to a close,” said Polyhymnia. I’ve spied her by the side of some human, helping them with a sacred verse or divine sonnet. By her hand they transcend corruptible flesh and a fragile mind, if only briefly. I wish more of the gods on Olympus would listen to her.
“The weight of grief is much,” Melpomene said. She met my eyes with that understanding we have. “Yet humans have much to rejoice in as well, I do not think it is that.”
Melpomene and I are the closest, though she is always sad and I always smiling. Our mother wondered why we enjoyed each other’s company so, but I think Melpomene is the only one who ever understands me. We’re two sides of the same coin. I laugh so that I will not cry, and she sees the tears beneath the joy. With TRAGEDY, there is always COMEDY.
We went to Urania, hoping for her insights. The track record of her eyes across the black were pinned to the walls, maps of the heavens. She had set her mind to deciphering the DARK VOID before we knew to be afraid of it.
“Urania, Atlas strains under the weight of the world. He may drop the earth and we will fall into NOTHING. What can be done?” I asked.
“You know what has happened, Thalia, better than all of us. The humans have FLOURISHED greatly,” Urania said. “It is not their flesh that weighs on Atlas. Humans take NOTHING and turn it into SOMETHING, a god-like action. The weight of their CREATION, their history, love, music, poetry, and the rest, mounts and piles. It is unbridled CULTURE which burdens Atlas so.”
CULTURE. That creature my sisters and I had nurtured since humans passed the need to be constantly tending fires and growing crops, no longer in its infancy but tested and grown to full maturity, now gathered on Atlas’s shoulders. Of course, how could he not buckle under the collective weight of human CREATION?
Had LIFE grown to such a girth that it now brought DEATH?
Melpomene squeezed my hand in the dark. “Are we doomed to the night?” she asked.
If anyone could see the meaning in the darkness, it was Urania.
“No, but he needs help,” she said. “It was we who grew it, and we who must sustain it.”
Thus, my sisters and I gathered to Atlas’s side. We stretched up our hands to carry the culture which by generations had grown. I understood then what had been buried deep. The tremendous weight of FLOURISHING can only be born through the painstaking work of transforming NOTHING into SOMETHING.
For that cause, we lend our aid.
The Muses
Calliope — Epic Poetry
Clio — History
Erato — Love Poetry & Lyric Poetry
Thalia — Comedy and Pastoral Poetry
Melpomene — Tragedy
Euterpe — Flutes and Music
Terpsichore — Dance
Polyhymnia — Sacred Poetry
Urainia — Astronomy