A Parable; or, Love of Lucre
Gather round, gather round, and hear ye, hear ye.
Another nug for you – gold, mind you – mined with the goal of – well... what?
Let’s not tread that trail agin; now’s not the time to tread water, but to cleave manful courses through choppy waters, yielding to the overmastering flow, of course, when need wills it.
Speaking of nuggets, all I’ll say on that ephemeral note – as all notes are, one source of their beauty – is that I definitely didn’t go gold-panning for the love of lucre.
I don’t share with that end in mind, and I don’t write with that end in mind.
I’ve always known, and have had more than my fill of concrete proof of the principle lately, that mixing up money with vocation tends to vitiate the vittles – spoil the soup, as the vulgar tongue has it, and as vulgar folk would have me have it.
I’ll touch my nose, point to my eye, and point you here for details, saying little more:
Anyway, I’ll spare you much more of my fart-sniffing word-juggling today, and simply reach into my nassty little pocketses and lay out for your esteemed eyes’ inspection (and ears’ audition, if you’re of that persuasion) a Bit of Writing from Some Time Ago.
I wrote this around 2009, too.
Too?
Yeah, like one of the pomes I placed here – Small Flowering, Vast Pleasance.
Why was I writing things then?
Well, I’m always writing things, more or less.
At that time – well – I’d gone through quite a harrowing, reconstituted myself from a puddle of goo, then mopped things up at the local Community College before heading on over to the
Augean Stables at the University of Maryland.
What was that like?
Eh, read my writing; or, hark unto this honey-tongued bard’s telling of the tale:
Reggie Watts Weighs in on the Academic Question
Anyway, I don’t remember all the details, and I don’t think it’s important either to search them out or to share them, such as I do remember them; but basically, for some reason or other, I felt compelled to try to get my writing published.
Let’s call it a momentary lapse in quality of judgment.
The community college had some sort of literary magazine, or writing-exposition-competition, and was inviting applicants to hawk their wares.
At that time, I’m not sure I had a clear sense of what my strengths were, writing-wise (or any-wise, for that matter), and I do remember struggling to produce anything like the creative fiction-writing or poetry being solicited.
Fiction ain’t my thing, at least not in the conventional sense; if you looked here, you’d have a sense of what is my thing, creative-expression-wise.
Anyway, I did come up with something – something like a short parable – which I did submit to this literary publication.
Of course, I got a nice canned rejection letter not long after.
That’s ok, though.
I’m not saying the writing I’ll share will change your world, but I will say that I’ve learned that most people don’t have any taste. Or any sense, or wisdom, or sensitivity, or depth; but part of my work, I’ve come to learn, is both to try to help and to try to love them, anyway.
In that sense, I never lack for work.
While wading and waddling through half-frozen streams of memory in the gold-panning efforts that yielded this nugget which is the object of today’s observation, I saw that what I’m about to share below had a brief note appended to it – saying that, at that time, I was reading Sufi teaching-stories, which seem to have influenced the style and tone of the writing.
That sounds about right.
By then, I’d read some nice collections of Mullah Nasruddin stories – I remember the wild and unexpected belly-laughs they evoked in the bookstore breakroom some years before this, – but in 2009, I believe I was reading something different – some of Idries Shah’s writing, if memory serves.
Anyway.
I think it’s all right, as my writing goes.
And you know what?
It says a lot about what I thought about the world, the people in it, and myself at the time.
Some things change, some things don’t.
6 June 2025
A Parable.
Once a wandering beggar passed through a wasteland. Amid its emptiness ran a single road; cobbled with skulls and mortared with blood, brightly it shone in the sun. "A road leads somewhere," thought the beggar, "and as I am weary of the pathless wilds, I will follow it. I do not think the knocking of my feet will wake these sleepers." And so he followed it.
Long he walked, many days, until thirsting, ruing the waste and its single road without end, he thought, "Whether this path ends, and where, now I will never know. Here I must sit until some unforeseen succor should come to me, or death." And so he sat; soon he slept.
When he woke it was night, and there came to his eyes the far light of a fire. "There may be the succor unforeseen," thought the beggar, "or else a desert-dream of my mind; but I will go to it and learn the truth, there to live or to die." And so he went.
But as he came near to the fire, a strange sight met him.
Where the fire burned, there the grim road ended; and beyond it the wasteland was no more. Over the reek of the road and of the burning blew the far fragrance of grass.
But by the fire stood three boys quarreling, and with them was a tethered cow. None of them heard the beggar, though he heard them; and he listened wondering. Lean and hungry, the three were arguing over the right to slaughter.
The first said, "I am the last of my people, who made the Road; this flesh is mine to eat."
The other said, "I am the last of my people, of whom your Road was made; this flesh is mine to eat."
The third said, "I am the last of my people, who knew nothing of Roads; this flesh is mine to eat."
The cow said nothing.
Wondering yet more, the beggar came yet nearer; and seeing him at last, the boys were quiet.
"Children," he said, "What is this talk of slaughter? I am thirsty. This cow has milk, a cure for thirst and hunger alike; and what of the grass beyond?"
Still the boys were silent.
When the sun rose next morning and the fire was smoldering, a lone crow, drawn by the smell, flew over a scene strange to its eyes: a head on a stake, three dead children, and a sleeping cow.
