About

Think of the person covered in mud. People look at him and see the mud. He found a stream lately, that he uses to clean himself of the mud. But it is far. To reach it he has to wade across a pool of mud and filth. When he reaches the stream he cleans himself a bit, but on his way back he accumulates some mud again. Now there is a path higher adjacent to this huge pool of mud, that he can use to get to the fountain from which the stream flows, but one has to climb his way up to the path. It’s steep. It’s beyond jungles and not everyone can see it. He was once following some people and he found the path.

It’s steep, but he has tried to climb up. Sometimes he climbs a fraction of its way up and then looses strength. Sometimes he has strength but defers his ascent, walking along the sides and ledges, until the ledges mix up with the slope and he has no way but to either fall into the pool of mud or start to climb up again.

There is something funny about the slope. It becomes easier as you go up. Every once in a while there is a permanent ledge along which you can walk, but there comes narrow spots, and if you are not careful of this you may fall. It is hard to fall, once you are on a ledge, but once you fall, its a hard fall.

He heard from the travellers whom he meets, that once you reach the path, it itself is an upward path. It is difficult to climb up but it becomes easier as you go up. And its hard to fall off the path, but once you fall the fall is much harder.

Once in a while you meet travellers who have been to the fountain, but this is rare. More often you meet those that have met those who have been to the fountain. They are kind of like yourselves. They say that once you reach the fountain you clean yourself of the mud. Then you start drinking from the fountain. And as you drink from it, things happen to you. You are given things you only heard of before.

But back in the pool of mud he doesn’t recognize the travellers. Nor can he tell who drank from the fountain. Its quite dark down there. When he is on the slope he can recognize them somewhat. They tell him that once you go upward you can recognize them more clearly. There is more light. But the travellers and drinkers are his link to the fountain. Sometimes they show him the easier ways up. There are many ways up to the path. But once you are on the path, it’s the same no matter what path you took to climb up.

There are other roads around the pool of mud, they take you further from the fountain. They slope downward. Once he was on one of those. It was easy to go down those roads, but there was a funny sensation of falling inside, the effect of gravity as one goes down a slope, the acceleration that warns one of a terrible fall. He stopped before it got steeper and darker. The darkness was intriguing, the mysteries beyond the darkness worth a discovery and the adrenaline rush indicative of more pleasure. But the growing darkness confused and confounded him, then his heart slowly gave in to the warning of its instincts. He turned around and kept climbing, darkness fading, until he reached the muddy pool. He was more muddy than before.

He needed to find some water, though he might not have known. The darkness of the downward slope had more mud and grime than he could have seen. In the growing dense of lightlessness you often feel happy like a pig. Happy to shower yourself in the filth. He had once heard of a path through the muddy pool that leads to a small stream, though he didn’t know what it could do for him. It was as if he had forgotten to wash. But he felt a need.

And in this time of need, there appeared, from somewhere, some people who looked as if they were always there but they looked cleaner, certainly cleaner than himself. They showed him the path to the stream, without him asking for it, or even knowing what to ask for.

And then he met the others, and yet others. He took a peek for the first time through the dense of the forest toward the peak. It was where he deduced the stream came from. And then he set out to find the path.

But around here, there is a big ram. It lurks in the dark. Or hides behind the light. It hits people with its huge horns and then they are lost. The travellers tell him that you don’t want to be hit with its horns when you are covered over with mud. But for the people of the downward slopes it doesn’t matter how you get hit. For some, the more mud you have when you are hit the better, or for some the further down you are the better.

He doesn’t want to be hit when he is covered over with mud. He wants to drink from the fountain before he gets hit. But nobody can tell when he is faced with the ram. Everyone knows that the rams exists. Everyone has seen the ram in action more than once in their lives. But they don’t know where it takes you. Not all of them knows that once you are hit, the ram is slaughtered. Once you are hit you are left with the mud that you have accumulated or the water you have drank.

So this person covered in mud, he climbs, in hope to find the fountain, before he is faced with the ram.