Tag Archives: possession

Golden grass covered in dew.

Possessive

Golden, dew covered grass
Photo by Johnny McClung

‘I’ve started talking to Proto-Indo-European.’

‘You mean you’ve started talking in…’

‘No. Talking to,’ Cassie insists. ‘I’ve personified the language. I call him Piedas.’

They meet every Friday at Lenny’s for happy hour to complain about their PhDs, how far behind they are, how mad they’re going.

‘Midas? Like the king with the golden touch?’

Cassie chews on a mojito-drenched mint leaf. She knows Beth will never understand her obsession with the noun-based languages that Proto-Indo-European generated. She never should have mentioned Piedas.

‘Like Midas, but everything he touches turns to nouns.’

It troubles Cassie that 40 percent of people, herself included, are doomed to see the world in terms of nouns. Things. Isolated, rigid, commodified. Bought, sold, stolen.

‘PIEdas. Proto. Indo. European. You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Beth says. ‘Happy hour’s almost over,’ she hints.

Cassie rises unsteadily and joins the clamouring mob at the bar. Foolishly she closes her eyes and allows the invading nouns— elbow, glass, noise, light, exhaustion, panic—to transform into verbs. Gush, swirl, flow.

She sinks, as into a river, like Midas, who dipped his tortured hands into the river Pactolus to be cleansed of his greed.

What hope is there for Piedas? Cassie wonders, moments before her head hits the sticky floor. A vision appears before her dark, unconscious eyelids.

‘Everything now you touch,’ says the river to Piedas, ‘turns to yours.’

‘Mine?’ wonders the weary king, casting his eyes over the verdant landscape that now belongs to him. Each detail now reveals itself in golden splendour—the waving limbs of his grassland, the jutting peaks of his mountains, the roiling herds of his antelope.

We can redetermine the value of the possessive, Cassie realises, as the crowd helps her to her feet.

‘You are thirsty,’ said Piedas to his wilting tulip, carrying water from his river in his palms.

Would you like to know more about this story? I discuss it in Episode 109 of Structured Visions, What makes you so special? You can also sign up to the Grammar for Dreamers newsletter to get monthly updates on the ideas that inspire my work.

Possessed

Wolf pack on a rock formation
Photo by Thomas Bonometti

Each fibre of fur is a strand of awareness. Each press of paw pad on the earth a moment of contact. We gather under the full moon in a sacred geometry as aligned with the astronomical expanses as any stone circle. The finely tuned notes of this howling symphony transmit the Earth’s wisdom to the stars.

A litter of freshly whelped cubs is both a miracle and a liability. We watch them each diligently, perhaps obsessively.

At the first sign of possession, a decision must be made. By what might the youngster be possessed? Can such possession be outgrown?

We’re on guard for clear signs the taint is growing stronger. Possession becomes apparent in the grammar of the cub’s eyes as he stares at the mother. ‘Mine,’ he thinks. He notes a unique fleck of white below the dam’s chin. ‘Hers.’

Possession destroys unity and must be stopped before it can grow. A merciful killing is sometimes required. Such measures pain us, though, and howls become mourning songs.

If we are travelling near a place where people live, we’ll sometimes deposit the cub on the threshold of a human dwelling. We stay distant, waiting for the cub’s new owners to discover it there, their miracle puppy, their adorable stray.

Would you like to know more about this story? I discuss it in Episode 79 of Structured Visions. Subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen.