Whatever do you mean? What happens next?

Two parts of a whole story. Writing style inspired off of Kafka's Metamorphosis.

Whatever do you mean?

Land passes by fluidly, and oceans stay still in their wakes. Whatever do you mean? Well, for example, the fish love to swim in the open sky, while birds stalk their prey with beady eyes in the oceans below. Houses stand on their roofs, and trees burrow their roots into the sky, while their branches float and spread along the waves of brown Earth. Memories float through the air, and opinions voiced scrape the ground below.

Now, whatever can this mean? Change. Everything does. And as everything will and does change, one thing remains the same; the love of travel by those of the government. They love to see new places through the tiny ants that they send to crawl along their land. They each take pieces and bring them back, and back, and back. But their children don’t take these pieces back, they eat, and eat, and eat, absorbing and learning and growing with each new place. Look! A new school, one with fresh memories and a brand new neighborhood. They won’t notice a few out of place pieces, will they?

The adult ants start to take small pieces from the houses around them, stuffing it into their sack of goods to take back to the government. They look and sneak, sneak, sneak around low to the ground, crawling and hopping and pinching and pulling their way through the pieces. Is it good enough, is it ever good enough? The children help, collecting, searching, moving, moving, moving, always moving. What good is moving? The children look at their parents’ faces and what do they see? A “whatever do you mean?” face. A face that says, “this is right and just within the way of the world”.

This isn’t right, the children think. I want to stay with these memories, they think. Or so they think. Their memories slowly start to slip away from them, all interest in who and what they are lost. But why? Whatever do you mean? They aren’t and weren’t yours to keep, you know. The children sort through the memories, finding trapped pieces underneath the memories of others they picked up. Whose are those? They couldn’t be theirs, could they? Whatever do you mean, of course they are. You hide yourself, trapped, suffocating, under the weight. What was the point of finding new memories?

What was the point? The point? What’s a point? Were all of their parents’ memories also hidden like yours was? They sneak, sneak around and look for pieces to fill the gaps. What do you mean, of course they are the same! They raised you after all. The children go up to them and say, “Look what we found! Does this look familiar?” The parents grab the memory and throw it away, always away. “What a useless piece.” they say, looking for something interesting, something unique.

Another move, another unique and interesting place. What happened to the memories before? Whatever do you mean? They’re not there anymore, they never were. It’s time to focus on the present you know. Again and again, the parents take and take, and the children sneak and sneak, growing, learning, suffocating. The land is swallowing them, but look! They are still on the ground, always there, but never there at the same time. Look at those children! Aren’t they so good, so behaved, so sneaky, always taking those memories away, always away, until it’s time to move again, always again. Again and again and again and again.

Whatever happened to never? What do you mean never? Never isn’t a word silly! It will ALWAYS happen. That’s what they think. They think wrong, most definitely. They are different, more loving, more caring, more memories. They learned to keep a hold of their own, to make their own memories instead of taking other ones. But this is wrong, right? It’s definitely against what their parents want, right? But they never cared. Why would they when they have their own pieces, their own memories that they have always crushed under the weight of stolen ones? It’s not their choice to make.

The children became adults, adults who stayed in place, who made memories instead of taking. They learned that the schools stayed upside down, and the students were hidden, but not because of them, but because that was the way things were, the way things are. Other things besides moving were constant. Maybe it wasn’t the moving, it was them.




What happens next? (Sequel to Whatever do you mean?)

In the land that passes fluidly, and oceans staying still, the fish swim in the sky, and birds fly in the sea with beady eyes. Houses live on their roofs, with the trees next to them twisting their roots above them, creating shades where the clouds - white fluffy puffs that people use to move around - maybe in another world would be. But still the memories of anyone and everything float around, with opinions taking a backseat, and no one looks at the backseat.

Yes, this means change. But change is good isn’t it? New memories, new places, new exciting things to see! Yes people stay, yes people leave, but that’s the beauty of it all, that no matter where you go, the only thing that truly stays the same is you, and even that changes. But what is change? Change is the secret that hides behind mountains, the words that slither out of someone’s ear onto the ground, the time that seems to tick, tick, tick by and nothing is done to stop it. Change is the movement of things. Now, if someone accepts this change in its entirety for the rest of their life, what on Earth would that look like?

Well, if a person whose life was just change, they would covet the ground where they walked, thinking it sacred. They would take pieces from branches, and water from the sky. They would pick up the memories they saw, and wave to the students hidden. They would stop to wonder why the houses were upside down, and then realize that maybe they were right-side up. They would live to live, not for themselves, not for others, but for change, for growth, for the garden that comes to life in their own mind. In order to accept this change, to live in it, one truly needs to have a mind that stays the same: curious, strong, grounded, grounded, grounded, are they grounded? What is ground? What is sea? Why do things happen? Do things happen? Is what is around people real? Do people even realize that breaking and changing and life and death and all things that make change change are what makes humans human?

But in the end, someone who tries to stay the same changes, and someone who tries to admire change can only do so at a stand still. The constant cycle of life builds upon the fact that change makes the world, just as it makes everything what it is.