THREE BROTHERS ⋅ A NEW GOD ⋅ CITY OF SALT ⋅ LAKE OF DREAMS ⋅ SUSPENDED! ⋅ THE TWO STREETS ⋅ ON THE EDGE OF THE MARSHS ⋅ BLACKSUN ⋅ DEMON ⋅ GAZELLE ⋅ THE HARDRIIM ⋅ RIDER ⋅ THE FLYER ⋅ ARABIAN NIGHTS ⋅ THE EMPTY MIRROR ⋅ THE SOLDIER ⋅ THE BICYCLE ⋅ THE CROCODILE ⋅ THE THREE TRAVELERS ⋅ OCEANSONG ⋅ THE FLUTE ⋅ THE TREE ⋅ THE TOWER

“How I long to tell a story that differs from the one I am telling! How hard I have tried to change it, yet always the same faces reappear, performing the same actions, thinking the same thoughts, under the same harsh sky. You may think my tale circular, but you are mistaken; it has no shape or direction. This unforgiving tale has only an ending, and this ending never varies, no matter how exotic or how threadbare the details leading up to it. The theme of this narrative is the death of the storyteller. So come, let us share this pipe at the marsh’s edge; we will watch the herons and egrets take wing over the delta.” The egret turned from the heron and looked over the many interconnected rivulets that constituted the mouth of the great river; the beauty of the sunset seemed to belie the heron’s unhappy parable. To preserve the fragile beauty of the moment, the egret took a mighty draw on the pipe. The cool smoke curled down his feathers and warmed his beak. Droplets of molten sunlight swirled in front of his eyes and then slowly coalesced to form the face of his friend, the heron. The egret slowly looked down at his feet. The mud beneath them seemed warm and friendly, alive. “I know what you say is surely true, heron. Yet I tell you this: there is no story in these heavenly marshes. When the time comes, we shall fly into the starry sky, and no story shall be there either. This phantom story of ours wanders the world, walks its pathways, chases its silvery herrings as we ourselves do. And in the eternity of this one moment, the only moment that has ever existed, we shall never know the fate of the storyteller, the outcome of the story, or the difference between the two.” -home-