Medicine of the World

Consider this an open diary entry, or poetry. People might not get it, in which case, don't worry about it. Perhaps it wasn't written for you. Perhaps in the final analysis it was written for me.



THE MEDICINE OF THE WORLD

There was a rift in the heart of the World. Now when I say world, you don't get worlds without solar systems, and you don't get solar systems without galaxies, and you don't get galaxies without universes, and you don't get universes without a Multiverse, but the World is what we know, so I shall say World.

Now some folks say it is a rift in us, that our hearts are bad, but we would not be riven were the World not riven, and we were riven because the World was riven. We are not a separate thing from the World.

There was a rift in the heart of the World. Now animals can find medicine for themselves in the fields and woods in the form of different plants, but how can a World find medicine for itself? Nevertheless, this is what the World set out to do, to make medicine for the World's heart. With all medicines, not enough can't heal you and too much can harm you, and even more so with this medicine because the World could not say for certain that any dose was a safe dose. It might heal the World's heart, or might wound it worse, and no being in the universe could say for sure.

The World made its medicine in the form of a child, and that child became many children; and as long as they were children, they neither did any great good nor any great harm.

And then the medicine became an adolescent, and the World began to see that a very small number of the adolescents were in fact medicine, but most were poison and made the rift in the World's heart worse every year. At first the World was poisoned very very slowly, but the rate of poisoning increased very slightly every year, and century by century the rate of change increased. And the World could see that things would become very bad, and that it would get very sick with fever for a long while until the poison was finally burned out of its body. It appeared that the intended medicine would fail, because for the most part it was not medicine but poison.

The few who were in fact medicine were at best disregarded by the other adolescents. These were the lucky ones. To be medicine in a world of poison was a dangerous fate. They had only a little power to turn the poison to medicine, or to heal the increasing injuries to the World. The medicine worked slowly, and the poison worked increasingly fast; the medicine was little and the poison was great, and the World's fever rose.

Now I cannot tell you the end of the story because it hasn't ended yet. There are many stories about what will ultimately happen, and I can tell you some of them, and some of them are for others to tell.

The simplest story of the end is, the World has a great fever and all the adolescents die from it. Good and bad, poison and medicine alike. In the end the rift in the World's heart is even greater, and who knows what medicine will ever heal it.

There is another story told by people who live in dry places. Now the dry places of the Earth give birth to both great prophets and great narrow-mindedness, and who can say from what place in the heart this story comes. The story says that the World will call on it's own dark side to destroy the bad medicine from the World, and leave only the good medicine behind, though perhaps the good medicine will be reduced to only two people by that time. The World starts again, it heals back to where it once was, but no one can say whether the rift in the World's heart is finally healed or whether the World is only back where it began.

There is another story told by people who live in forests. This story is that there were eventually very few of the adolescents who were strong in the good medicine, and one of those took the World's divided heart into his own heart, knowing it would kill him. His heart exploded from the burden and he died, but this act ensured that there would be at least one more generation of medicine left in the world, and perhaps one of those would find how to heal the World's heart and bleed out the poison. Whether they ever will, no one can say because it hasn't happened yet.

But know this: we are of the World and if our hearts are sick it is because the World has a sick heart too. It knows this and is trying to heal itself. But the medicines are few and the poison is great, and no one knows how many future generations of medicine there will be in the world. Perhaps one day all the medicine will be gone. All that will be left then, is for the World to purge itself and try again, and we will be gone.