HOW IT CAME TO PASS

“A long time ago, (much longer than you have ever been a conscious thing.) And longer still than the tallest trees were but seedlings.
Longer than the rivers had left the glacier, and longer than some mountains, (but not all,) have been stacked up upon the earth;
At this time, so long ago. I came into being. Here. In this place.

It was a gradual thing, as gradual as light bringing forth colour at the dawn.
Could you tell me the exact moment that the sun had risen, out of the slow slip and all the colours that slowly bleed together? 
It was the same for me.

And in that moment, as the rays of my consciousness alighted the corners of this land, I came into a knowing.

There are types of knowing that seem to transcend memory, time or place. It was one of these knowings that came to me. 

I knew that long before the dawning of my mind, I had wandered and drifted this land, and felt a knowing of the sun. And a knowing of the sky. 

I could not see. And could not hear. I could not speak then.
And still I had this knowing.

I knew that around me were rocks, and earth. And water and sky. And I knew that if I shifted, and changed, just but a little, I too could be rocks and beearth and be water and be sky.

And so I built myself.
It was something like the feeling of stacking stones at a river, or sand castles at a beach. I was loose. I was formless.

And I spent some time like this. Rolling and crawling, stacking and falling. Making my way from one corner of The Waste to another.
I stayed like this, over many years…or maybe just for an afternoon, (for then, when I was new, I had no knowing of time,)

Until suddenly a knowing of sight.
Of understanding that new dimension of seeing and looking and witnessing. And I could see my stones and rocks and sand.
I knew that it was myself.
I knew the borders of where my rocks ended and where my sand began.
It was then I truly had a concept of shape.

All at once (or maybe over many years,) I began to grow in me a vanity.
I learned of wants.
Wanting to have an arm. Wanting to have a face, wanting to be different than the rocks and sand and water and sky. Wanting to be a person.

I found this place here. What they now call The Intake.
I called it a Cove. For like driftwood on a lake shore, a current began to pile things here. 

I had no knowing of these things, save for that they were not rock, or sand, or water or sky, (although now I would know them to be the discarded things that slip through the cracks. The waste, the wants, and the overflows.)
And so I began to play. I began to shape from them;

First hands. For with hands I could move and create and adjust. Then with hands I made a face, with new eyes, and a mouth, and ears.
I could speak. I could hear.

I built and built and played. I carved myself from the discarded things I found here in this Cove. And I was… finally.
A person.

I knew I had been something like this before, a person, (for how else would I know of hands and arms and legs and eyes and mouths?) But I did not understand my own coming to be.

I began to ask. I began to question.
Of everything and nothing until one question spoke louder than the rest. Why am I here?

With my new Corporeal form, I wandered the land.
Much as I had done when I was rocks and sand and sun and sky. But different now that I was aware.

I began to have a knowing of this place, and its shape and its edges, and I called it the Wander.

And I soon found that there were others like me.
Once, upon a beach shore, I found a pile of shells, bleached white from the sun, slowly and gently they swirled, as if leaves in an invisible wind.
My knowing told me this was a person also.

Soon there were many, (what now I would call a few.)
There were four of us. And we called ourselves the Firsts.

Our ways of knowing were different, as different as our Corporeals, and our Coves. For each of us had that in common, that somewhere in this great wide Wander, we had drifted on a current, from a Cove and that brought us always a sense of Home.

One person chose water, and its corporeal was loose, a collection of weeds and bugs and floating twigs, swirling and flowing and changing with the tides. They drift and travel the water.

One person chose Sky, and built feathers and wings, so that they would always be aloft. They created the wind to speak to them and keep them company, and they never have landed again.

One person chose the Land, and wandered shore to mountain. Water to sky, shaking and breaking and shaping and building our world.

And I still wondered. 

Why am I here?

I tried to move above in the sky, but missed the feel of the water. I tried to swim in its depths but missed the grounding land.
I tried to wander the wastes, but I could not do so alone. 

I began to have a knowing of alone.

And so I came to Sky Person and asked them to stay, but they did not need me in that way, and left with the wind.
And I came to Water Person, and asked them to visit, but they had no concept of this, for they have no need to visit, (when they are fluid, they are everywhere.)
I came to Land Person, and found the same blank stare, the same un-knowing, for why would a mountain feel lonely?

I was alone.
But only I understood alone

(Perhaps it was being alone that allowed me to notice the others.)

I went back to my Cove, here in the Intake, and I started to sort through the Found Things. And so many found things there were. Every day, as if by magic, the found things would find their way to my door.

I learned of clothes and I sorted them, and shoes and hats and gloves and blankets and even pillows.
I learned of houses and chairs and couches and dishes and sinks and of Books.
In books I learned of the rest.

I learned of People and Persons and Names. I learned of talking and childhood and games. 

I learned of places. And cities and countries. I learned of Love, and Joy and Heartbreak.
I learned of war and I learned of starvation.
I learned of Human, and Community and Sadness and Grief.
I learned of Death. I learned of Life.

It was then I noticed the others

They would come to me, formless, as I used to be. Drawn here on the current to the Cove. And I slowly began to shape them. I used the clothes, and the shoes and the hats and the blankets and the pillows. I gave them their own masks, their own faces.

I gave them books and stories and knowledge, and one by one they left.
So I would stay and shape another. And another, and another, as they came.

I became a Person of Creation. 

And so it has gone on, for many years, or a day, (for time is still slippery here.)
But somehow everything lost finds its way to me, and I shape it and send it on its way.

Much has changed since the early days. The young ones who left have built their cities and towns, their doors and their ports. They have built their societies and their rules. They have built their wars and their love and their sadness. All here in The Wander, all out on The Waste.

And still I sit, and shape the new, and send them on their way.”