I am sitting in my room, trying to get over this nasty cough I've got in time for the midterm tomorrow, but I've been getting a little tired of this thankless studying I've been doing. Yeah, studying. Because that's what I've been doing all day, not watching trashy animated TV shows online. Yeah...
Anyway, As I sip my tea and gulp down my honey, I have been feeling like I owe you all some writing, even though I haven't been doing much myself in that respect. However, in preparation for National Novel Writing Month come November, I've been editing/reading through the piece I wrote for the contest last year, and I came across a short excerpt that you might like. Plus it doesn't give anything away! Yippee!
Excerpt From "The Antiock Mission" (working title)
...
“Now I have some advice for you, but I will relay it to you through a tale. Once there was a wise sage who could entice the growth of plantlife. He would move his fingers towards the sky and agriculture would spring up from the ground, at the will of his mind. In this way he grew enough food for himself, his family, and the students who studied with him. People came to him from all across the land with their starving families to beg for food, but the sage always refused. He insisted that his ability could not be used frivolously or the balance of nature could be irreparably disturbed.
“One day a poor family came to him on hands and knees, begging for food. They were dressed in rags and were missing teeth; their children and infants were so skinny that their bones seemed to jut out from their skin. They pleaded, worshipped him like a deity, and offered him gifts of precious metals, but still the sage refused. One of the sage’s loyal students, however, could not bear to see the suffering of others while there was power to stop it, so as the dejected family trod off this student caught up to them and promised them him services.
“Now, this student was not as powerful as his master, but he had a natural energy of his own, and he was able to make some vegetables grow on the family’s soil. The carrots were wrinkled, the lettuce was thin, and the tomatoes were dry, but the poor family thanked the student profusely and deemed his work the ‘divine garden.’ The student left the family asleep and full, smiling from the good deed he had done.
“The next week he returned to the farm of the poor family to find nothing there. The roots of the plants had been torn out, and dead plants lay everywhere, the sad remains of his divine garden. The family’s tiny hut had been burned to ashes, and the bodies were nowhere to be found, save for one of an infant with a crude spear pinning his forehead to the ground. Confused and distraught, the student begged his master for advice, but the sage turned his head in shame. ‘To think you could solve a complex problem such as hunger with such a simple solution,' he said coldly. 'Hunger and greed come together. What you did was to stoke both, and now you see the result. Because of your foolishness, you are banished from my school. Please never come to see me again.’ And with that, the sage sent the young student off.
“There are some lessons in this story, dear Alaer. Even if you have a pure heart and good intentions, your actions may produce terrible results, both for you and for those you are trying to protect. I know you have a pure heart, my son. But that is not enough to heal this world. You need to use your brain, your common sense, and your consciousness. Always see things like you have never seen a tree. This should be easy enough for someone like you. Do not be so trusting of people who need help. Perhaps they think they know what they need most, but that is not always the case. Perhaps the sage is right in one sense. Perhaps we should not try to heal the world at all and simply aim to remain self-sustaining. But I cannot accept that solution. There must be a way to support this planet as well as all the creatures on it. Personally, I find the sage at fault as well for his negligence towards global improvement. In fact, there is no character in this story who acts correctly in my view. In this light, they all have advice for us."
...
I hope you all enjoyed that. Now I have to go cough a few more times.
By the way, if you ever get the chance to watch Brenden Small's "Home Movies" comedy TV show, I highly recommend it. I've been watching it for free on YouTube for a while now, so I figured I should plug it here in some sort of thanks. Also, the show really is funny.
And I want to wish Justina a happy 22nd birthday! Your party was quite fun, considering that I normally can't stand parties.
Usually she's not that silver
P.S. Justina isn't one of my readers, so she will never know I wrote that!
Have good days everyone,
-Sam goldsmith
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