Kokopelli

 

The sun turned its slow circle over the hill where Kokopelli sat beneath a twisted tree with gently swaying branches. There was shade on that hill and Koko loved it, but he truly dwelt in the shade of his mind.

The valley below had been baked by the sun the entire day and, Kokopelli expected, so had all of his family, friends, and the other villagers. He had not been working since dawn, though he had risen earlier than anyone else toiling below had. His day began in the twilight before first light and he had climbed the hill to the twisted tree and sat.

As the sun rose over the forests and plains and rivers and lakes of the east, Kokopelli looked on in awe. Dawn was his favorite trick that the sun did. He sat, back against the twisted tree, as a single and beautiful ray of light shone between the far off mountains, making the ground glow amber and golden. Koko noticed, also, how just as light shone from the east shadows grew from the twisted tree and from the forests below, even from himself, toward the west.

The west was not a place that Koko cared to look very often, but if he were to follow the sun he had to spend half of that time looking west, sometimes more. Even after it had set he would gaze still to the west where the sun had gone, hoping foolishly, that it might return and go home to the east. Besides, that was the place where the sun belonged.

Whiling away the hours under the twisted tree, Koko would occupy himself with many diversions. He liked to watch the shadow of still objects move beneath the sun, seeing how not doing anything was an action like any other. That while the twisted tree remained constant and steadfast, events around it caused it’s shade to distort and change.

And while it was a part of the day he liked least, Koko always watched when the sun took a shadow from one side of his body to the other. Facing the north, it was always the noon day sun that tore a shadow from east to west. He tried to find the instant where the change happened, but he never could. Sometimes he cried when the twisted tree was corrupted, shadow being destroyed and recreated in a western image the same as the east but precisely opposite.

It never looked the same for the remainder of the day, that twisted tree, and it was during the second weary part of the day that he began to loath the tree the way the other villagers did. They hated its gnarled and distorted trunk. They balked at the sight of the exposed twisted and tangled roots. Of course they dismissed the flourishing leaves in a thousand ways, for it took only one thing to defile perfection, and the tree had more than enough reasons to disgust.

Yet if the reverse were true, thought Koko, it would only take a single beautiful thing to give any thing value. There was much amiss with the spears and arrows of the village hunters, but they were not burnt or shattered. The implements had a simplicity of function and necessity that gave them a place, and value. Perhaps it was only the selfishness of the villagers that made them only deem worth those things whose value lay in their own interest.

If this was true then it must be their apathy that allowed this tree to survive. It was not sucking the earth’s honey from their crops, it was not occupying any desirable land (at least

none desired by anyone other than Koko himself), but most importantly it was more work than it was worth. Koko wondered whether his survival was because of some value his village attached to him, or that starving was more work than it was worth.

The sun was nearly set in the west, and Koko considered, as he always did, just closing his eyes and waiting for the horror of that moment to pass. To not see the west swallow his light. To not see the parched and fast encroaching desert, the greatest threat to the village but also the most ignored, snuffing his imperfect yet wondrous light. To not look east and see the shadows stretch long over all the living land, decaying them before his eyes. To not see the final darkness descend on everything. But he could not close his eyes.

Kokopelli did not know that his talent to the flute was not his greatest gift. He did not know that his real strength was ceaseless, but not unquestionable, vision. He could not stop looking or even unsee the dangers, threats, or corruption’s of his village as the others could. He could not bear to look away.

It was first a fear as a child that these dark shadows would creep closer when he turned his back to them, and they did, but his gift developed as he did. Now his vision could sweep over a landscape of horrors, as it did every day, and while he need not be always turning around to look behind him, he still could not ignore all of them utterly. Sleep, his one indulgence, was, he felt, his greatest sin. To forsake his unknown duty of vigilance hurt him even though he could not entirely understand why.

The village would be expecting him by the fire soon, so Kokopelli prepared to rise and descend to the village. Placing one hand on a low low branch just above his seated body, he pulled himself up, kissing the branch as his lips passed by it. His flute he removed from his belt, putting it to his lips, and playing.

He thought the lyrics he could not sing aloud, knowing he lived by his willingness to play the songs the elders and other villagers wanted to hear. That his thoughts could not be sung, ever, around the village fire. That even his parents, who loved him for reasons that went beyond his usefulness and even his faults, but reasons he could not understand, would not hear his words. He could not sing them loud enough or often enough, so he did not sing them at all. Only thinking them or whispering them to the twisted tree.

The fire was a tall one that night, everyone was already gathered around and some had begun dancing to the pounding drums. They heard his flute as he approached, the drums accommodating his melody in rhythm. As he always did, Kokopelli did not stop walking until he was as near the fire as he could stand, where he stopped moving almost entirely.

He watched the dance of the day, relating all the mundane things that he missed while spending his time atop the hill. The hunters’ success, the farmers’ work, the harvesters’ return. Yet there was something hidden between the spaces of the dance. It was where the others never looked, in the long shadows of the dancers that the fire created. The light so close to the earth always made the longest shadows.

Koko saw how a few had noticed the western desert’s relentless advance; he saw also how they had buried that realization by working harder on the same patch of land they had always worked. He wanted to scream at their blindness and passivity.

The simple solution was to start farming the eastern side of the village more, but even that was overlooked by the lazy farmers who would rather stay where the land was already cleared. It was so much work to cut trees and remove their stumps, and it wasn’t necessary yet. Besides, the hunters would be angry that they had to go further to reach the forest and return to the village.

In time there would be no option but to move the fields east of the village, and that eventually the farms would move so far away that a making new village would be much easier than walking all the way to the one they had now. That village, too, would be touched by the desert soon enough, but it would be a long time before the villagers realized it was once again the path of least resistance to move once more.

The beat of the drums rose in tempo, and Koko conceded his own tune to their forceful pressure. The tempo rose in pitch and fervor, and he followed still, gazing only at the fire. Then he looked around and saw the villagers dancing, but their feet did not fall to the rhythm of the drums pounding pounding in his head.

They moved with tortured slowness, their bodies rising and falling to a beat Koko did not hear, falling to beat unlike the one that pulsed within him.

Then the dance was over and a hand dropped upon Koko’s shoulder. A voice told him that it was alright, and that he would play better tomorrow night. It was his father, concern and love in his voice and eyes. Kokopelli nodded, though not in response to his father’s reassurance.

The drums still played in Koko’s body and in his feet he felt the need for them to rise and fall. He nodded and smiled because he faced east, gazing over the fire to the forest path out of the village. He laughed because for once something within him or outside of him was telling him something that was right and true.

He told his father that he was leaving, and though the man nodded, he expected he was neither taken seriously or indeed listened to. The hand on his shoulder fell away and fatherly footsteps receded into the west.

The drums still beat, the fire still burned, and Kokopelli still smiled.

When the last amber became ash the first ray of dawn shone through the trees before him and lit his face and the dead fire with more beautiful colors than he could ever remember.

Koko’s new companion, the steady drums, drew his foot forward. It fell into the fire pit followed by the other and soon he crossed the fire pit. He did not stop. Relentless as the complex, intricate, and ever simply beautiful rhythm, he walked onward. The forest path rose to meet his feet, and each effortless step was followed by another.


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© 1997 Daniel Parke -- All Rights Reserved

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