The Strong Set the Stones
We are being told that apparently the strongest set the stones. Far, far away, a giant named Begat fought Gravity for the stones and won. He heaved the stones above his peanut head and onto the wet crevasse of his back and carried them across sand dunes and seas to bring the stones into formation. Begat stacked them in symmetry to a cosmic rhythm, so that the stones could listen in on the conversation between the moon and sun.
It was Merlin the Magician that had Begat do all this by mouthing the magic word – ‘History’.
Between the shadows of the stones the people threw off their clothes to bake in the final sunrays of the longest day. As they Hugged the stones tight to their bodies, broken bones reset, gout subsided and faces unwrinkled. People – pulled into the stones’ orbit – came from far and wide for Spa Day.
Begat, his work done and now far from home, stood in the Compost Bin and begun to decompose from the knees down. No longer lifting the apparently unliftable into the air, he was now the big stone glued to the ground. As he sunk down into the soil he thought ‘how thin the world seems sometimes.’
Under the earth Begat joined the fungal commune, passing messages between trees, trading news with pebbles and fossils. ‘From here we can mix matter and paint the world’, Begat was told by the commune’s grandmothers. He was shown by them how to push toadstools up into the nook of a tree root and to fold daisies over upturned sods.
In time Begat met Gravity again and, holding his big heavy hand, they walked between the stones. The field where the stones sat had over time become a great midden and together, they read the stories from what had been belched onto the surface.
– Dee Parker
Written on Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar. Dee Parker is an aspiring healthy adult. Influence for the piece was taken from Rebecca Solnit’s book ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost.’
