Cyclical By Nature

My mother tells me the orchard of dead and twisted apple trees used to bloom in the spring. Past the sweeping fields of canary yellow dandelions sits a cemetery of looming wooden beasts. Once a source of nourishment, now a symbol of past life. Like the dilapidated headstones to the East. Crumbling above the bodies that once bloomed as well, but with life not fruit. Predominantly the remains of former soldiers. Like my grandfather and his father, all down the line of descendants. The soil of our fields tinged red with memory of past blood spilled in battle upon the fertile earth.
Some cycles preserve unbroken. This one did not persist, for my father is a cordwainer, a shoemaker. His mind contains knowledge of stitching and soles not of rifles and formations. Every shoe is a whisper of beauty, a painting, a monument. My father is in his own right an artist. Attention to detail with greater precision than Velasquez or van Gogh. Truth of form in the ways of a Bernini sculpture. Instead of pastels and clay, fine calfskin and Chamois leather are the agents for his creation.
The place, the time of my story do not really matter. The beginnings are consistent; fear, anger, opposition, war. The patterns are like, even with differentiated passions and no replication of exact characters. The molds so near the true person, the end product fits just as well.

They say if we do now know our history we are condemned to repeat it.
Human conflict, so often mindless.


The people of my village used to recite this poem in times of terrible hardship:

Unlike Barley and Corn
Seeds of fear grow best
Without sunlight and care
But in darkness and despair

It was meant to serve as a reminder how evil finds it's beginnings. They told me how to combat fear, blinding it with sunlight.
Without seeds of fear, the roots of war have no depth. The common man may prevent war just as easily as he tends to his garden. By pulling the shallow roots of the weed that is war until they shake loose of his land. Let the seeds take deep root, forget to pick them just once and the cycle repeats.

They say if we do not know our history we are condemned to repeat it. Ironic then, that by simply forgetting some of our history we would have nothing to fight about