Happy Tet! Happy Lunar New Year!
Devoted readers may be aware that I take in an interest in Vietnamese history and culture. The Narcissus flower is a symbol of prosperity typically associated with Tet. There is already a myth behind it and its quite different from the history I’ve constructed here. I hope you enjoy both tales!
Long ago, before any word was spoken, before any time was had, there was a boy who lived atop a mountain and a boy who lived in the lowlands beyond it.
The boy of the lowlands had paper-white skin. He tilled and hoed at the Earth with his palms to grow paper-white flowers. Some time later, though time had not yet begun, the paper-white flowers bloomed. The lowlander lay on his back, his chest heaving, his vocal cords innocent of any cry for joy.
The boy of the mountains could touch the sun if he climbed to the very tip-top of the mountain and got on his tip-toes. His skin was a tanned olive. His body was soft as clay. When the mountain boy looked out from his abode, he saw the deep and slumbering ocean, which was bigger in those days - as big as the sky.
Some time later, though time had not yet begun, the mountain boy descended from his abode to the lowlands beyond.
The mountain boy and the lowland boy had no words for each other. Though even if they knew the words that we know now, they would find their voices had left them. Some emotions, inarticulable, find expression in the body. They circled each other with slow, curious movements. They found that their eyes were heavy with tears. They found that their mouths were curved into wide smiles, as bright as the sun, as big as the sky.
They played at the edge of the ocean, chasing after and then running away from the tide. And on and on they played till they were no longer playing. They simply moved with the tide, serious as death itself, playing the role of its shadow.
When it came time, though time had not yet begun, for the mountain boy to return to his mountain abode, the lowlander picked a paper-white flower for him to take home. The mountain boy, overjoyed, walked to the tip-top of the mountain and got on his tip-toes. He arched his soft body towards the sun and extended the paper-white flower as far as he could. The sun - bright, alive, and as big as the sky - gave some of itself to the flower, once paper-white and now tinged yellow.
The boy of the mountains returned the flower to the lowlander. If he had the words, he would have said: Here is the sun. I climbed to the very tip-top of the mountain and got on my tip-toes and stretched my clay body and singed my clay fingertips so I could bring it to you.
And on and on they went for eons, though eons had not yet been had, the boy of the lowlands growing paper-white flowers and the boy of the mountains steeping them in the sun; wading in, wading out, serious as death itself.
One day, a new sort of paper-white flower grew from the Earth. Its petals were closed up like a fist. The mountain boy, innocent of the difference, plucked it and brought it up to the tip-top of the mountain, just as he always did. All of time was contained in that curled up paper-white flower. With careful fingers, the mountain boy unfurled its petals. The flower now hid nothing.
With time, and time had just recently begun, comes death. And when death came for the lowland boy, the mountain boy crouched over him. His grief, inarticulable, found home in the raw sob of his nascent vocal cords.
Slowly, slowly time ticked on. The sun gave of itself till it was no longer as big as the sky. The mountain boy learned to mold the Earth with his own palms. He learned to grow sustenance from seed. And in time, and by now there had been a lot of it, death came for him too. Every new year, the inheritors of the tilled Earth nurture and then pluck paper-white flowers tinged by the sun. And the mountain boy’s words, now that word has come to be, can be heard as a whisper in the wind. I stretched my clay body to give you the sun.