Jonathon and The Collector:
Once upon a time, there lived a boy named Jonathon who loved nothing more than playing in the wild forests of his imagination.
He had a mother and father who loved him so dearly and friends of plenty of whom he danced with so freely.
But one day whilst playing by himself in snow, dear Jonathon met a man he quite surely didn´t know. The man said to him: “My boy, have you the time, for if you have none you can make haste with mine”.
Jonathon thought what a strange thing to say, for why would a man count existence away?
“A second, a day or a week or a year, are treasures to keep, my boy, nothing to fear”. Jonathon knew that his musings were wrong, that time only is, in each note of a song. And just as a note may be grandiose and vast, a song that´s been sung cannot sing in the past.
“My boy you´re so clever, then care you a treat? I have in this bag a prize for your feat”. Jonathon smiled and ran to his side and tugged at the bag to peer deep inside.
“My child if you will, reach as far as you can, a surprise for you waits at the stretch of your hand. Wiggle your fingers and tip on your toes, the deserve you desire is beyond your nose”.
Jonathon did as the strange man had said, he stood on his toes and he buried his head. When balance was lost there then came a mute cry from a brown hesham bag with a young boy inside.
"How did I fail? Stranger please tell me why."
“You won me with logic but I fooled you with pride”.
The Collector moved on and he vanished from sight; into the
darkness, away from the light. And inside his bag a collectable toy,
with movable parts, a collectable boy.
When The Collector got home he dished up a feast, he cordoned his
bag and he put up his feet. On an old rocking chair he rested his rump
with his tiresome feet on a rickety stump. It was back and forth he
swayed with delight with a lick of a finger after every bite.
He ate cat, he ate dog he ate rat he ate frog he ate fox he ate ox he ate minks he ate lynx he ate mice that had lice he ate maggots for rice, twere the nastiest things twere the things he found nice.
For dessert what he wished on his grubby old plate was the boy he
collected, no older than eight.
He cast out his belly and turned on the telly for the air in the room
was now thick and was quite smelly. The stench form his farts and his
burps and his feet were then made all the worse by the stifling heat.
A scary old man on an old rocking chair with long fingernails and grey
greasy hair; skinny white legs and filthy back toes; distracted by
thoughts of maundering prose.
Out of his reach and still far from his sight stirred the making of
trouble; the start of a fight. From inside his bag well now wouldn’t
you know, there now wriggled a wriggling wriggly toe. Then came a
foot and from there came a leg and a hand and an arm and a little
boy’s head.
Out of the bag the boy jumped for his life and he carried
in hand an old hunting knife. He motioned toward the old man and
said “I’ve something to tell you before you are dead”.
The Collector was startled and screamed to the night for a prisoner was he, of distraction and fright. “My boy if you do you’re no better than me for to kill of one’s will is to set hatred free; for desire it rules from the heart to the hand from the seat where I sit to the stance where you stand”.
Jonathon smiled and shook of his head and leaned in and hugged of the old man and said:
“To live is to die and to fail is to try and to be an old man is to seldom ask why hath the hole in your heart and the dread in your head be the burden you carry from the road to your bed and these things you collect and forever keep near hath done nothing to vanquish the state of your fear, for this hell you preserve above one, above all; it deepens your downing it heightens your fall. You siphon the past through a memorial sieve as a bitter old man with a life gone unlived”.
The Collector sank into a sad empty stare as Jonathon pulled on the old rocking chair and the old man he hummed such a dark mournful note as the young boy he plunged the knife deep in his throat.
The lesson to learn in this tale of a boy is to caution of conscious, a dangerous toy. For just as a rattle keeps a child at distraction; the thoughts that one keeps tend to speak of inaction.
- Johnathon and The Collector is an extract from the dystoian novel
A RISING FALL, book 001 in the dystpoian trilogy
CITY: A Literary Concerto.
This fable is preached to children within The Nest, to teach the importance of focus and maintaining a state of 'one'.
A Rising Fall is the first book in a dystopian trilogy entitled City: A Literary Concerto. The story starts ten years after the blackout as a group of humans struggling to fight off a conscious famine, try to re-learn empathy to save humanity in an old industrial assembly plant. In 3 days; feigned affection, deception and a black heart will take them further into the repression of their own fears in search of unconditional love.
The City Concerto through literary prose; answers one question: To what lengths would a father go and what horrible wrongs would he do, to teach a god how to love again?
Following the theme of a concerto, City is divided into three parts; A Rising Fall, Utopian Circus and I, Cannibal. Each book is then divided into three pieces and with A Rising Fall, each piece refers to a day; the three days leading to the fall of their city.
The trilogy illustrates the human emancipation from three states of love; Eros, Philos and Agape as each is torn apart under the guise of well intention as humanity; now void of identity in the wake of a century of dehumanising dependence and necessity upon industry and digital technology; has separated itself from the labour of its existence, aborting empathy and setting in place the death of mother nature. Yet, on the verge of extinction; mankind presses on; towards salvation; towards the city of light and sound; towards New Utopia.
Take Risk and Take Care and Merry Festivities,
C.SeanMcGee
