Tag Archives: One Hundred Years of Solitude

The Water Cycle

The people of the Rune Poem were farmers and seafarers living in a wet country, and they had a much closer relationship with weather than we have. We can spend whole productive lives indoors, deep indoors, climate controlled, insulated, where rain cannot penetrate, and we might wonder sometimes is it windy outside? The Rune Poem singers did not need to go outside to find out: they felt the wind in their homes and their bones. Their houses were much more porous, and if the wind wants to send hail smashing down upon their roofs, crops, heads, they would feel it bitterly. If the storm lashes the sea all around their boats, they’ll be stuck in it terrified, buffeted by waves, riding it out. And they would ride it out. Sometimes the wind brings tempests, but all storms become calm water.

 

Rune Casting: Yr

Look at you, you’re a gorgeous one. Hello. Such a pleasure to see you looking so impressive today. You’re good for looking at, is this the rune you picked? Yr? It looks good on you. Where’d you get it? Goes with your eyes. Sparkling, shining, scowling some, but you’re in a hurry. I get it. Hold your horses diva. Give us a chance to see you in all your gloriousness, before you set off. You are going places and you’ll impress when you get there. Your time is coming so you’d better bring it. You look ready for this fight. When you stay ready you don’t have to get ready and you look fierce. You will be remembered. You will be worth remembering.

 

The Oxen of the Sun

April 8, 240 b.c.e.

Eratosthenes of Cyrene
Chief Librarian
Great Library of Alexandria
Alexandria, Egypt

Dear Eratosthenes,

Greetings my dear friend. I congratulate you on your recent measurements of the globe, though I suspect your eyes will suffer from so much gazing at the sun to achieve it. If you are hungry for it I require your assistance in the computation of the number of Helios’ cattle. They are horned, though that may make little difference as all are worth the same money horns or no horns. They live in four herds of different colors, white, black, yellow, and dappled. Each herd has bulls in these proportions: the white bulls are equal to a half and a third of the black together with all of the yellow. The black are equal to the fourth part of the dappled, and a fifth, together with again, all of the yellow. The remaining bulls, the dappled ones, … More

X≠Y≠Z: Rune Casting!

Y: This is our future? Ear and Feoh. Death and cattle? Are we going to kill a cow? Are we meeting some rich cattle?

Z:  Wealth. It means wealth.

Y:  Wealth? Like lots of cows?

X:  Portable wealth, not cows. Nobody pays in cow anymore.

Z:  Some do.

Y:  How is a cow portable? Imagine it. Pulling it behind you on a leash to go shopping. Loading it up into the car.

X:  The smell of the bank.

Y:  The smell of the bank! The wealth rune. Wealth!

X:  We’ll have money.

Y:  Yes! We will be rich! It’s so good to know it beforehand. Cows are big, right, this is big money, beyond our wildest fantasies rich. Yes. Fantastic. Yes. We’ll be swimming in it. Scrooge McDucking it through ducats! Plunging into property!

X:  Capering in capital!

Y:  Lounging in lucre, washing in wealth! Rolling in bankrolls, piling into pesos, current … More