Say I Love You

The story of a people from the great mountain

Once there were a great people of the mountain, who lived in harmony with nature and each other. Everything they touched turned green and bountiful. Their eyes only fell upon beauty and everlasting joy. Animals lived in harmony with these great people, silently watching over them as they tended the fields and the terraces in the mountains. The eagles looked upon these people with great anticipation, for they were the ones who first planted the forests, the ones who first constructed the rivers, the ones who first established the mountain, indeed, rising it up from the Earth itself.

One day, a road was built to their doorstep, by a group living in the lowlands, a group who had long forgotten their blood relation to the great people of the mountain. It used to be that no roads were necessary because no machine could have done what they did on their own two feet. That was a time from long ago, cemented in the transition between peoples and lives.

With the road came many new-age affordances, some accepted and some rejected by the great people of the mountain, in due diligence. With the onset of technology, money and politics, things were not quite as green or as harmonious as they used to be because life was unnaturally accelerated with the help of machines. Village elders could see the future coming, a future they did not want, but could not stop. The seers and the sages fortified their people against the cultural onslaught, doing their best to prepare them for the days ahead, along the road that was built to the mountain.

With the road came new ideas, new religions and new ways of thinking that were previously unknown and unnecessary to the great people of the mountain. In place of religion, they simply had providence. In place of money, they simply had each other. In place of the road itself, they simply never encountered a need to leave. This was a time from long ago, cemented in the transition between peoples and lives.

As time went on, more technology from the lowlands arrived on the road to the mountain, and with it, the trials and tribulations of economies. The men of the lowlands were heard being said, "with this technology, you will no longer have to toil as hard on the terraces, you will no longer have to grow your own rice because we can bring it to you, directly to your doorstep, for a small and consistent price." The men from the lowlands recommended this development, but it just so happened that, because of the new costs being incurred by the great people of the mountain, they were eventually caused to work longer hours in the factories than they did in the fields, a stipulation in fine print that was never indicated to the great people of the mountain.

As time went on, feelings changed, what used to be a great harmony was now a dance between costs and profits, a dance between living and dying, a dance between the certainty and uncertainty incurred by injunctions of economies from the lowlands. Things were never quite as green as they used to be and the eagles and the bears were less and less interested in the goings-on amongst the great people of the mountain. Without the gazes afforded to them by the animals, the great people of the mountain no longer had the blessings of the nature spirits, as the spirits rode on the very gazes themselves, from the animals who were watching with great anticipation, overlooking what used to be providence on the mountain.

Families got smaller and smaller, and the work longer and longer, due to the shift that the great seers and sages saw coming in the time long ago. Rather than their eyes only befalling beauty, the eyes of the great mountain people now only befell bills and costs and ratios and rations. Where there used to be only smiles by the advent of a new child, there were now only grimaces because that meant that a greater need for money had been generated, a greater need for the fake intervention by businesses and economies of the lowlands into the mountain herself.

It used to be that there were no rules or formal proceedings, it used to be that there were no blockages in the expression of their joys and loves, but, as time went on, the great people of the mountain slowly forgot how to cherish each other, as the eagles and the bears once did. It used to be that there were no shortages of words said in the declaration of their love, in the pontification of familial bonds that seemed to come so easily and naturally. The great seers and sages saw it all coming, but, alas, they could only do their best in preparing the people for such trials.

So much time had passed that many generations were firmly inculcated into the economics of the new way of living, with all the laws and the rules and the bureaucracies that followed, with all the paperwork and the timelines and the deadlines. Families had gotten smaller and smaller, villages farther and farther apart, all because of the road that, at one time, was paved so innocently.

The lowland people now had big cities of their own, with armies of police and bureaucrats, who seemingly had a law for every occasion, laws that just so happened to continue the cementing of their powers over economics, society, religion, business, and, most importantly, money. The villages were drying up, in what must have been purely coincidence, in an invisible attack that occurred over several generations. The once great people were faced with continually more difficult decisions.

There was a man and there was a woman, who, at one time, tended the great mountain with much fondness and joy, and, who were eventually pressed with yet another difficult decision of their own: to join the people of the lowlands, or to find a new home. Though they had not yet met, this man and this woman, who were prepared by the seers and sages from generations ago, decided of their own accord that, rather than join the people of the lowlands, who had caused the development of their situation without their knowledge, the man and the woman decided to leave their home country, they decided to leave their mountain entirely to begin a new life in the Americas.

It was a great trauma, leaving their home, but, as so often follows with maturity, hard decisions must be made for the benefit of our children. This man and this woman, not only left the very mountain on which they were grown, they left their family, their parents, the very essence of who they were, to literally manifest a new life, in a new place, in the new world of economics, brought to the whole of Earth through a hidden power.

It used to be that the great people of the mountain had no fear, no doubt, no remorse and no regret. It used to be that they could say and do anything to their heart's content, but, after experiencing such an uprooting, as a great tree does, new shoots emerged from the ashes, new shoots in the forms of sons and daughters.

The man and the woman, who were from the same mountain and different villages, had never met until they came to America, and, insodoing, began a new life after mastering the dark magic of economies, of housing authorities and of the legalese that carries it all forward. It had been so long, and, for the man, who could not be present at the passing of his own father because of what decisions had to be made, it was a battle never indicated by the seers and sages, it was a battle he faced on his own, forged in the fire of experience.

So much time had passed that the old words were forgotten, just as the old worlds, and that, even after the rising and success of the new shoots, the man and the woman could not proclaim their love verbally for their sons and for their daughters, because of the hardship endured by their emotional selves, as a result of the difficult decisions that were made to manifest a new and better home.

So much time had passed that the old souls started returning into modern bodies of the great people from the mountain, who were brought to the Americas by their forefathers. The Earth around them began to become more green and lively again, just as the seers and sages said it would, with the onset of new beginnings, manifested by the desires of the old souls currently reincarnating into the sons and daughters, who were sent forth as reinforcements against economies and bureaucracies and fake interventionism.

It was Father's Day in America and the daughters surprised their father from the great mountain with a humble cake. All he could say was "thank you". The daughters were so kind and so patient, knowing exactly what had happened, so they said in their soft voices, "Dad, it's okay. Say I love you."