Thursday, March 29, 2007

MYTH XXVI - THE POLLINATOR

THE POLLINATOR - by Radha Pandey

INTRODUCTION

A myth is a truth that is close to one’s heart. It is something that is more a feeling, than a story. It is a truth you cannot pin down as right or wrong. It is a true story or a story that is based on the truth.

Structure of myth

According to me there are two ways in which one can approach a myth.

One is from the very beginning. Introducing every single character in that point of time and their relationship to another and then continuing with the story as it slowly unfolds upon reading it.

The other, is to start from what you think is the middle. You start by showing the myth, instead of telling it. So what one reads/ writes is an incident, one of many, one that cannot really be located at any point, at that point of time, in the myth. But the story before and after unfolds from there; and locates it.

The relationship between the various characters, takes form from there.

A myth contains a general overview- a show and tell, if you will, of all that is around. Not explaining, but hinting at the existence of that certain environment. It moves onto the main characters/ introduction of the hero as one of the characters (who may later evolve to take on the role of the hero); then families and tribes- communities, and their individual stories. This is followed by conflict, and then a resolution and hence the evolution of a new situation/event/series of events/circumstance.

About my myth

The Dream-time Myth is based on my version of how the planet we live in today came to be. It is about what kind of life existed before we came about as a race, and what traces of it remain till today. There are traces, but we fail to take notice/see them. They are the reason we exist, in the first place. We came from them.

The traces that remain of an earlier time, today, are plants, trees and crops. The planet earlier was one single mass of living breathing green flesh. Not in the typical sense as we know today, but literally, they were life- All life. They had dreams, thoughts, and feelings which traveled skywards and formed a collective consciousness through which they were all able to communicate and emote to each other. They were highly aware and sentient beings, and retain their sensitivity even today. Through a series of events that the myth takes one through, a creature is evolved from what is shown to be a mandrake root that is the result of the dream-time of the hero of my myth- the Pollinator. It plays a key role, up until the physical manifestation of its Dreamtime, in the creature.

Why is my myth important?

This is not the future the green flesh families envisioned for themselves or us (their direct descendants). So in the end, where does that leave us? This myth will (hopefully) help us realize that the world we live in today is not just ours- it belongs to be everything around us, even more so, than it does to us. All living beings have more of a right to be here, than we do. We haven’t been here long enough, to live the way we are living, and destroy all that we touch. We have to learn to love, to protect what we don’t yet understand. We cannot afford to fear it, because IT is what keeps us alive. And we need something to remind us of that every single day. To make us think twice about the way we live our lives. How every single action affects all that is around us.

Why is myth important?

I think myths give us a sense of belonging. They make us feel like someone has been there before us, and there will be others after us, and we are not alone. We have a history. Whether by we, I mean culture, or race, or religion or country or the world- we have a history and it is a glorious one. We create myths to feel alive- so we don’t feel it’s all for nothing. We create myths to exaggerate reality, to make us write a truth or an untruth to share with the world, with the future that we know may or may not come. It’s a mark that says we were here and this is what we achieved, and it was the truth. It was real. Remember us for this.

It is what makes me, me. And you, you.

THE POLLINATOR

Part one: Prelude

Somewhere between then and now- then, being about a million million million million (one with 24 zeroes after it) years ago, and now, being about a million million (one with 12 zeroes after it)- the earth as we know it was in fact a soft glowing orb. Around this orb were gases we now know as helium, oxygen and hydrogen. The source of this wonderful glow was, on closer inspection, was tiny particles of water that caught the light now and again, as a meteor would pass, or as the stars near by would combust…

One would wonder what water was doing on an orb this size- it seemed so small and fragile. Like a soft porous stone made of chalk. The glow was a greenish one, as the water droplets were reflecting the true colour of the orb itself.

It may be time now, for a closer inspection on what we think is this orb. It is a living mass of green flesh. It seems to have been alive and breathing forever. This mass on closer inspection is a ball of plants- intertwined, heaving, breathing, loving- alive! This ecosystem is self-sustaining. The plant forms are adapting continuously. The entire planet is covered with green. Not a single bit of space shows through all the green. No colour shines through, except the green of the leaves, the stems, the trunks of trees, the vines and the particles of water that hover over it too, reflect this green.

These plants live in families that are flung, what seems to be, randomly, across the planet. They cluster and live - one species all together. Like one big joint-family, all together. There are different kinds of families; nocturnal, and diurnal. Both these families dream- powerful dreams and thoughts. They know what the other is thinking and can feel. All their thoughts, and feelings from their dream-time float up and are trapped in the tiny particulates of water. This is their collective consciousness. Be aware- I do not refer to this as a subconscious or unconscious- these are very conscious and meaningful thoughts. This dream-time holds importance and helps this planet grow and flourish harmoniously - as a collective.

In this world of green flesh, lives one other creature, different from them all. It is a Pollinator- for lack of a better word. The Pollinator is the only one of his kind on this planet. It is also born of necessity and is the connection between the different plant families. The families are not oblivious of this creature, and yet are not dependant on it. There are plant families that mate, and wait for the creature to appear from time to time to unite their male and female parts. And then there are plant families that do not need sexual organs. They hold birth within themselves, their strong roots, pull up from the orb-center tiny bubbles of water. As these bubbles travel through the stem, it is birthed with a small leaf and a small root within it. The bubble of water (the baby carrying bubble) travels up and out of the plant. At the end of this cycle- the plant babe springs out and down the mass that awaits it, while the water bubble (still intact), floats up, with the new plant memories, thoughts and dreams- and it joins the collective. The entire planet knows, and welcomes the new born.

The Pollinator thus cannot be called plant or animal- it’s a tiny form which is somewhere in between. It has elongated stick like legs with roots for feet that enable it to crawl through the undergrowth without much trouble. It can anchor itself wherever it pleases, aiding it in its pollination process. Its body is a thick ball of pollen, tightly held together, so dense that you cannot fathom its nature.

This Pollinator, can tap into the collective dream-time and read all the dreams of the life that surrounds it. Its own dreams float upwards and join the collective.

Over time, the Dreamtime of the Pollinator is impacted deeply by the Dreamtimes of the families that surround it. It starts to dream of a form that is neither plant, nor Pollinator. This creature is asexual and births another of its kind, with a sex. When the offspring comes to life, the birth - giving creature develops a sex opposite to that of its offspring. They are then able to mate and propagate.

The Pollinator’s dreams feed into the collective as strong Dreamtimes and take the families of the entire planet through the process of this creation of a new being, neither Pollinator, nor plant.

This new creature is able to communicate, with plant families and with the Pollinator, and is essentially born of them. It is different. It contains water that is red, as opposed to the translucent green and yellow of its birth-families. This creature can read Dreamtimes. The Dreamtimes are etched like a language onto the structure of this creature.

It is inscribed onto the extensions emerging from the main stem, on the flat surfaces that we call hands. They are etched in the way the fur flows and follows a beautiful pattern on its surface. And they are written in the way the flesh stretches over the structure- covering a skeletal form and hiding the rivers of veins. The vein patterns are also Dreamtime memories.

The dreams of their collective are so powerful that this wondrous creature is birthed and is looked upon as a true creation of the now planet, Earth. An amalgamation of all that is pure, natural and clean- a reminder of the green flesh families that exist and the single Pollinator. This creature carries till today, the language of the Dreamtime, inscribed on its body, in its veins, in every cell as a constant reminder of its origin.

Part two

One million million years ago, before the creature came to be, the powerful Dreamtimes of the Pollinator started affecting all the plant families deeply. The Dreamtimes of both the plant families and the Pollinator became stronger and stronger as they fed into, and took from, the collective.

The planet started growing more and more, far beyond its capabilities and it could feel itself growing stronger and more powerful, but where this new strength would take it, it had no idea.

The Pollinator stood alone. As light would break every now and again and as it would fade, the Pollinator would find the plants, trees, shrubs etc. that needed to be pollinated, by tapping into the collective and deriving their location, and state of need. If it sensed that the time was right, it would advance towards their territory and carry out the pollination process. It would make its way through the planet catching pollen from the male plants and releasing them over the female plants. It played an essential part in their creation cycle. Unlike the asexual plants, the male and female plants waited for the Pollinator to arrive. The veins would peel away from the leaves and reach skyward in welcome, when it did. The male would sway towards the sky, emoting to it.

On sensing this, the Pollinator would brush itself against the male using its root-feet to prod it up. It would then advance towards the most mature female plant and begin to circle her, moving faster and faster. The pollen would float briefly in the air and be gently swallowed in, by her inhaling body. This act would impregnate the female with a small grain of pollen. Water from the stem would slowly surround it. This grain would then grow into a tiny leaf with a root. It would then follow the same process as the asexual plants and release the bubble into the air.

The recent Dreamtime strength of the collective resulted in large numbers and subsequent growth. This led to a new phenomenon. The Pollinator now retained bits of the pollen that it had collected over days as it went from family to family, species to species. The families cross-pollinated. Sub-species began to emerge in large numbers, as plants took on new forms.

The asexual liverworts and mosses that earlier lived under shrubs and primarily formed the undergrowth now started becoming plant-like. They began taking life from each other and giving life to each other. They were evolving and forming liverwort plants, and moss trees. The tree tops of all the green flesh families began to grow and grow and grow. Their branches and leaves merged into one another. Where one tree began and the other ended, was impossible to tell. Their branches melted into one another and new branches were formed. Vines began standing on their own, they too were becoming plant-like, free-standing and independent.

These new forms fed fresh Dreamtimes into the collective. Over time the collective formed a constant stream that was visible for light-years- much like our milky-way.

As the green flesh families begot sub-species, so did they. The sub-species begot saplings and they begot their own, until entire families were born. And they begot sub-sub-species and they begot saplings… and so on and so on.

With each birth, the green flesh families grew even stronger, as did the collective. It had taken on a somewhat physical manifestation that hovered over the entire planet. [At this point the Pollinator began to dream of a creature that was neither Pollinator nor plant, and thus from the collective came new life. The creature bled into the massive trees, the tops of which caressed the collective. It slid down through the veins in the leaves and following the trunks, found its way into the roots below.

It is essentially from these roots that it was born. It had witnessed the spectacle as the center of the orb; not just felt it.

Everything that grew within this planet was born with all the knowledge that it would need to survive. The same followed for the creature, and its offspring. ] – don’t know if this should be included in this section…

The first divisions faced by all occurred in the collective.

The Dreamtimes of the mother species that began all life, formed one stream in the collective; the sub-species, another; the sub-sub-species, another, and so on and so on. The Pollinator’s Dreamtime was a part of all these streams; even the creature’s, which formed a separate stream altogether. The streams were still connected, held together in one whole, but within that whole is where the first tribes emerged.

Part three

Soon after the formation of the tribes within the collective, the green flesh families began to slowly spread further and further apart from their mother species. The Dreamtime differentiations led to plant inbreeding and new, weak plant species came into being. This inbreeding led to a curious phenomenon among the green flesh families. The survival of the fittest is what followed and a new breed of carnivorous plant species emerged.

These carnivorous clans were nocturnal and secreted tiny drops of acid into the air at nightfall. These droplets consumed only the buds of those flowering plants that grew near these carnivorous clans. The acidic droplets would have a film of coolant enveloping it. These were interpreted as moisture by the buds and would be absorbed in immediately. The acid would then eat away the bud from the inside out. Taking these buds destroyed any hope of reproduction for that particular species. Although the process was extremely slow, these clans polished off entire colonies of certain plant types. This process took a similar form in the collective. The Dreamtimes of the carnivorous clans would slowly trickle into the Dreamtimes of the species they were feeding on.

This wasn’t the only phenomenon that occurred. As the mosses grew into trees; the liverworts took on plant-like formations; and the trees that touched the edges of the collective began merging into one another, they began casting dark shadows over large areas of land. This resulted in the growth of more and more nocturnal plant species. Diurnal plants began adapting their present states-of-being to accommodate the gradual but drastic changes that were affecting the entire planet.

At this time, a strange event occurred in the collective. The Dreamtimes began merging, once again. This time it wasn’t becoming a whole, as it was before. Similar Dreamtime memories seemed to be merging. The Dreamtimes of the over-shadowing trees and the Dreamtimes of the plant species that were becoming nocturnal as a result seemed to merge because of similar circumstance. They were feeding into each other and learning in greater depth, the consequences of their actions. The changes were a part of an evolutionary process that had engulfed the entire planet. Apart from the tapping into the collective consciousness which the plants had been doing for eons, they were now physically able to tap into other plant species and families, through the collective. It was as if the physical states of the green flesh families were bleeding into the collective and feeding into one another’s Dreamtimes from where they could be accessed.

This ultra-awareness that developed would feed into the milky-way sort of manifestation that was surrounding the orb. The collective seemed to be spilling out ever so slightly into whatever lay beyond its existence. The Dreamtimes of the green flesh families were able to tap into what lay without and so were their now physical states that bled into the collective.

The knowledge of the with ut led to, among other things, tumultuous weather patterns within the orb. The boughs of the trees that were earlier kissing the edges of the collective now grew further into the collective itself.

Larger areas of space were taken over by these heavy branches and leaves and these prevented the water particles from making their natural way through and above the collective. The droplets that used to surround the orb and that were symbolic of the life force of the planet itself, were now trapped, save a few that managed to make it all the way through. These trapped particulates collected and produced mild rainfall until all the droplets ceased to exist. As the plants reproduced, over time, the droplets would collect and rain would follow once again.

The occasional advent of the ‘monsoon’ affected life on the planet to some extent. Carnivorous plants began to change their feeding patterns, as the buds they depended on now received their moisture from the rain. They now turned their attention to fungus and moss that were still in their early stages of development. They adapted their methods to suit their new prey. They would line their structures with the droplets they earlier secreted, and wait for the mosses and fungi to sense the moisture. Once they advanced towards the moisture-bearing carnivorous clans to latch and grow on, the plant would release its acid and slowly consume its victim. The carnivorous clans managed to filter their Dreamtimes so that the mosses and liverworts couldn’t sense their true nature.

The only other creature that knew of their existence was of course, the Pollinator.

They shared a symbiotic relationship. The clans were dependant on the Pollinator to aid their reproductive cycle, and the Pollinator in turn, was dependant on their coolant enveloped acid drops.

The monsoons proved to be a threat to the survival of the Pollinator. The moisture that the air contained earlier was more than appropriate, but now that the weather patterns were taking a turn for what seemed like the worse, the Pollinator’s life force was under threat.

When the collective divided into tribes and clans, the Pollinator was able to tap into and sense information out of all these. When the carnivorous clan came to be, it sensed their feeding process immediately. Because the Pollinator plays a key role, all should be transparent before him- and so it chanced upon the curious habits of the carnivorous clans.

As the monsoons descended, the Pollinator put to use its knowledge. It followed a similar process as to when it was pollinating a female plant. It moved around a particular family in the clan, moving faster and faster, until it managed to soak in the droplets that they exuded.

As the rains would arrive, the Pollinator would be safe in its fresh coat of acid. As each drop would fall, it would sizzle and evaporate immediately on touching the surface of the creature. It worked, thus. The coolant envelope would stick to the Pollinator and create a thin film over its entirety. The acid would come to rest over that. The coolant would prevent the acid from seeping into the Pollinator and the acid would prevent the rain from destroying it. Equally miraculously, as the brief monsoon would wear off, so would the film of acid and coolant.

During the monsoons, there would be lesser need to pollinate, and so the role of the Pollinator shrunk in size. Although the rains did not last very long, it would do so only in certain parts. The Pollinator would then travel across the orb in search of green flesh families that needed pollination, carefully avoiding the depressed areas which tended to collect water. These water bodies initially disappeared after the monsoons first came to be, soon after the rains had died down, but eventually, they lived on. Some grew larger than others. Some stayed where they were and maintained their original size, others would flow down from the leaves of trees, down their trunks and among the plants, throughout- even when there was no rain, there would be streams of water towering high above the earth-bound green flesh families. The liquid was born of the green flesh families and of the collective, and hence formed a part of the collective. It was a separate stream, situated much lower than the rest, almost as if it were resting on the water surface around the planet.

With this elixir, came new life.

Part four

This magnificent liquid, this elixir, brought about tremendous changes within the orb. The vaster of the water bodies that were created submerged countless families and species. Their Dreamtimes were in turmoil.

They started dreaming of their time above the water surface and once again absorbing air that wasn’t trapped in such small pockets in this viscous element. Their individual Dreamtimes weren’t able to project themselves much further than the surface of the water that seemed to be drowning them. They formed a separate stream that merged with the Dreamtime stream of the liquid. The Dreamtime of the water floated just above it; and formed a part of the collective as well. The thoughts and dreams of the submerged species combined because of similar circumstances; and as a result of this combination, their Dreamtimes were indirectly transmitted to the collective.

An evolutionary change took place at this time. The submerged plant species began to detach themselves from the now-underwater bed; and started to rise slowly up. Others managed very well in their new underwater abode and decided to stay. The law of the survival of the fittest once again took hold, driving many a species to extinction.

Some curious species sprang up. Floating plants with thick waxy leaves that spread themselves out over the water surface sprung up and reproduced more than most others. Other submerged flesh families adapted to their new home by shrinking their leaves to mere twigs. Their roots became as strong as their stems and reached skyward, above the water surface in search of air. Out of these roots were born newer, younger, flower-bearing families that were able to breathe outside the water surface, just like their ancestors, and many others around them were still able to.

A close relation of this plant species of the same family was one which could physically move itself out of the water, by literally crawling out, using its strong roots. These moving plants, morphed into what were no longer plants, but they were not yet animal. They were the newest creation of the Now orb.

Taking this major evolutionary change in, the green flesh families all over the orb, whether without or within the water, within the collective, or without, had experienced another element in its entirety and had evolved from it. The orb had experienced its second major evolutionary change.

Part five

The water-born plants that crawled out of the water and emerged out onto the land were stronger than any other green flesh creatures that the orb had seen. They seemed to be the distant relatives of the carnivorous clans that had once been found increasing in number on the orb. The earlier clans died out because of the emergence of water. These new species came from the water itself and seemed to be virtually indestructible. They slowly ate away at their cousins that were awaiting their arrival on land. The collective had been flooded with Dreamtimes of all the green flesh families. First, with the emergence of water, then, with the strong Dreamtimes of the submerged flesh families that emoted ever so strongly.

Now, the, Dreamtimes of these new flesh creatures, neither animal nor plant, were being absorbed into the collective as a separate stream. It had earlier been intermingled with that of the water, but as these clans took on their new forms, their stream began to rise, but just above that of the water stream. And there it stayed.

A few families that were essential to the survival of the orb survived these changes. The undergrowth, mostly, and some plants, whose properties were considered symbiotic, were left in peace. Apart from these, the new clans created havoc on the Now orb.
Nothing seemed to be left, when they began advancing towards the large overshadowing trees, that had begun reaching into the without.

Curiously, they took on the form of the trees. They began growing as them, and eventually merged with them. Though their plundering days seemed to be over, what was left of the remainder of the orb left a lot to be desired; within the collective and the Dreamtimes.

The flesh families that remained, under the water and on land, felt a gap in the collective. The families that were; had left vast channels of missing streams. The Dreamtimes of the flesh families still fed into the collective, as it used to, the reproductive cycle still went on as it did, but the gap was there. And it was felt by all.

The Pollinator had been away. As the monsoons had descended now and again, the Pollinator had found a way to shield itself from the moisture. But ever since the rainfall became more and more frequent, and large parts of the orb now began to retain the viscous liquid, the Pollinator had decided to flee.

It took refuge in those parts of the orb which remained virtually dry. It still played a small but nevertheless important role in the reproductive cycle of plants that weren’t able to adapt to the emergence of water.

The Pollinator sensed the major evolutionary changes that were frequenting the orb. It sensed the distress of the green flesh families as they were being slowly wiped out by the new water-born hybrid flesh families. It sensed the gaps that were now formed in the collective and these affected it deeply.

The new hybrid species didn’t need the Pollinator to reproduce. They were asexual and were able to grow at a much faster rate. In its Dreamtime the Pollinator began to dream.

It dreamt of a creature that was neither Pollinator nor plant. A creature very different as compared to what had come upon the Now orb. It used its Dreamtime energies in the collective, consciously and replaced its increasingly shrinking role in the reproductive cycle with an urgent need to create by itself.


Thus from the collective came new life. The creature bled into the massive trees, the tops of which were now embedded in the collective. It traveled down the water-streams that the boughs of the tree held up high above the earth-bound flesh families; it followed the trunks, and found its way into the roots below from where it grew.

It is essentially from these roots that it was born; and it took into it the form of the roots from which it came. The root was a mangled heap that resembled a mass of flesh and it came to rest above the surface of the orb. On touching this outer covering of the orb, it came to life. It immediately sparked off a powerful stream in the collective, and this stream, similar to the Pollinator’s, was embedded within all collective streams. This root-creature contained water that was red, unlike anything that the flesh families had sensed before. It was different, but still, it was a spawn of the Now orb- and was growing more and more everyday. It sensed the Dreamtime of the Pollinator and communicated with it through the collective. It didn’t need the Pollinator to reproduce. It would birth its first offspring asexually. The new born would have a sex and as it matured, so would the sex of the mother creature. They would then procreate and propagate.

When this major evolutionary change took place, the collective and all the green flesh families felt the presence of its overbearing stream. Although this creature was a part of them, they gradually responded by, over time, embedding the memories of their journeys throughout their time on the orb, across generations to come so that they never forgot their origins, where they came from, and the parent green flesh families that birthed them.

They did this because they were aware of the drastic changes that their precious home was to undergo over the millennia. They created their memoirs by extending a part of their roots into themselves and extruding them so that they became visible from without. These memoirs were embedded when every seed was born and it physically established itself finally when the sapling grew into its mature state. This way they would never forget.

Their Dreamtimes were etched like a language onto the structure of the creature.

It was inscribed onto the extensions emerging from the main stem, on the flat surfaces that like leaves divided into five. They were etched in the way the fur flows and follows a beautiful pattern on its surface. And they were written in the way the flesh stretched over its structure- covering a skeletal form and hiding the rivers of veins. The vein patterns were also Dreamtime memories and a part of the collective.

The creature was looked upon as a true creation of the 'now' planet, Earth. An amalgamation of all that was pure, natural and clean- a reminder of the green flesh families that existed and the single Pollinator. It carries till today, the language of the Dreamtime inscribed on its body, in every cell, as a constant reminder of its origin.

(THE END)

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