A look at the world, through the Labyrinth of perspective.
by benjamin vandgrift


Between the idea    / And the reality
Between the motion  / And the act
Falls the shadow    --T.S.Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

Welcome, once again, to the worlds of Morwyn.  Where the mind is
stretched, twisted, wrenched, and abused.  A lighter side, or maybe
not.  Things can be much different through the eyes of a child.
They can see beyond this world and into the next.  Is it their
imagination?  Or is it some wonderful sight that we lose as we get
older?  Is it a wall we build ourselves to keep us from truths and
fantasies that our adult minds can't handle?  Maybe if I relate a
little of Morwyn's own childhood...

Learning about Pride and the Lonely Top --
     It was a warm summer, just before the leaves would
turn red, purple, and yellow and the school bus would
arrive steadily every morning to cart the youngsters off
to school.  Their minds would be filled with the facts
of science and the fiction of history, all arranged by
the school board, which hoped that the information they
drilled into the youths' heads would be of use to them
 later in life'.  But that was a few weeks away, and the
boys still had a little bit of freedom left, when they
could run wild, climbing to the top of the tobacco barn
or chasing the cattle around the fields, trying
desperately to avoid their leavings.  It had been a rich
summer, one of the softest and sweetest seasons I had
ever seen. Of course, that was, at the time, out of
eight, but I am hard-pressed to recall a summer as
vividly, even now.
     The field above the house was freshly plowed,
having been sown with fescue in an off year, and it
added a certain earthy smell to the yard, the field, and
in memory, that whole summer.  That smell still brings me
back to that year.  That smell, and the scent of blackberry
blossoms, which had bloomed continuously that year due to a
late frost.  And to this day, the pricked finger and blood
lost to nourish the vine are well worth the flavor of those
berries, a flavor which packaged berries can never achieve.

        *       *       *       *       *       *

We sat atop the circle of stones and stared out at the
wilderland.  The land stretched out before us like a map,
all ours, and never before seen by human eyes. Untamed.
It was a world of rivers and ravines, of wolves and wild
things, of forest and bone.  And it was all in our backyard.

        *       *       *       *       *       *

     But that day was about exploration and bravery.  About
courage and challenge and fear of the mountain of rusted iron
at the edge of the field.  It was about proving your manhood,
even though you were only eight.
     There is a point in the life of every farm
implement at which the hitch breaks, or the wheel rusts
shut, and after four thousand years of faithful service,
it is scrapped, and thrown on the heap.  The heap grows,
the metal rusts, the iron fuses together, and after a
hundred years, a pile of rusted points, tarnished edges,
evil barbs and wicked spikes decorates the edge of the
field.  To an eight year old, ten feet of stacked metal
constitutes a mountain, and mountains are for climbing.
     Brian and Jeff, both freckled and redheaded, were
my neighbors.  They still are in a way, as they are the
only neighbors I have ever had.  Or at least, the only
neighbors that stand out in my memory as being more than
people who lived next to us.  It was the Simpson Brothers
who challenged me.  I wasn't thinking about the fact that
the freckled pair had never set foot upon that mountain
of death.  Only that they said I couldn't.  And so, I
did.

        *       *       *       *       *       *

There was an entire universe that no adult could see.
Only Brian and Jeff and Kris and I.  Eventually, sadly,
Jeff lost his vision, as did Brian.  Kris was the last
to go.  Now I fear I may be losing mine.

        *       *       *       *       *       *

    That stack of tetanus and steel was a thousand feet
high.  It's top, covered in spikes that could impale the
largest of elephants was lost in the clouds.  Blades as
sharp as razors and chains three feet thick, clawlike
protrusions pointed iron teeth stuck out at every angle, every
direction.  Climbing the Iron Mountain, as we'd taken to calling
it, would be a feat that defied death itself.  So I started
my ascent.
     I climbed around the spikes.  I went between the jaws of
the rusty beast that lived inside the pile.  I climbed for
hours, going around, dodging, finding a better perch.  I
meandered up that monstrosity until I reached the plateau
at the top.  I waved at my friends, miles below.  The I started
back down.  When I began to descend, the mountain reeled in
protest, threw me down, and jumped on me.  I fell forever, the
rust monster diving after me.  Then I hit the ground, and it
fell on me.  The teeth of the beast sank into my leg, and then,
having tasted my blood, the beast stopped moving.
A metal disk had cut into my leg, from hip to
thigh.  It was not a serious cut, and I needed no
stitches, but it felt as though it were to the
bone.  I screamed for help, but my cowardly
friends had fled.  And so, I dragged myself out
from beneath that pile of scrap, and went home.
     But I survived the ordeal.  And I'd won.

     The next day, my father and grandfather
moved all that metal to another part of the farm,
and warned us to stay away from it, should we ever
find it.  We never did, though it was the object
of many a Mystic Quest.  To find the Mountain that
Moved.  The Mountain that Morwyn had climbed.  I
am, to this day, the only one who climbed that
mountain, and though it was only a dozen feet
high, it put me at the top of the world.

        *       *       *       *       *       *

Imagination is a gift.  The ability to see and believe
is truly divine.  Believe in Angels.  Fear the Bogeyman.
Always close your closet door before you go to sleep.
When you're afraid, pull the covers up over your head.
See the unseen.  Feel the wind.  Not just the phenomenon,
the force.  Talk to stuffed animals.

I have stuffed lions that guard my door.  Not because I
fear creeping things, but because I fear losing my childhood.


--ben/Morwyn