Part I introductions

Chapter Two: Tether The Exogyra, Naming and the Language of Flowers

Without the gift of flowers and the diversity of their fruits, man and bird, if they had continued at all, would be today unrecognizable. Archaeopteryx, the lizard-bird, might still be snapping at beetles on a sequoia limb; man might still be a nocturnal insectivore gnawing a roach in the dark. The weight of a petal has changed the face of the world and made it ours..
– The Immense Journey, Loren Eiseley, from the essay – How Flowers Saved the World

The unthrift sun shot vital gold….
– Henry Vaughan, Silex Scintillans

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Where to start? And how to explain it to you in a way that you may understand? It is a hopeful thing that you seem to understand me. You hear me, see me; awe me. But you do not fear me, so my efforts may not be in vain. I’ve always heard its best to start from the beginning. Following that advice, I guess would be to go back to that strange event alluded to in the very first myths. Not human myths, mind you, but the first sentient myths; a moment before moments, the impetus of time itself, full of energy, matter-creating energy, and potential. Not mindless. But not intentional either, not the way you might understand intentions, but nevertheless, in a way that lead inevitably to the events I am about to unfold to you.But no. Starting with that beginning would be more than a little obscure. And anyway, that would be starting from a point when I wasn’t around. Not that I have been everywhere and seen everything, but I think having been extant during the events I presume to relate adds to my credibility.

The grains of stardust from that very earliest time, some of them, I am certain I have filtered through myself, but I fear, what I have incorporated those many years ago is too deeply embedded in my shell for me to relate them to you with any elucidating detail.

I think, actually, for our purposes, since our story concerns people, mostly, human people, that perhaps we should start at a more recent point in time. These people, like a lot of their kind followed some calling and for various reasons came to live for a time not far from this very spot. The people I refer to, of course, are you and your progenitors. Call them Adam and Eve, or Wurugag and Waramurungundi, or Kaliyan and Kalicchi, or… Ask and Embla? Maybe Noah and Pandora? Mary and Joseph? Now I’m getting confused.

Well anyway, those were not their names, but you get the point. Following the stories that came to them, that they told out of love, they actually came to me, without realizing it. They came to find me. Their stories became a better aid in finding truth than in following maps and such, – for in the act of storytelling, every storyteller partakes of the power of the Namers and from so Naming from the act of love, truth may grow. And thus with the telling of this story, we begin Naming again. But I get ahead of myself.