The Laughter of the Gods

A long time ago, before trees were trees, before clouds were clouds, the gods inhabited this earth. Naked and unaware, they would sit around an laugh together needing nothing but each others company and the world around them. They would drink and play games and laugh, and each laugh would fill the world a little more with something special. A flock of birds flying high, a field of poppies smiling under the sun, a song on their lips. The gods filled their days with happiness and mirth, each with their own purpose and each aware of the others purpose. One day, the god of warm bodied creatures was walking and tripped over echs own foot. Ech laughed at himself, so full and so hard and so pure, that a human appeared. The god was startled by this being, something so familiar and yet so foreign, that ech laughed even more. The human, not knowing who or where or what he himself was became frightened at the booming sound of echs laughter, a feeling unknown to the god. This reaction made the god laugh louder and harder than even before and two more humans appeared, just as scared as the first. The god brought the humans back to the other gods to show them what ech had created. Such a simple and silly creation, a smaller, more tangible version of themselves (the gods were not solid beings such as humans are, you see, they could bend like the grass and move with the wind, they could shine bright as the sun and cast shadows dark as night. They were wondrous beings as transparent as air and opaque as a stone. One could not describe their appearance, they were neither man nor woman, solid nor gas, left nor right, up nor down, though they seemed all these things, they still looked like you and me.) The humans huddled close together in the overwhelming sight of the gods, forming a bond between themselves they could neither touch, nor see, nor explain.

As with all other creations, the gods grew tired of these beings and left them to live amongst themselves like the deer and rabbits and foxes and trees. The gods continued in their games, drawing pictures with the stars, using trees as slingshots, shooting rocks into the sky, playing tricks on each other. The god of earth was notorious for creating mudslides as other gods walked down mountains causing them to slide the whole way down. This always brought out laughter and the world would grow richer with beautiful things. One god laughed so hard ech stomped his foot on the ground and the earth shook for an hour. On a dare one summer, the god of seasons held echs breath for so long they experienced winter for an entire year.  As the gods continued in their games and merriment, more humans appeared. One autumn day, the god of wind grew curious to see how these beings lived. The gods had lived in the mountains for so long, (gods are not like us humans, the do not need shelter. They are the rain, the wind, the snow, the sun, the earth. They are everything they create. The earth is their home, sun their fire, rain their shower. They live in the fields, grass their bed, a pillow of stone. A god has no needs, he, or she -ech, just is. But the gods were not solid beings like the humans. They were without wants, they were without needs, they were without fear, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, pain. So curious was this god of these foreign ways that ech transformed into a gust of air and blew over to where they were living.

The god of wind observed these creatures for three days and three nights. Each day more surprising than the next. On the first day, ech noticed they had multiplied. There were humans of all sizes now, little tiny ones the god could crush with an eyelash, medium ones running around everywhere, and big ones too (compared to the littlest ones, anyway). These beings had formed ways of communicating, carving into trees and digging up dirt. The gods had never needed communication before, their thoughts traveled on the wind. (They were all one, really.) 


  the humans had torn down the branches of the trees The god of wind was appalled at what ech saw. These humans were destroying everything the gods had created. And they had multiplied.  There were little boxes and triangles everywhere that the humans were walking in and out of. The trees were without their limbs, animals without their lives, and their skins. The humans had draped the skins over their own shoulders. It was a gruesome and dreadful sight, the god had never felt this way before, how could something they had created destroy their brothers and sisters? Those trees had come from the same womb, the animals the same belly, the earth the same mother. These humans were destroying themselves, their environment, they were destroying their makers. The god of wind did not know that he was feeling a deep sadness, the gods had never had reason to feel this way.