Hunger Stones and Long Time
How can a deeper view of time save us from disaster?
What fascinates us about things that are hidden? What entices us about the edge between the known and the unknown? Throughout history, human beings take note of patterns that emerge in the world around us, and even more note of those instances where breaks in a pattern form. We seek out abnormalities, edges, oddities. And we pass information on to our inheritors, marking our presence in a strange and mythic place, laying claim to the abnormalities of our time.
When droughts occur, rivers shrink, and thinks that were hidden reveal themselves. Strange shapes loom up from the depths and breach the air for the first time in decades or centuries. Rocks, old buildings, petrified trees. These relics of an underworld state remind us of hard times that came before, remind us that famine and hardship are upon us… but so, too, that famine and hardship will go away again.
Over the centuries, we mark these protruding markers as they arise, taking part in the collective task of charting our history. It seems that we do this both for our children’s children, so they might be forewarned of hardships to come, and also for ourselves, as reminders that we survived these times in the past, and we may survive them again. These markers have become known as “hunger stones,”…
