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A Fable about wheels within wheels.
Maraca, the Carver, was respected in the camp. By dint of his clever, skillful hands and nimble fingers, even necessary utensils became objects of beauty. His wooden or stone supernatural fetishes influenced more powerfully. His pendants and rings had a vigor of their own.
One sunny morning, Maraca was hunched over working on a calabash that was going to be a goblet when Distress overwhelmed him. As if it had been growing in there for a long, long time, a big old tear seeped out of his left eye, the better one.
The sadness slowly flowed over his cheek, down to his chin. With his elbow, he moved aside scrapers and scoops on his work table, gently put down the calabash. Then, his proficient hands free, Maraca straightened his back, squared his shoulders.
He stood up slowly, absently studying work-related gouges in his dirt floor. Then, playing with the long wispy hairs of his beard, he sighed, and shook his head decisively, blinked a few times. There was no way around this, he was dissatisfied with his existence, out of harmony with community.
With abrupt energy, Maraca, the carver, took up his spear and, with notice to no one, left the camp to get answers from the spirits of the Forest.
After many ups and downs, he came to a hole that led to an Underground world. Thinking that maybe it was a spirit's home, Maraca held his spear before him and ventured down.
In fact it was the world of the Pig people.
They welcomed him with a grand feast, celebrated him as a great warrior and adventurer.
Around happy campfires, Maraca, now the bold explorer, told them many stories.
He liked it so much he lived with them for many a moon. Then he remembered his life up above in that other world of Forest and Sky. Realized that he missed his family deep to his bones. So he asked the Pig people for their blessings, made promises in exchange, and returned topsides.
Maraca told the camp of his Underground experiences, how well he was regarded down there, the plentiful food, everything. To his family, in particular, he suggested that they return with him to the pleasant world of the Pig people.
His family, though, refused to follow him into this odd place. They choose to stay with the Forest and Sky camp.
Maraca, unhappy without his relatives, then had to return Underground.
But now, since the Pig people's world depended on genuine native excitement to create happiness within the souls of its inhabitants, Maraca's new mood changed the seeming of Underground, and so he was miserable.
Moral:Life is how you live it.