Not everything that grows out of the soil is good. -Intellectual Shaman

People have depended on it for centuries. And those who don’t depend on it, depend on those who do. It is the beginning of all things; earth, water, fire and wind, blowing favorable skies to farms.

Johnny Boy looked at the churning mass of vapors in the dusty air. He couldn’t remember the last time it rained. His destiny depended on it. Rain felt good, the droplets that fell, but they only teased his flesh. The whole place was dying; he was dying. Johnny looked like an emaciated weed, the well had dried up, and no water meant he would have to leave. His difficulty to give up the land, his father’s land, and his father’s father’s land was similar to releasing his soul. It was nature’s lack of mercy; a god that didn’t care. His prayers fell on deaf ears, his tears were the only droplets that sunk into the soil.

Johnny didn’t have a love for fashionable things and perhaps that’s why he stayed away from town, but all of that changed on a windswept day, when a traveler passed his farm. “How far is New Haven?” the clown asked. He was tall and sad, with sunken cheeks and evil eyes, smiling with a painted unhappy face.

“Six miles on the dusty road,” Johnny Boy said.

“This place is dying.”

“I know.”

“What will you do?”

“Leave for greener pastures, I suppose.”

“Here, plant these seeds.”

“Sir, I already have crops planted. It takes water for them to grow.”

“Not these.”

“Don’t kid me.”

“I only kid, when I have an audience. Don’t trust me, fine.” The clown threw the sack of seeds to Johnny Boy. “Say to the seeds what you want.”

And the clown, smiling, clicked the reigns, until his circus cart vanished over the hill.

To be continued…