Confessions Of A Dark Sorceror, page 20

Reminiscing With An Angel

Last night, as Vanessa and I slowly came closer together, some memories of a lifetime we shared thousands of years ago became clearer. Vanessa and I still have much to work out regarding Yoshiel and that whole adventure -- we have some differing opinions about Yoshiel which must be carefully considered and negotiated over time.

However, that does not preclude our discussing other things, and last night my thoughts turned to a time long ago when I thought of myself as “the music man” and people called me “Tinker”.

Vanessa seems to remember our time spent together in those ancient days as fondly as I do. It was as close to idyllic a life as I have ever known.

With so many lives filled with drama and passion in my mind, a time when I was nothing more than a worker of wood who lived in peace in a place of beauty has much appeal for me these days.

What follows is a small part of what came to mind last night as I though about my days as the “Tinker”.

Visions Of A Simpler Time

My name was “Egmon” (phonetic -- I could not read, write or spell -- and not to be confused with the “Walrus”), and Vanessa’s name was “Imi”. The village where we spent our entire lives was named “Tish”.

I now know the name of our land, it was “Katur” (maybe ancient Qatar?). I got the impression that maybe “Katur” might be a compound word like “South Ur” or maybe “East Ur”. Something like that, perhaps.

Our village was in a flat land of many trees and fields, which farmers tended with oxen. I could see them in the fields, raising grains which looked to me like wheat, although perhaps they were barley or rye. One man would lead the ox while the other rode on the plow to help it dig in.

Whatever the grain was, it was a staple for us, and the women used the stone-ground flour from these grains to make bread. Usually, the bread was made quickly on the hearth stones, flat and unleavened, but as a treat and for festivals, there was a leaven they would use that the village healer used to make.

The loaves made this way were sweet and delicious!

Horn Of Plenty

We ate the meat of sheep, goats, oxen and poultry (chickens I think, but maybe ducks, or both, I can‘t quite tell, they hung around the village is what I mainly remember), as well as some small game animals, and fishermen would catch many fish in the wide, slow-moving river nearby using nets.

Meat figured prominently in our diets, we drank the milk of our livestock and made curds and cheeses from it as well.

There was a dish made with meat (lamb was best for this) and a culture like sour cream or yogurt. This dish was so perfected by Imi that she used to make it all the time for special occasions around the village, such as family celebrations.

Imi made this dish better than anyone else -- the name of it is on the tip of my tongue -- and she was always well-rewarded for it in trade. People gave us animals, cream and spices, and we got to keep the leftovers of the animals and what was left in the pots she made her trademark dish in. It was really good.

I never grew tired of this dish, though I must have eaten it thousands of times. Imi was an excellent cook, and taught all the girls in the village. Food was never a problem for us that I can ever remember, even in times of blight and locusts (we ate the locusts). We never went hungry.

There was a cereal she made by soaking whole grain kernels in hot water to soften them and make them swell up, then milk and cream were added, and sometimes honey. I remember being very fond of this dish.

There were vegetables we ate, mostly from gardens tended by the women. I remember peas and beans being common, as well as some sorts of squash or zucchini, I think. We also ate many kinds of seeds, and there were some spices we got in trade.

Village Of Clay

We lived in a house made of large clay bricks that the brick-making family made and sold. They got the clay from the river bank then dried it in wooden molds set out in the sun. Most villagers lived in houses made of these bricks, and some paths were paved with them.

I didn’t make the normal molds, they did that, but I did make molds for them which would make bricks in special shapes, or with carved impressions of things like animals, fish and astrological symbols that would be left on the brick when it dried. Builders placed these bricks in decorative ways among the bricks of our houses.

As with any village, some families were poor, and lived in wooden huts at the edges of town. My sense of them is not that they were necessarily unfortunate, but lazy and unwilling to work very hard.

Most of us spent our days working, and most of us enjoyed our work, but not everyone thought work important, and instead chose to basically live off the land. They were poor because they had nothing worth trading for.

The Matter Of Mats

The roofs of our houses had wooden frames, but the coverings were woven mats made from the stalks of the grains from the field. These mats were well-made by the thatchers and weavers, and were set atop the roof frames of the houses in many layers, which kept the seasonal rains out.

They were expertly tied to the frames so the wind would not blow them off. Some houses and huts had bundles of reeds set on the roof either on top of these mats or in place of them, but most people used the grainstalk mats, which were excellent.

We also used the mats inside our houses to cover some parts of the floor, but rugs and blankets woven from wool were more common for that. What made the mats attractive was that they were relatively cheap - you could get a good-sized mat for a loaf of quickbread, but you might need to trade a good animal or several craft pieces for a rug of the same size.

Maybe a hundred or so of us lived in the village. I never counted them, and there were always many children running around, making counting harder. During festivals, especially at harvest time, those who lived outside but near the village would gather, and it seemed like there were hundreds and hundreds of us.

We/they would set up temporary tents and booths in the fields around the village for people to stay in and for doing trades. Merchants would come to celebrate, buy grain and flour and sell all sorts of things, it seemed like anything we could imagine was for sale at harvest time.

With everyone moving around as we did, both within and outside the village, it was impossible to count our numbers.

Rush Of Remembrance

An amazing amount of detail springs to mind as the words rush from my fingertips. It is clear that this was an especially happy life for me, so tranquil and simple.

There is much, much more, such as memories of my friends, fellow craftsmen, people of the village and some of the more boisterous boys who seemed to be capable of causing mischief in six different places simultaneously -- even while standing in front of you with looks of false innocence on their faces.

But this post is too long as it is, in a thread that is also too long, so I’ll save those things for another time.

[edit on 9/17/2004 by Majic]