The Tale of the Sandman

Kifkef spoke:

"He lives in the desert where all is as it is and as it will be. He plays all day in the dunes, rolling around and under the hills of sand. He loves the tiny, yellow grains of sand of which there are more than even he can count. They don’t pretend to be anything they’re not and exist without ambition, content to be pushed around at the caprice of the winds.

The Sandman was here from the beginning and was the first thing to take form from the raw stuff of Allah’s Creation. He took a good seat to see the volcanoes spew fireworks of lava into the sky. He watched the oceans fill up the ashen craters, the mountains grow into the clouds and the forests sprout wherever they could get hold. He saw the first bubbling amoebas, tiny fishes and the little lizards that crawled onto the rising Earth.

None of it impressed him much. He knew where it would all end up.

It's said that he yawned when the first mammals came of age and stalked the smaller ones that nibbled plants and roots. He barely raised an eyebrow when the monkeys lost their fur and learnt to use their thumbs, the smarter of them evolving into grunting humans. Though he couldn’t help but laugh when he saw them bowing down to worship the fire where lightning had struck a tree

The Sandman realized fast that these humans were very different to the other animals. Instead of being where they were, they almost always lived in anxious futures or regretted pasts, forever coming from or going to somewhere. Perhaps this was why they looked so unhappy and made life so hard for themselves - And for everyone else within range.

The Sandman felt sorry for them and decided to help. He walked through the streets of the villages and cities, pouring sand between his fingers and crying:

‘Look. This is all we're made of and what we'll go back to in the end. So why get so excited about things?’

But as sand had zero value in the market place - in fact everyone was sick of the sight of it, they all assumed he'd been wandering around in the mid-day sun and took no notice.

So he sighed and stood back and watched as monolithic empires briefly threatened the sky and then collapsed again into debris and ruin. Civilizations came and went, each one thinking itself immortal, proud of its art, philosophies and gods. In their own time they crumbled back into the nothing from which they came, waiting to be dug up by future archaeologists. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. And sand to sand.

"I told you so." The Sandman lectured the graves of the high and mighty, who now had no choice but to listen as their bodies decomposed underground. He split his sides laughing when the Pharoahs tried to avoid this embarrassment by having their bodies preserved long after their deaths. As if a few thousand years made any kind of a difference.

Eventually, however, a few of the humans seemed to catch on. The Sandman spent many happy hours with Heroclitus by rivers that never flowed more than once - and with Buddha, too, in the Bodd Gaya gardens of such here and now beauty. He whirled with the Sufis of Konya and for a while it seemed that there might be hope. But their followers seemed to have missed the point - I mean they just clung to the words and thoughts of their dead masters, rarely living the truth for themsleves.

Things got so bad for the people on Earth that the Sandman knew he must find a way to help. But knew that no one would listen to him. So he decided to approach them through the back door by slipping into their minds as they fell asleep.

Now, in the passage from the realms of wakefulness to the kingdoms of dreaming, there was a kind of no man's land - a place akin to the desert where the Sandman could wander freely. When people’s minds drifted through this place, they let down their safeguards of fear and worry, allowing the Sandman to approach. Still, it was not always easy for they clutched onto consciousness for all they were worth, perhaps afraid that some wild animal might tear out their necks while they slept. But the Sandman would approach them, singing:

‘Let go. Let go. There's nothing to hold,

Welcome the new, let go of the old,

All that was and all that shall be

Is sand in the hands of Destiny.’

Falling under this spell, they at last dropped the creases of tension from their faces, let their shoulders fall from their ears and perhaps even allowed a small smile to settle on their lips.

These days, the Sandman spends little time in his old home of the Sahara. He is busy travelling the frontiers of dreams, easing the passage to sleep of everyone who relaxes enough to allow him in. Of course, many of them still just jump awake in the mornings to the demands of their alarm clocks and wipe the dust from their eyes - ready and alert for what the world will throw at them that day.

But he has not given up hope. The Sandman still believes that there may come a people who will not be afraid of where they come from or where they're going to. They will not be so afraid of the dark as to chase it away with bright lights and loud noises. Instead they will walk into the empty lands, past the frontiers of human settlement and find that it is not something to be feared or distrusted. They will embrace the formless as but a long lost side of their own nature, knowing that all Creation must come from something. And likewise return to it one day.

 

Chapter 23