Welcome to the Cave Next Door

 An allegory to pique your interest in the CND.

        Muddog One and Muddog Two crawled up the timber lined shaft with only some kind of vague belief that the light above meant some kind of reality that they were meant to know.  Blue sky.  Green plants.  What were these?  Unknown things from a long forgotten world that existed before they knew her.  Before they felt her drawing them, whispering to them, receiving the incense from the poor sacrilegious sulfur sticks of common prayer, even as they had tried to enter her sanctuary from the hidden sewer.  Before they had met her mistress and she had accepted their libations and had spoken, “Come in!” with muted rumblings and passionate pauses when they had knocked.   Before she had breathed on them recently, and slammed the door in their faces at their ill thought out exuberance.  Before they had promised her.

        One (Muddog that is), says it was all because of the promise, because they promised her.  Two (Muddog that is) says One is crazy and none of it ever really happened.  “Can't we just keep digging?”

        The first giant was an obscure fellow in a crumbling castle. Most of his kingdom had been sold to influential bidders who often had done him wrong.  His friends had listened to the bidders, not to him, and had infiltrated his kingdom and now he was left busy trying to save and repair the land while his castle crumbled around him. 

        It was here she lived hidden from all eyes, but vulnerable now.  She had many sisters in the kingdom, many of them hidden but also vulnerable.  Some of them though had been discovered, and often treated shabbily.  Long ago, one of her sisters had been found by some trolls, explored and exploited.  The obscure giant, in an attempt to make friends and save what might have been left, changed her sister into a golden goose who now just lays golden eggs for the other giants and trolls to fight over.  Sometimes a gentle gnome comes through and her sister remembers herself, fresh and new,  sparkling in her beauty as a blushing bride.  She  notes the sparkles in the gnome's eyes of something known but not seen.  And she remembers.

        So she and her hidden sisters needed help.  The foundations of the towers they were hidden in were weakening.  In these times, many packs of gnomes and trolls were wandering through the giant's kingdom. 

Some of the gnomes were friendly, but some were not, and some had even made secret pacts with the trolls and were fighting the giants.  Sorcerers, with their facts and misfacts,  had weakened the shields of obscurity that had protected the towers.  Well-intentioned gnomes, pursuing their favorite hobby  and hobbit-like scurrying and digging for the sheer joy of it, had slowly underdug the foundations with their shovels and casual random notes and persistent record-keeping.  Soon all would be lost. 
        She would suffer to see each one of her sisters hunted and found like a cheap runaway slave; used or sold as the finders saw fit.  Sometimes for good, but often treated badly and still unprotected.  Who would help?  Who could be trusted?  Change was coming on the land.  Reason, holding on to the few scraps of truth left, was struggling to make itself heard amongst  clamor from various self-interests and sects.  And giants walked in the lands.  Often the beauteous were seen no more.

        There is a place and time where all these things are settled and reconciled and made right for all, for better or worse.  And beauty shines forth as only beauty can.  But—it always requires a sacrifice.  She went there.  She, who was this wonderful nothing, grew in the dark heart of a mountain, hiding beauty and mystery.  She is the void which contains the hope of the beauty of things unknown.  She went before the council of all things that are and all things that are not.  Material or physical, seen or unseen.  All the Physical Laws were there with their side kick Constants.  The forces were well represented from the most ponderous down to the most minute.  Sometimes even the most unlikely or imaginary particle was perceived by a coloring of the atmosphere or the taste of the air, as it popped into and out of the place for no apparent reason.  Theories were there in abundance, both the Powerful and the Weak, the True and the False.  All well represented by pundits of the humanities. 

        All was dark for that was her world.  The only light to see by came from the spirits of beings who died for beauty and mystery, candles in the dark.  She, the nothingness on which all those before her expressed themselves, the blank paper on which creation is written, made her plea.  The giants wanted to lock her into towers and hide her beauty, or make her lay golden eggs to give to their friends.  The sorcerers wanted to chain her up and wrench her secrets out of her, measuring her and drawing their lines, forcing her into their paradigms.  The gnomes would take her for their precious and bust her virgin passages to pass her on to their friends.  The trolls wanted to explore  and exploit her wantonly.  Who would bring her in all her perfection to those she belonged to?  Her people, her admirers.  Who would take her to the world unspoiled?  How?  When?

        The deliberation began.  Sparing the gory details, to understand how this happens, think of a compost pile, where the giving and taking of the animate and inanimate goes on freely and joyously until what began as unusable chaotic waste becomes something full of the secrets that feed and sustain all plants.   Spirit hiding itself in matter. 

        Needless to say, the Theories almost totally evaporated or canceled themselves with the Pundits disappearing like so many talking heads into radio noise, leaving only a few strands of the absolute to float in fractals on the air. 

        Soon all the deals were cut.  The cake was cut.  The ribbon was cut.  She would be sent two friends.  Now as surely as light will settle into matter, making it glow, eventually even the greatest magic will settle into the dust and mud of Earth.  Now as every evolutionist knows, the only way to get from everything that came before to everything that came after is through the salamander,  the most dissatisfied of all creatures.  When he is in the water he wants the land, and when he's on the land, he dreams of his home in the water.  A living embodiment of an ancient contradiction.  She waited in her close, sweet, comforting darkness for her friends.  They slowly came on as patient as the asters, and as sure as the dawn.  Muddog Two and Muddog One.  The promise keepers.  They always promise the water they will come home, and they promise the land they will come back.  So they promised her that they would take her to the world and present her in all her beauty, however she may look.  They promised to show her to the world even before they themselves would behold her beauty.

        The rest of the adventures of Muddog One and Muddog Two are written in secret code in the log.  If you want to know what's really happening, ask them.    

By David Hodges

The Original Muddog

Send mail to phatman@cavenet.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2004 Cave next door
Last modified: 08/17/09