Madagascar from Google Maps
Wood is for the living; stone for the dead. That’s the old way.
Yes, Papa, but if we keep chopping down trees and grubbing them up, there’ll be nothing left but the ancestral stones.
My boy, my boy, we honour our ancestors, we follow their ways. Would you have us dishonour them, have them bring plague or famine upon us?
No, Papa, no. But after two thousand years of our ancestors’ ways, what’s left for the living? Not for you, not for me, but there are other things here, alive and equally deserving.
And wood, my boy, is for the living, and stone for the dead. So, you answer me this: What is our reason for living, if not to honour those who went before us?
But, Papa, look! This is what’s left. Nothing. And now not even me, Papa. I’m leaving.
wordcount: 142
Written for What Pegman Saw
Wood is for the living, and stone for the dead: So said Malagasy archaeologist Ramilisonina to the British archaeologist Mike Pearson Parker on seeing Stonehenge during a visit to England after their many seasons of fieldwork together in Madagascar. As Mike Pearson Parker later reported, these words opened his eyes to the intrinsic nature of the megalithic monument and launched him into the most successful and thorough exploration of the surrounding landscape. To say I am in awe of Mike Pearson Parker, and through him Ramilisonina, is an understatement. I drool at their feet. And I’m sure Ramilisonina, whose life-work has been the study of the island’s prehistory, would not like to see all that he loves crumble because of an adherence to ‘the old ways’.
crispina kemp 
Haunting and powerful work, Crispina. Love the voice and the message of this very moving story.
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I thank you. It’s something I feel strongly about. Not necessarily as it applies to Madagascar, but wherever people cling to the ‘old ways’ regardless of those ways serve them best
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Love this ❤🌼
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I thank you, Jen
And great news! I’ve cured the mystery of the disappearing texts … oh Yay!
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YAY!!!!!!!!!!! Plus 100% to the intrepid Sherlock! 😊 Simple solution?
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Once I found it. I kept asking google. I can usually turn up a solution on google. But no matter how I phrased it, google misinterpreted. It was getting the wording right. And there it was, just the one answer. Go into Google Chrome Settings, and disable the Enable Hardware Acceration. Lo! Apparently Chrome was jumping in, trying to speed up the write-to-screen process, and thereby shattering the visibility of text. Ho-hum.
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AHA! Chrome can be a nasty bugger LOL
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I’m learning my way around it.
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It’s slowing some things for me as well. I’ll have to carefully check my settings.
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We tend to make a setting, and then leave it. And we get updates and downloads and install more apps and more programmes. And we think the old settings will surfice. Always worth an occasional check
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🙂👍 too true
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Indeed.
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A timely message about the need to rethink our traditional ways. Such strong urges to follow our ancestors, and yet ways that might have worked well in prior eras can be so destructive when scaled up to modern demographic levels. I hope this son returns one day to help make the change that he sees is necessary.
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As I’ve just remarked to Karen, it’s something I feel strongly about.
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Beautifully done, Crispina. The old ways are not necessarily the best ways, are they?
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I’m amazed at the support this micro-fiction has drawn.
No, the old ways aren’t always best. But at the same time, I’d advise caution before making radical changes. We all know what happened to the baby. It got thrown out with the bathwater, no more to grow.
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Indeed!
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Sorry, had to laugh. I had just typed in *Indeed* in reply to a comment just before this.
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I do that… oy!
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Indeed. … oops!
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Hahaha!
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🙂
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😉
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Love it! ❤
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I thank you
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Very well done, Crispina! Story and message, both! And some history on the side to boot. Fantastic. 🙂
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Can’t help the history. I meant what I said, I’d love to sit at the feet of these two giants of men (at least, giants in the world of archaeology)
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So good – so haunting, so real. It speaks not just to the temporal nature of our lives, but the need for reusable… well, reusable everything!
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I thank you. And wood, of course, is renewable … so long as the soil isn’t leached by the subsequentalal agricultural. But what right have we to point fingers at those who eke out a living in fragile environments, when we are the descendants of those who destroyed the virgin forests of Eurasia.
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Haunting and atmospheric Crispina, with an important message / question about when we should stick to the old ways and when we need to move on.
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Yea, it’s not always clear-cut.
I thank you for the interest.
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I think the old ways worked until there were too many humans practicing them. Thanks for such a poignant story.
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Yes, I agree
And thanks for reading
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