Foey

Once upon a time in a far far away land there was a princess named Foey. Now there exists an entire world which is the totality of untruths, to which we have access with our minds, just as a world of physical reality exists, to which we have access to with our bodies. Foey had been conceived by a mind which we may name Vater von Foey, a lonely mind admittedly, prone to bursts of euphoria as it contemplated nourishment.

There also exists an entire world of truths, to which we are denied access with our minds, just as a world of physical reality exists, to which we have access to with our bodies. We dare not venture into this world because it is reserved for the gods, a forbidden world, far removed from our human nature. It's a world in which time is an emergent phenomenon for us internal observers but absent for our external observers and which was therefore intriguing to our lonely Vater von Foey.

So it came to be one fine day that Vater von Foey gave an apple to his sweet Foey and said “Here my dear, take a bite, and may the truth be with thee.” Every culture on our earth relishes their own untruths and the culture in this far away land was no different. Foey took that bite. She became reconciled as the truths were released into physical reality. She would bare children. She would grow old. Vater von Foey cried on the floor. “What have I done, what have I done? I have doomed my dear conception to old age and bitching.”

It would be nice if we could think outside of the human condition, the untruths. Those constraints of purpose and meaning left inside the box, no need to attribute the unknown to the gods. But we are stuck with our curiosity and it drives us into depths of madness where we perceive a soul in everything. Reality prevails. It's nothing but cold stark atoms, remoulding themselves as they get sucked into the depths of nuclear furnaces, spewing out in reformed substances to cling together in a frenzy of dispassionate forces creating fodder for the black holes which gobble everything in sight. Just as coldhearted it all is as the kid on a freeform bike, wagering life and limb against the cold hard concrete, mindless revenge against the urban forces which shape his will.

Vater von Foey put himself and his dear Foey on a bus, one of those city buses which take weary workers to and from distant locals. It had been many years since he had been away from his sanctuary of aloneness and he disembarked the bus with Foey in a neighbourhood which he thought was where the nutrients of life flourished, but his memory proved him wrong and they began walking through a series of streets and alleys filled with grime and dirt from generations of industrious fabricators of every useful tool known to man. Discarded and broken remnants of these coldhearted soulless implements littered every nook and cranny piled high in intricate entanglements of rusting obscurity. Foey laughed fondly at her creator and sustainer as he frustratedly searched for some way out of his misshapen memories. Cheered by her lack of resentment they together began looking for an escape route.

They saw it together, another bus, this one used to take workers to and from the dungeons in which they laboured. The driver, a weary father, was taking a scattering of other drivers back to refuge where they could fritter away the hours till the next loads of thankless, dirty beasts would board the buses and return home to delicately stewed steaming hot meals of mush. The driver let them on with a nod and off they rode, the scenery changing from an ocean of metal clad foundries to a sea of smoke clad hovels with dirty children uprooting every possible inch where green life might flourish. The bus came to a standstill next an oily riverbank overflowing with overladen barges and puttering tugboats. Vater von Foey now knew where he was. They could follow this river.

Sucked in we are to conceitedly think our universe would betray it's virtues to mere animals, animals who pilfer the austere outer crusts of wee planets, no more noble than vile crystals ordered by the dispassionate forces. It is by luck that we have religion to give us meaning in our fleeting appearance in these miserable confines. We send our messages in bottles to oblivion. DNA sequences sent out with one in quadrillion chance of being found by other life, and if they did find our bottle in the oceans of star dust they'd disparage of decoding it, it would hasten their own demise, refuting their own gods.

We will yet find a message in a bottle. It will say “Smile, you are doomed. Give up now and please yourselves. Life is a dead end path to nowhere. Smash your heads into your concrete monuments. Be reckless as the depths that surround you. It is a freeform place we inhabit, no love lost. Live for your passions till you crash.” And so it was that Vater von Foey and his sweet Foey continued on this journey sticking as close to the riverbank as the lanes would allow. Upstream they were heading and as time wore on the land developed a hue of green, sparingly at first, and then becoming lush with leaves and grasses. They took a rest on a little oasis by the river edge, and Foey saw it. A bottle, sealed with duck tape, floating peacefully in the reeds.

Inside that bottle was a note. Luckily it was engraved on a parchment of brass because the duck tape had leaked a wee bit. “Divulge not unto others what you would not divulge unto yourself” was what it said, either an oxymoron or a good reason for suicide one might surmise. Whether Vater von Foey who saw this message as an untruth or Foey who saw this message for it's truth viewed the message similarly is unclear but they rejoiced at it's finding as most humans and their conceptions do when finding messages in bottles. They journeyed on a little more optimistically, fathoming a culture upstream with duck tape.

They came upon an orchard, an orchard of apples. Now it was Foey's turn. She picked an apple fresh and red ripe from a branch and said “Here my dear, take a bite, and may the truth be with thee.” Well Heavens to Betsy, as Vater von Foey chewed his nourishment the poles of his earth reversed. The untruth became the truth. Foey was no longer a conception, she became an inseparable part of her conceiver's being. His loneliness vanished. He had filled his pockets with red ripe apples before he realized his urge to bitch. It was too late... that message in the bottle hit him hard. He had divulged his urge unto himself and was free to bitch at anyone and anything around. Something gnawed at his thoughts as he sat with his pockets full of nourishment. He felt the spirit of sweet Foey inside him saying “You don't have to bitch.”

Vater von Foey wandered the earth for many years into a ripe old age and smiled cheerily at everyone he would meet. And he always had a red ripe apple for them, as he bid them to venture into a forbidden world, far removed from our human nature, in his bursts of euphoria which he shared with Foey.