This Is My Letter To The World: The Omikuji Project, Cycle One by Valente Catherynne M

Author:Valente, Catherynne M. [Valente, Catherynne M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2010-04-30T20:00:00+00:00

The Economy of Clouds

T

reasurer’s Report, Filed in the First Tertiary Helion

Outer Provinces, Nephelokokkygia

Compiled by: Gunther Gundersson, Lord of Hedgerow Funds We had thought it was understood, in the lands below, what clouds and sunlit shafts signified. It seemed obvious enough on our end. What else is church good for, if not to teach rough-palmed farm boys that genuflection and not grand larceny is considered proper behavior when confronted with the ten tiers of heaven?

I believe it is safe to say, now, that the beanstalks were a mistake. I suspect the beans themselves originated three-quarters of helion [translator’s note: something between two months and seventeen hundred years, time being at best uncertain in the paradisiacal dialects] past, during our last Bothersome Visitation. That first boy, devil of a prodigy, managed to lash himself to a roc in breeding season and ascend—I think we can all agree it should be at least that difficult—straight into the Sphere of Mars, where the annual croquet match was in full swing, with the Florentian team thoroughly at the mercy of the Aegir. After helping himself to the Tea-Sandwiches of Martial Fortitude and lounging on the lap of a rather irritated Valkyrie who beat him soundly with her hat, the child laid waste to the Victory Gardens, where the tempered souls of warriors toil in sweet labor while their wives strap on gleaming armor. The Templars and Spartans hoe side by side in the Fields of Virtue and Peace, couching the gentle Tikkun Olam Raspberries in wire baskets, reaping the Corn of Katabasis, the Eight-Fold Spinach, the Strawberries of Guest-Friendship—and the Beans of Spiritual Ascent. It surprises me that we still cultivate such a breed, given its clear danger. I suggest sending up a banning order immediately. [Translator’s note: a period roughly between an hour and three hundred years.]

There is a tale in the earthly climes involving an girl improbably named after lettuce—there is also a tower and a witch and at some point someone stole beans from the witch’s garden…well, treasurers excel nei

85 ther at jokes nor folklore. However, I do recall that the witch punished the bean-stealer with great alacrity, and I question why we do not do the same, since the theft of the Anabastic Beans caused such turmoil in our eternal economy, disrupting as it did transit from the lower spheres to the upper spheres. Once there were golden stalks spindling from the Sphere of the Moon to the Sea of Glass, and seraphim slid down their lengths at their leisure, chewing on the protein-rich beans for their supernal sustenance. After the Alighieri boy’s adventure, the beans withered in their pods, and transit has slowed to a crawl. Only in the lands below do they still possess some scion of that original stalk, and we have seen most recently the results of that lapse in security.

Thus it is that a new soul appeared among our spheres, for the beans have a tendency upward, and a yearning to be utilized, and so I

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