XIV. Dead Hero:
Extra, extra, read all about it..
What if I told you that I once, when I was a young kid, had a ball in my possession that was as gold as a 24 carrot necklace. And when I would bounce that ball it would grow wings and fly up as high as the clouds in the sky above me, until one day after a bounce and a fly, it never came back and was robbed of me by a flying monkey who pointed at me and laughed with red eyes while I sat there and cried sorrowfully.
I am fibbing, of course. The ball was only blue, it bounced like an ordinary old ball, and it got stuck in a tree.
But which way of telling the story helped you feel what I felt more? The former, of course. We as humans love to exaggerate tales that have happened to us, but instead of calling it an exaggeration, I am going to call them MythoLies.
In book XIV. Dead Hero in my book Jackism, The Fairytale Religion, the hero character is Skully the Skeleton who is working his way out of the underworld to become birthed as a being on the earths plane once more. But in order to do so, his mission in Hell was to help lost beings down there realize why they were, too, there, so that they could bloom as a flower on the earths plane once again – because even being a flower on the earths plane is a step in the right direction away from being stuck in the Underworld. And so Skully has 3 more beings to bloom, the Sandman, the Snowman and the Statue Man.
The Sandman was a being of sand who was stuck in the desert because in his past life on earth he was greedy, and would not even share a grain of sand with anyone. The Snowman, stuck as snow, because he could not keep a promise for even one season of the four – and so he is stuck in one. And the Statue Man who was a terrible pessimist – and so he is a tomb. And the whole time, Skully is trying to remember what the sky on the earth looks like, which he thinks is purple. He conquers the final 3 beings and blooms them up as flowers, and Skully crumbles into a bundle of bones and the tale cuts to a baby being born on the earths plane:
[66] Skully drinks up the snowball, and then crumbles into a bundle of bones. On the earth’s plane a baby is born anew who cries in the arms of a doctor named Star.
Dr. Star: [67] Mrs. Moon, Mr. Sun, the color is baby blue – he is a boy.
Mrs. Moon: [68] Oh, it is! It is our first-born son! Alas, I finally have my Sun and my son.
Mr. Sun: [69] What does your heart tell you to call him, my dear?
Mrs. Moon: [70] Sky.
Letter from JackOBat:
[71] And there you have what we have taken for granted for all of these years – the birth of the baby blue sky; hard worked for and a hero behind the scenes. Ah, but let us not forget Savior the snake as well, who rose up on the arm of that hero named Skully – and became the darkness and the night of the earth’s plane.
ABRACADABRA
Is it a lie? Sure. But is it better to pass on by the blue sky mundanely, or to think of it as it being once a hero in the underworld who had earned its place to be there up above for us? Certainly the later. It makes you grateful and more appreciative for the sky, which is what you aught to be, and so even though it is a lie, it instills a Truth in you of gratefulness and awe and love for it.
We do this all the time when telling stories, as I did with my example at the top of this blog. Was the ball gold? Nay. But I wanted you to feel how special that ball was to me when I was a kid, and if I had just said “blue ball” – it is a lame feeling, and you don’t get the feeling out of it that I had. Same with the bouncing – did it grow wings? Nay. But it certainly felt like it did when I was a child – and so I wanted you to feel what I had felt; and saying “I bounced it” does not do it. And lastly, If I had just said that “it got stuck in a tree”, there is nothing there for you to experience what I had experienced. It was stollen and robbed by a flying monkey who stared at me a laughed with red eyes while I wept. That is better to let you know the direness and traumatic feelings that I had felt when I was a child.
So, they are all lies, indeed. And even though one may never be able to pass-on the feelings of a happening, the only way we can get close to making another person, even just taste it, is by exaggerating a story; telling a MythoLie. This is why people love to add-on to tales, we are speaking mythology with our tongues all of the time and do not even realize what we are doing. We want the person to Feel the Truth of how we felt, and paradoxically the only way you can get close to that is by MythoLying.
That being said, I want to point out that it is no good to be a bastard liar. There is a balancing act and one should always maintain Truth. It is always the liars that exaggerate EVERYTHING – even useless, pointless nonsense. And those losers are ruiners of mythology. But even an honest man will MythoLies a tale here and there, they will sprinkle just some subtle extras into it to make you grasp the feeling of Truth in the tale, and I think that that’s okay and good for the person you are telling it to, especially if it is meaningful. Let him feel what you felt – make it count.
If you want to read the full book XIV. Dead Hero, buy my book: Jackism, The Fairytale Religion by clicking the bold.
Strength & Honor,
JackOBat