RE: allegory

["Timothy Mungenast" <mungenast@earthlink.net>]

As a corn-fed mystic *and* a railroad buff, I love the story, but I'm not
quite "idjikited" enuf to pick which of several possible meanings is the
most valid ;-)

Reminds me of the godlike "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
book... appreciate the ephemeral and the delicate, but also appreciate the
thunder of the great greasy machines. 

Yours in Goat Cheese Pizza,
Tim


> [Original Message]
> From: samba - <sambacomet@hotmail.com>
> To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>; <ocfdiscuss@efn.org>
> Date: 12/8/2004 9:03:27 PM
> Subject: allegory
>
>
> Allegory
>
>  
>
> By Gregory Bateson
>  
>
> There was once a beautiful lady, whose habit it was to sleep on disused 
> railroad tracks.
>
> In that same country there lived also a brutal surveyor who ran the
trains 
> up and down the tracks. He was at heart an explorer and therefore was 
> particularly attracted by those branches of the railroad system where no 
> trains had passed within living memory. These were precisely those 
>tracks 
> where the lady delighted to slumber.
>
> So it happened over and over again that she would be disturbed in her
sleep 
> and compelled to retreat hastily while a powerful and smelly engine
dashed 
> over the very place she had been happily resting.
>
> Every time this happened there was a falling out between the lady and 
>the 
> gentleman. He maintained that she was an old-fashioned, trivial, and 
> superstitious thing. She, in return, would spit out insults in a quite 
> unladylike manner saying that he was indeed a thing, subhuman, and
nothing 
> but a small boy interested only in silly noisy toys.
>
> And so it went on. For about two thousand years she would always be
finding 
> new and unexplored parts of the railroad system upon which to sleep and
he 
> always choosing those very branches of the tracks for the exercise of 
>his 
> monstrous vehicles.
>
> He asserted that it was his right - and even duty - to map the railroad 
> system and that the whole system was entirely his - especially the 
> unexplored parts of it. He argued that the system was a single, entirely 
> logical-causal network of tracks.
>
> She averred that the tracks were designed for the rest and peace of the 
> human soul and cared nothing for his dreams of causality and logic.
>
> He mapped every detail of the tracks along which he ran his engines. She 
> continually found other parts of the system not yet mapped.
>
> One day the engineer carelessly left one of his maps beside the track 
>and 
> the lady found it. Gingerly, holding it only with the tips of her
fingers, 
> she picked it up. She handled it as if it had been left there by the
devil.
>
> It was curiosity that led her to open the map, unwilling to see what it 
> might contain and therefore not really looking at its details. Looking 
>at 
> this from a distance through half-shut eyes, she was surprised to find
that 
> thus half-seen, the document was in itself beautiful.
>
> At the next confrontation between herself and the engineer she said
without 
> thinking, ‘And you don’t even know that your own maps are beautiful.’
>
> At this the surveyor was amazed. He gruffly replied that he was not 
> interested in that.
>
> She said to herself ‘Ah, then there is something in the universe in which
he 
> is not interested. That something belongs to me.’
>
> ‘For ever,’ she said.
>
> After they parted, each considered what had been said. The surveyor was 
> forced to agree that indeed the beauty of his maps and correspondingly
the 
> beauty of the railroad tracks were not within his province. She, on the 
> other hand, was delighted and hugged to herself the secret knowledge that
he 
> would never invade what she most valued - the elegance and symmetry of
the 
> total system. Not its details but its foundations.
>
> At their next meeting he asked whether she was still interested in the 
> so-called beauty of the maps. When she rather defensively replied in the 
> affirmative, he said in an offhand manner that he had perhaps something
to 
> show her.
>
> He then confessed that while she slept upon the railroad tracks he had
come 
> quietly and had made a careful drawing of her body. It was this drawing
that 
> he wanted to show her.
>
> He unfolded and placed side by side before her his map of the railroad 
> tracks and his drawing. He said it was ‘scientifically interesting’ that
the 
> map and the drawing appeared to resemble each other in many ‘formal’ 
> characteristics. He specially wanted her to see this strange resemblance 
> between the two documents.
>
> She briefly dismissed the matter. She said she had always known that.
But, 
> saying this, she looked away and smiled.
>
>