Image "osatokaoshirotongzenshaghi" by djahal over at Deviantart
He had bought the waterfall and surrounding land when he was fifteen, with the meager sum his father had left him. In those days beauty was not equated with land value, and so he was able to get an acceptable offer. The years had gone by, and he had mined on the land, and farmed on the land, and when he had reached the age of twenty-five, he had realized that the land would not make him rich. He thought about that for a long time. Then, as often happens after a long time of brooding, he woke up one day, had his breakfast, went out to hunt, came back to the house, cooked lunch, made progress on an idea he had been working on, and did not think about his lack of monetary success. The next day he also did not think about it, and he continued not to think about it until one day he did. When he did, he realized that he no longer cared, and continued to think, and to wonder, and to stare at the waterfall and do the work necessary to keep himself alive.
He stared at the waterfall and kept himself alive and thinking for twenty years, and then fifty. He ate lean meat, and salty meat, and fatty meat, and meal and grains, flowers, berries, fruits and nuts. He did not pay large amounts of attention to what he ate. When he was forty-five, the first book-printing businesses took off, and he purchased books on the things he was interested in with the money he got from sale of most of his land. The waterfall he kept, and the land around his land he sold with the understanding that he would not be bothered and that nothing would be built, but occasionally people would wander through.
By the time he became known as wise, he was a very old man, who had been wise for many more years than they had given him credit. He built a small shack, open to the environment, on a very small island, composed of solid rock, which was near the waterfall, hardly bigger than twice the width and length of the shack. He thought of it as a shack. The local people thought it was beautiful, with its arched roof and strong square pillars and the small amount of red paint he had used on the sides of the roof.
They spoke of him as someone who was not actually a person, who merely looked like a person. He acted completely different than a normal person, spoke differently. He ate the same, but he used one spice on everything, which tasted earthy and savory, and had a recognizable odor that turned sweet when he burned it. The words he used, and the way he spoke to children and men younger than him, and women who were clever, and those who were not, wives, leaders of both genders, the very few men older than him, and babes were different, and varied, and he got along with and had something meaningful to say to anyone who came. When someone came he would stop what he was doing, and speak with them, having filled out the cellar of his tiny cottage with foods, holding a vegetable garden nearby, and only needing to hunt ever so often, when he wanted something fresh, or he knew his guest would appreciate it.
Each year more people came to visit him for advice, as happens to those who make themselves unique. The old man didn't pretend to understand it, but there were people who needed help and they thought him the best to give it. He seldom gave specific advice, but when the people found their own way, they left on their own, and made their own choices, and nearly every person he spoke to who did not benefit from his advice attributed it to a misunderstanding of his advice rather than bad advice, though he gave some bad advice in his day.
There were some who argued that it was the spice giving him wisdom, that it grew of a magic bush that he kept in his garden. Others were sure it was a great scholar he had learned from, or all the books he had read. Those things had helped. Once, a child asked the old man what the secret was, what had made him so wise that people flocked to him. The old man took a long look at the boy, and asked him two or three questions. The boy answered, and the old man saw that he was smart, and decided to answer the question about wisdom. Whether the old man was right or not was anyone's guess, the old man told the boy. Old men can be right about anything and they can be wrong about anything, the same as any boy. But the old man had had dreams of riches, and he had saw them dashed. He had never been scared of being poor, for he knew how to take care of himself. He had dealt with idea after idea for being rich dashed before his eyes, and had finally begun looking for ideas about how to be happy, and how to make others happy. One day someone had come to him for advice, thinking him old and therefore knowledgeable, and he had been able to help that person. After helping that person, someone else had come, and he gave advice and heard many stories and thought about what they meant and what was different between them, and what was the same. Those things had made the old man wiser, but he had been wise at twenty-five, when all of a sudden, he had realized that his ideas would not make him wealthy or famous, and that he had ought to spend them some other way so as not to waste them or his life away on false hope.
The year the old man was about to die, he planted a tree, and it grew quick and sure, and they buried him under it. Somehow it grew on the little rock next to his hut, and the people attributed it to the same magic that had made the old man wise. Whatever the reason was, the boy grew up, and from time to time he visited the shrine, and he didn't feel important, until he reached the age of thirty-five, and, sitting in the pagoda, next to the large tree, he realized the old man would have wanted him to find himself important, and he felt important for the rest of his life.
He stared at the waterfall and kept himself alive and thinking for twenty years, and then fifty. He ate lean meat, and salty meat, and fatty meat, and meal and grains, flowers, berries, fruits and nuts. He did not pay large amounts of attention to what he ate. When he was forty-five, the first book-printing businesses took off, and he purchased books on the things he was interested in with the money he got from sale of most of his land. The waterfall he kept, and the land around his land he sold with the understanding that he would not be bothered and that nothing would be built, but occasionally people would wander through.
By the time he became known as wise, he was a very old man, who had been wise for many more years than they had given him credit. He built a small shack, open to the environment, on a very small island, composed of solid rock, which was near the waterfall, hardly bigger than twice the width and length of the shack. He thought of it as a shack. The local people thought it was beautiful, with its arched roof and strong square pillars and the small amount of red paint he had used on the sides of the roof.
They spoke of him as someone who was not actually a person, who merely looked like a person. He acted completely different than a normal person, spoke differently. He ate the same, but he used one spice on everything, which tasted earthy and savory, and had a recognizable odor that turned sweet when he burned it. The words he used, and the way he spoke to children and men younger than him, and women who were clever, and those who were not, wives, leaders of both genders, the very few men older than him, and babes were different, and varied, and he got along with and had something meaningful to say to anyone who came. When someone came he would stop what he was doing, and speak with them, having filled out the cellar of his tiny cottage with foods, holding a vegetable garden nearby, and only needing to hunt ever so often, when he wanted something fresh, or he knew his guest would appreciate it.
Each year more people came to visit him for advice, as happens to those who make themselves unique. The old man didn't pretend to understand it, but there were people who needed help and they thought him the best to give it. He seldom gave specific advice, but when the people found their own way, they left on their own, and made their own choices, and nearly every person he spoke to who did not benefit from his advice attributed it to a misunderstanding of his advice rather than bad advice, though he gave some bad advice in his day.
There were some who argued that it was the spice giving him wisdom, that it grew of a magic bush that he kept in his garden. Others were sure it was a great scholar he had learned from, or all the books he had read. Those things had helped. Once, a child asked the old man what the secret was, what had made him so wise that people flocked to him. The old man took a long look at the boy, and asked him two or three questions. The boy answered, and the old man saw that he was smart, and decided to answer the question about wisdom. Whether the old man was right or not was anyone's guess, the old man told the boy. Old men can be right about anything and they can be wrong about anything, the same as any boy. But the old man had had dreams of riches, and he had saw them dashed. He had never been scared of being poor, for he knew how to take care of himself. He had dealt with idea after idea for being rich dashed before his eyes, and had finally begun looking for ideas about how to be happy, and how to make others happy. One day someone had come to him for advice, thinking him old and therefore knowledgeable, and he had been able to help that person. After helping that person, someone else had come, and he gave advice and heard many stories and thought about what they meant and what was different between them, and what was the same. Those things had made the old man wiser, but he had been wise at twenty-five, when all of a sudden, he had realized that his ideas would not make him wealthy or famous, and that he had ought to spend them some other way so as not to waste them or his life away on false hope.
The year the old man was about to die, he planted a tree, and it grew quick and sure, and they buried him under it. Somehow it grew on the little rock next to his hut, and the people attributed it to the same magic that had made the old man wise. Whatever the reason was, the boy grew up, and from time to time he visited the shrine, and he didn't feel important, until he reached the age of thirty-five, and, sitting in the pagoda, next to the large tree, he realized the old man would have wanted him to find himself important, and he felt important for the rest of his life.
"Font of Wisdom" Flash Fiction © Ben Clardy V
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
