“Each man for himself,” “blood runs thicker than water” and “dog eats dog” are the superficially contradictory war cries of the global community of captives, a pocket of which a little girl was born into in Holland in the 16^th century. Momentarily all those adopted qualities were suspended though, as the village came together to celebrate the arrival of this latest addition to their community.

She was christened Meg and she had fun growing up – playing, sharing her joy, wide-eyed innocence and joyous abandon with everyone she came into contact with. But a lot of things just didn’t feel right, didn’t make sense to little Meg. On one hand was her joy and light-heartedness, on the other hand all these serious adults who said and did things that seemed contrary to what Meg could feel was going on inside of them. The only time they were not serious was when they drank an evil-smelling brew that made their eyes glaze over and their speech slurred. The men would grope at the women, trying to push their big working hands up the women’s skirts or into the cleavage of their blouses. The women seemed to half delight in the gesture and half be repulsed by the imposing deftness and undisguised lecherousness.

Awareness of this state, this dichotomy and contradiction between what was true and love and what was neither, only the young children seemed to have. The rest of the villagers had either lost this sense or chosen to not feel or acknowledge what was really going on, instead basking in the glory of fleeting victories over others or salivating over the delicacies of a village or private feast as they lined up for gooey cheeses, lashings of cream, hefty stews, herrings, pickles and onion rings and whatever else had been hauled to the tables.

As Meg grew older she could sense that the adults were captives of their own choosing; captives invisibly corralled in the parameters of a consciousness that relentlessly controlled the boundaries, drew the line of the demarcation zone between it (the harshness and dishonesty, everything that is not love and joy) and what it considers its nemesis (the love and joy that were so real for Meg and her little playmates).

Meanwhile, the people around Meg kept busy, trudging, shuffling around, seemingly going somewhere but in fact going nowhere while turning around in circles on a planet that obediently and endlessly circumnavigates the Sun, providing the platform for them to come to their senses, to themselves – one by one and by their own choosing, in the created time of existence.

It did not end well, not in the eyes of the world or her own – Meg could not forego, forsake or deny her innate sensitivity. She became isolated and a loner, an outsider who was deemed unfit for ‘normal’ village life, unfit for a marital union, an eternal spinster, an embarrassment and disgrace to her parents and wider family. She could see what was going on, the invisible swords, daggers and sabres people were thrusting into each other when their tongues were seemingly honey-coated and their speech mellifluous to the ears of those who had chosen to not truly hear. Meg could see, smell and sense the evil forces, the unseen, which to her were so very real. And so she set out to fight them, pointing a lance she had picked up after yet another skirmish in the direction of the unseen forces in a futile attempt to make others see, hear, smell and sense, to get them to take notice. But she was alone in her quest, could not bow to the stupor that they had all been born into and her kinfolk obediently subjugated themselves to.

All Meg could see was that the busier and more inflated or deflated the inmates’ puffery was, the less room there seemed to be for the awareness of their true state – that things were not as they ought to be, that life need not be such a drudgery and joyless affair. On occasion, drive and passion seemed to cut through the thicket of the turgid and paralysing emptiness they felt inside but, in the main, the voluntary captives willingly bowed their heads to the miserable and devastating yoke of their choosing and kept the consensual wheel turning around.

And so Meg became known as dulle Griet in her native tongue and people gave her a wide berth and avoided her eyes, her ever-knowing and seeing eyes, as she roamed the roads and lanes, her lance in hand.

Poffertjes* anyone?

By Gabriele Conrad, NSW Australia

* Dutch mini pancakes.

Further Reading:
Are Humans Insane?
The Land of Cockayne*
Evolution, and the origins of mankind