This is the story of a column, carved out of limestone by a sculptor under the influence of ancient Greek hallucinogens. It, along with three other columns carved by three different sculptors under the influence of three different ancient Greek hallucinogens, supported a cracked entablature, and they all stood on an unstable hill next to a blue, blue ocean with a wooden dock. At its core, the limestone column held a defect, a segmented, plated fossil.
If ahead is toward the ocean and the four columns faced it, then the limestone column was in the back, on the right. Next to it, on its left, there was a column with a steel core and a creamy soapstone facing.1 The soapstone column was taller and more slender than the limestone column.
A black granite column stood in directly in front of the limestone column; it was taller and had more heft than the others. To balance its starkness and strength, its sculptor had carved on its face, around its entire circumference, a diamond-patterned mesh. Then the sculptor had carefully filled in the grooves of the mesh with a gold alloy that shone in the sunlight.
The remaining column, of pink granite, was the only one sculpted to look like a person, a popular Greek heroine really. It stood as tall as the limestone column with one hand up - giving the illusion that it supported the entabulature with that hand - and one hand at its waist, holding the folds of it skirt.
Four years after the completion of this crooked Greek temple, the crack in the entablature widened and split it in two. It fell, and the two granite columns rolled down to the ocean. One day fishermen from a far away land tied their boat to the dock, saw the fine carving on the black granite column, and took it away with them, leaving the pink granite column on the sand. The soapstone column also rolled to the ocean, but it rolled to its left, taking a long and winding path down the hill, coming to rest on the sand far away from the pink granite column.
The limestone column remained on top of the hill, and through the years the fossil within it stirred, slowly waking. It grew, eating the limestone around it, and the outside of the column cracked, losing bits of itself to a pile at its base. As it grew, it changed from a segmented, plated fossil to a naked man.
He held his hand to his brow and looked from the top of the hill to the ocean. He saw two piles of crumbled stone like the pile at his feet - one closer, one farther away. He looked at the wooden dock, decaying but standing. He bent down and touched the broken entablature, running his hand along an edge. Then, he stood up and pulled the right corner of his mouth back, dimpling his right cheek. “Hm,” he said. “Curious.”
Soon another naked man walked from the far horizon to the hill and greeted the naked man who had been a fossil inside a limestone column. They talked and laughed, and the naked man from the far horizon asked the other naked man about the ruins around them. “What happened here?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” said the naked man who had been a fossil inside a limestone column. “Let’s try to figure it out. It’ll be fun.” So they did.
1 No, ancient Greeks did not have access to modern steel, but this is my story. So shut your cake-hole.
