a goblin's tale

I'm in a strange mood today, perhaps partly because I read Robert Anton Wilson's Schrodinger's Cat trilogy in one sitting without really understanding many of the references and becoming practically delirious by the end of the 3 books.

(I'm beginning to think that the sound of words is sufficient enjoyment, even without understanding of the content. Why else was I hooked on the trilogy for the better part of today when I'd already lost track of the multiple characters in the multiple plots in multiple universes smothered in multiple references?)

(Is the pure aesthetic of poetry words without content?)

It could also be because the weather is swear-wordedly warm and the mechanical hum of my laptop is irritating me and threatening to give me a headache.

I also feel an overwhelming urge to speak in italics. Which I might or might not indulge in later in this post. Let's keep you in suspense for now.

And as always, stories surface and then drown in my mind, unconnected and unthoughtof, and then resurface again. One that has been on my mind for a long time is a tale of a goblin.

I don't see the point of writing a story about a goblin since everyone knows that goblins are at best secondary characters, and are never successful in the roles that really matter - Nordic heroes or Byronic heroes or Shakespearen heroes or even vampires. Some authors have maintained that even the smallest of creatures (like hobbits) can matter, but the truth is - and we're not talking about fiction here - the smallest of creatures seldom matter in significant ways.

So I don't see the point of writing a story about a goblin.

Nevertheless.

This goblin was small, even for a goblin, and was born in a goblin village, which was ruled by Authority. Authority came dressed in a pink lace dress. The other goblin inhabitants of the village disliked Authority in principle, and went about discreetly defying Authority as best they could.

One day, Authority left the village, instructing the goblin inhabitants to behave themselves. The Majority of the goblin inhabitants formed a Group, and while the individual goblins disliked Authority, the Group claimed to uphold Authority's rule, and in fact, became Authority itself (except without the pink lace dress).

The Authority-Group decided to enforce all of Authority's rules. The rules that they enforced included those rules that individual members of the Authority-Group used to break when Authority was around. As a result of the Authority-Group, the enforcement of Authority's rules was much stricter and harsher than it used to be, when Authority was around. Many goblins were drowned or burnt at the stake for the smallest of transgressions.

When Authority finally returned to the village, the Authority-Group reported all its enforcement actions to Authority, and Authority was well-pleased. The Authority-Group then disbanded, and previous members of the Authority-Group continued their discreet defiance of Authority, seeing no contradiction in their actions.

The non-hero who is our goblin played no significant part in these happenings (as tends to be the case with the smallest creatures), but was deeply troubled by the inconsistencies he saw. The goblin decided that a Group was a strange and complex entity that was more than the sum of its individual goblins. The goblin decided that he was afraid of Groups because Groups were motivated by chaotic, unpredictable impulses and an unyielding logic of their own. Groups, he thought, were impossible to understand, and dangerous.

The goblin went on to do many other things in his life. However, as I've said before, they are not very significant. Goblins are very insignificant creatures. Goblins, like humans, are never heroes, even though heroes are sometimes disguised as humans or goblins. But that is not very important.