Finding ForEverAfter

(the official origin story)

(Photo by J. Golko)

ONCE UPON A TIME…

a thoughtful traveler encountered a radiant siren of angelic song.

Overwhelmed by the beauty and grace of the muse’s stringed-harp,

the voyager vowed to return to the celestial enchantress with
an offering of musical instruments,

forged by the hands of human-kind,
in a symbol of unity between the Heavens and Earth.

In time, this noble nomad of navigation returned with three instruments
of ingenious imagination.

The first,
born of an African Blackwood tree,

its hollow form ornamented
with an intricate design of
magnificent mechanical levers
with triggers of tarnished silver ore -
harvested from the mountains
by the land’s ancient ancestors.

The deity smiled warmly upon hearing the gentle, pure tone of the
wooden wind instrument
and asked the explorer
to perform on another.

From a narrow box as dark as night,
the artisan assembled a rod of
steel, pins, and springs;

a contraption sure to invoke
the very spirit of Lightning, herself.

Without so much as a breath,

the metal pipe bursts into a soul-stirringly lyrical, whistle.

Bewitched

by the airy,

weightlessness
of the wand…

…wonders of whether
the Wind had once possessed
this weathered wayfarer who hath wandered from the Midwest.

And from deep within
the divine imagination of
the harpist’s hallowed mind,

a harmony had been awaked.

Hark!

Suddenly the sound of rapture
had captured the traveler’s senses.

Hark!

For once more,
the throne of the siren resonated,

resembling the eminence of an immaculate cloud-garden,

teeming in translucent beams of
golden sunlight,

with speckles of stardust sparkling
like softly flurrying snow.

At last, the skilled craftsman reaches for the final offering.

Kneeling down by a nearby stream, the sage architect extracts a handful of magic bamboo seeds and sprinkles them into a seashell.

Upon dipping the shell
into the gently flowing current,
the seeds suddenly started to sprout!

In a matter of a moment,
a mountainous volcano raises
with plumes of smoke and flickers of ash from the palm of this woodland-creator!

With a breath-taking eruption
(of miniature proportions…),

a blaze of molten brass begins to form!

Bubbling into a slither, snaking
from the shell holder’s hand
into a patch of light green grass.

Inspired by the flowing form of
one of Life’s most mystical sources,
the golden alloy evolved into
a winding river of metallurgy,

embedded with the pearly,
ivory of precious tusks,
twisting its way up
to a thin strip of a bamboo tree.

Dynamic and ethereally expressive,
rich with all the complexities of a connoisseur’s palate,

the instrument’s voice
effortlessly weaving
in and out of
the harp’s strings as if
meticulously
sown by the skills
of an all-mighty master.

In uniting the celestial ringing of the siren’s stringed-harp with the
conjured forces of the nomad’s woods of
Wind, Water, Earth, Metal, and Fire,

a polyphony of sonic textures vibrated throughout the Universe
in a perfect dance of harmony,

ForEverAfter.

-THE BEGINNING.

© JGO Inc. 2021