Lantasian wilderness- Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

Lantasian Wilderness -unfinished
-Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014



It is five weeks since my exile began, when I left the stream at the source of the great sea. I have never been to the sea, but I'm told that all people travel to the sea in the end. When we die we go to the sea, having left the stream, after travelling through the great rapids of tribulation of the river to reach the great conclusion.
Find your boat, gain your boat through the honest labours of your heart and the ride will come easier than expected.

I myself was exiled to the wilderness. The governor of the town had concluded that I was a traitor and a disgrace. Without trial, ample evidence from any witness or proper justification I was condemned with a unanimous roar. He said "Guilty!"

But at the same time, that terrible mouth uttered,
"traitor! You had the nerve to confront me, question my law and threaten me! Exile is your food, your drink and your life from now on! Never return again to this land! You former son of mine this land has forsaken you!"

Out from the brook and the town square I went, without a horse and devoid of  even a sack of food. All my riches, my trade, my stock of sheep and field of cows were left to be sold at my expense of be destroyed in a ruthless will of malice.

At first I was a hunter of every animal I could find. I cooked the flesh of many wild game, found perched on the fringes of the forests, with makeshift fires and makeshift huts. I had at least some knowledge on these fundamental matters. I lived a rough, basic, primitive and  dogged existence. I  lived among the stonemasons, the lumberjacks, the farmers, the gatherers of the earth and amongst the humble but destitute ridden professionals of the earth and found a humility I had never known in the city of my own glutenous kingdom.

I then became a gatherer of alms and mercies, where I lived on the generosities and kindnesses of my hosts;
priests, farmers, humble tradesmen and monks who took me in, gave me water, bread and a paltry ration of the cloister's remaining pork dinner.

I was alone with my soul in the bed at night, that lit up, as if it glowed to call out for my hope and renewal, to sing for salvation as I slept in the creaky confines of my coffin like bed at the monastery.

Foxes gathered by a meeting of the roads, almost as if they were imitating the world of human beings, their gorgeous auburn looked rather appealing and attractive in the descending din of the evening light, that dropped and dropped on every weary traveler who passed the road from town to town.

From town to town, I witnessed poverty and life, hand in hand and every form of life with every form of vice, but I must admit that mankind in its full had many guises and disguises, but I took each person as they came, one by one. In one town I recollect that the entire town had worked hard, strenuously in fact on every word of a legal document that was bring peace, order and a golden future and all I know is that five years later the children of town worked strenuously to destroy the laws of their predecessors and their parents. Each piece of paper was ripped and burned in the local Fasnacht as they burned all their laws and reverted to vandalism, drunkenness and theft. I remember that I once asked a perplexed gather at the procession,
"What was the whole point of your law?"
He then stared into my eyes and as I gazed into his eyes, the fires of the effigy burned through them in a horrible and gripping emptiness that took me by the bonfire.
"To make us good. What can we do now! They have destroyed our laws, so that means we can do what we like!"
I responded to him in disgust saying, "Laws don't make a difference, men make the laws the laws don't make the men! The heart is the seat of each man's choice and that is more effective than the sword, the fire or the laws you make, which all manufactured only to let your children break. Laws will come and go but right and wrong are conducts for the heart and soul to abide by, how can you rejoice for this darkness. I fear that this darkness is the manifestation of the darkest night of your soul and certainly your people."
He merely stared at the crackling bonfire, that reached and sparked into the night. He was silent, gutted and maybe even shamed.

The point of peril, the furthest peninsula from my home town is called Lantasia, a strange and wonderful place where the wilderness is wilder and weirder than ever anticipated. The geographers and the men of trade cannot fathom the depth of these outer mysteries. These silver birches, these elms of gold and fire seem indifferent to the history of a travelling hermit, but a plethora of countless hosts whose plumage lights up the treetop canopy in the great morass of the night.

I beheld a Golden Chaplin bird- which was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It is a strange, bird that peers out and pierces your soul with its gaze. Some goldsmith dipped this bird in a well of molten gold, long long ago and left it looking like a peacock, with a finer fan-tailed exterior, but placed firmly on its head like crown making it more imperial rather than like a priestly bird of holy canon. Its curved and pointed beak had a strong resemblance to that of a cormorant, precisely formed for the art of catching the river fish, day after day. It stared out unto a lake as if it had stolen my thoughts and memories, in the land of my exile.

After a harsh winter had depopulated the villages once again of their merry and vivacious spirit, the Lantasian people had come to flourish in a land that had given birth to the rich bounties of the land and the love that each labourer had for each other. Liquor was being prepared for the cycle once again or germentation, harvest and intoxication which sadly the people gave themselves to during the winter.

 I myself had spent the winter holed up in a meager rent, working as a labourer, I gathered silver wood, every day for my employers at the tavern, who had to keep the fire burning, the human spirit warm and keep the kettle burning for the fermentation of wheat and barley by the fire.
Each man's body was kept warm by the flow of alcohol through the body, as the tavern became the centre of life, fun and madness, where men and women of all trades gathered and groped around the roaring fires, desperately trying and succeeding in keeping their bodies warm for the harsh snows that greeted them when they left the tavern's protection.

I have worked and worked in the land I never called my own for a people whom I never dared to call my own, in this wilderness were all life lives and struggles to survive. I will continue to write this journals and I soar above the landscapes in my dreams to places where my dreams live and meet each night in a congregation of sleep and fantasy in the Land of Lantasia. I will work my way up as I hope to become the local storyteller and artisan for the entire archipelago of villages in my new-found home, one day perhaps I might find a bride and be the governor of very own town.
But these are just dreams and they coming and going to the lands where the rivers meet and the hungry gorging of the sea. I will one day go that sea of mystery, I will go and rest in the seas of time and mystery.

But now I rest, as my memories of old have been stolen by the gazes of the Golden Chaplin, whom legend has it steals the memories of the thoughtless wanderer who strays to close to gaze into its eyes of mystery.
I am indeed in exile...far...far away and into sleep I go!


                                                                            
                                                                         II

At the furthest point away from civilization you have what is known as the point of peril or what may be known as the points of peril, the fingers that meet the unknown sea. In that land a tapestry and archipelago of wilderness exists known as Lantasia and its people have lived and struggled in a way that some have called a "stubbornness in the bosom of their old traditions", having refused to conform to The City. But the bosom is warm for the blood is warm in this body of family; communities that help each other in the spirit of community, though they do drink a lot and it is some sight to behold their swollen bodies filled with wild quail and fermented ale, once the winter is upon them and the drunkenness has arrived with the falling of the timely winter snows.

The city has conquered the earth, the grounds are swollen with steel and glass towers, industry flows through the blood and mental capacities of the people. Lantasia is the final refuge and the final wilderness left on earth.