In front of a temple or the door of a house are swirls of moogu. They invite what is welcome, inside. On Fridays, at dawn, hands stitch the earth together. They begin with a grid of evenly spaced dots to guide them and to maintain symmetry. If they are young they carefully produce straight lines and gentle curves. If older, they render a design that shows their practice, or one that shows disinterest. They use chalk, or white flour, and sometimes add a touch of yellow or orange.
On religious holidays they will bring out the rare and expensive colors- purple, blue, green, red, occasionally brown or a golden yellow and create the design that they had fallen in love with when they were younger. They will fetch some dung and mix it in a bucket with water and prepare their canvas by moistening the earth with it. Now, their colors will be brighter and their image will keep its form, keep the shape of its flowers and leaves when faced with wind.
Before, when there were no roads, and all there was was dirt, this water was antiseptic and dung radiated heat when it burned. We spread it on our fields to let our food grow strong. We washed our floors with it, which were no more than bare ground, to kill germs.
We walked along the seams of the earth made by oxen.
Our wheels were wood.
Outside the temple stood a chariot, taller than all of our houses that took years to build. An artist carved myths in rows along its side, telling each story with thousands of figures until he reached the end of the line. He was dwarfed by the large wheels that carried his myths around town once a year. He chiseled in their shadows.
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Sep 28, 06:38 PM