the dream of three heads exchanged

 

 There are the three heads of state, they are meeting.  One is the Wizard, with his long hair and robes.  He is stern, and angry, and can move and change things with just the sound of his voice or the wave of his hand.  And yet, this does not satisfy him.  Another is the Scholar, who is not actually meeting.  This is his house, and the other two have showed up, and are having some sort of insistence on having a meeting.  The Scholar arranges his inks, looks at his books.  He wishes there was a room in the house that he could get away from the other two, and work on creating the drawings and books that are still so disorganized after so many years.  In many ways, he has been running from both of them for years.  He has been running away from the entire world, perhaps for all of his life.  He picks up bottles of ink from another room, how have they wandered there?  He scowls at his housekeeper girl, who reminds him so much, in some ways, of the King.  No matter how well the house is organized, something is always wandering away one way or the other, sometimes even by his own absentmindedness.  In that, he himself reminds himself of the King. 

 

The King is a young and strong man, with a curly black head of hair.  The Scholar is trying to tell him things, trying to pass information through stories, bringing out maps, drawings - hoping to pick up the man's interest.  The King actually does visit here often, with one thought or another to discuss, and the Scholar tries to remember information he has found that might help him or help him make his decisions.  But the King is not in the mood to think, he feels like all he does is think all day - on things everyone asks him to do, laws to make, things that seem to swirl around and around and hardly ever come to anything but by inches.  

 

The Scholar is upset, and wishes he could make the Wizard go away - he is a bad influence on such a young hothead as the King is at the moment.  And the bringing of the three together, at this place, at this time, does not bode well.  There is a prophecy of the switching of three heads, and that in this could end the world.  

 

The Wizard strides angrily around the room, interested by everything but not having time for any of it.  He paces and does nothing useful.  He breaks things, he smacks the mouth of a small white monkey that is attempting to get affection.  He threatens to take its mouth away entirely by magic, if it does not go away.  The housekeeper gives it a bit of fruit and it sits clutching her robes at her feet and bares its teeth as the Wizard paces about.  He gestures angrily at everything, whether it is right or wrong.  The thought of the end of the world actually makes him excited.  He rubs his hands together and thinks of all the ways it could be accomplished.  And yet, something does hold him back.

 

The Scholar gathers the last of his inks into one room, on the desk, even though he is afraid with one sweep of his hand the Wizard will simply dash them to pieces.  Then, with the Wizard to his one side, and the King to the other, he begins to make his case.  I know what you have come to do, brother, he tells the Wizard.  And I know you do not think you can stop him, but you have come anyway, he tells the King.  And you do this because you do not know, neither of you, the way everything entangles and becomes from things you have not yet discovered.  Without you here, King, this could not happen.  If you had left and went far away, this would not have happened.  Without you here, I would have no need to worry, he tells the Wizard.  And yes, if I was not here, if I went out that door and left my home and all of these books, it would also not happen.  However, how can I leave you, with your destructive nature, and you, with your carelessness, here in my library?  You come here to my home, and because of that, I do not leave.  We are all to blame.  

 

But I also know that this was prophecy because it will happen, at some point.  I have read it, in many languages, and have spent many years thinking over what it could possibly mean.  And now, my brother, for yes - you see, I remember in many lives, I was your little brother, my Wizard friend.  And you, also my brother, you were my little brother in many lives, my friend the King.  And I know you both as brothers.  You, my elder brother, are hotheaded and do not think things through, and are even more angry when you discover the very information you wished for but did not have when you acted.  You, my younger brother, are strong and ready to act, but have the worst habit of getting yourself into exactly the place you do not need to be.  It is not entirely a fault, without that, we would never solve some things that need solving.  For my fault, all too much, is that I will avoid the fight at all costs except the loss of knowledge.  

 

Here, we sit, looking at the prophecy that says the end of the world will come from the switching of three great heads.  And you, my elder brother, are all ready with the sword to take them off and reassemble them by magic.  And you, my younger brother, are also ready with the sword, with no plans whatsoever.  For years I have been trying to rephrase and reword, are they heads of state, are they headwaters of rivers, are they this, are they that.  And here as I sit between you two I find that they are actually the changing of minds.  

And now that I cannot back away from this situation any longer, I have a proposal.  We should switch our heads.  Ah, yes, I have your attention.  Hold with me a little longer, as I explain how.   The Scholar holds his hair for a moment up on top of his head, mimicking the Wizard's hairstyle, then flattens it down to his head, mimicking the King. He turns to address the Wizard first.  You, my elder brother, should become a Scholar.  If you were to become a King, in your frame of mind - you would destroy the world.  But something holds you back because you want to know what will happen - and that curiosity needs to be developed.  You must learn more and solve the anger that burns in your eyes.  You must take to maps and stars, chemistry and botany and use your powers to discover how the world is put together, in order to use your powers in ways that do not destroy things.  Don't look at me like that.  Think.  That is the thing that you Avoid.  The scholar avoids too much, but he also teaches, and collects information so it can not disappear.  I see that recognition now in your eyes.  This is what it means to exchange our heads - to exchange our old ways of thinking, and try on new ones.

 

And you, my brother, the King - you must become the Wizard, taking your energy and your vitality out into the world learning to make things move in ways that do not involve the horse and the sword.  You must animate your energies and organize things beyond campaign and country.  And to do this yes, you will also need to learn, and you will need a teacher, perhaps in our eldest brother, the Wizard here, as he becomes the Scholar.  

 

And I will also need a teacher.  I, who do not wish the position and would avoid it at all costs, must become a King, and go out into the world and use what I have learned in books.  But they do not always work in the real world, as you, my little brother the King, know all too well.  I must try to arrange the affairs of real men and women, laws and countries.  And without the power of the Wizard to point and make things happen, for that only works in one or two places, where the power of the King is to move many minds and set up structures that will move whole societies in good and purposeful directions even in the places he is not present.  

 

And in this, we would have swapped heads, and the world would not end, as it might if we lost all the knowledge I, the Scholar have put together in this place.  And we might surely lose it if you the Wizard, my dear brother, destroys it out of anger.  We might also lose it, though, if you were to became the King.  For you are so used to having your way immediately at the snap of your fingers.  And if the Wizard has thought this through, and has any love in him still for his little brothers, he will open his eyes and take to quelling his impatience with the world.  

 

And you, my youngest brother, the King.  In learning how to move (the very elements of) things yourself, where you are, in the powers of the Wizard, and with your wisdom and knowledge of people and their ways, perhaps you can influence in one or two places the world as it is, and move it the directions you had always wanted to, bit by bit, inch by inch, still, but in a different way that you can see and touch.  Perhaps this will fill that longing ache within you for the things that never seem to happen, no matter how hard you have tried to get people to agree and work towards them.

For in the end, you can know all there is to know, but do nothing with it.  You can move mountains, but not in the right directions, if you have not studied the flow of the rivers and the animals that live there.  You can move nation states to peace or to war, but it is still a game of chess and the moving of hearts and minds that often cannot agree.  In changing our heads, we each can grow and become more, instead of less on the chopping block.  The Library is yours, my eldest brother.  Please be gentle with it, and let it show you the wonders of it.  If you become impatient with one thing, open another - and another.. and through the learning of many things the structures of this world you have moved so easily in the past will reveal their miraculous interwoven web.  A world of energy and possibilities awaits you, my youngest brother, and a change to move your chess pieces on the world stage differently and with more purpose.  And perhaps I will need both of you to point my way out into the World of men and minds, as well.  

 

So, can we decide to cooperate, instead of destroy?