The Herdsman.

The herdsman has lived his whole life off his livestock, he even believes that he was birthed by the first of his cows for the sole purpose of being her herdsman, and the herdsman of her children. He believes that after the world ended, and all that was left was her and others of her kind spread across different parts of the world (these ‘others’ are the livestock he now refers to as her children). That she had looked up to the heavens, reminiscent of the old days with tall green grass, when men with staffs guided their path and she was never alone. And when she walked, she could feel the side of her belly rub against the rough hide of the belly of a brother or sister and they would converse in oral and bodily languages known only to them and would only teach the man these languages once he had proven himself a capable herdsman.

She remembered all these things and just as the Jews had done in the Old Testament when they asked that their God give them a king, she asked of the universe a man. A man who would wield a staff and bring her and her brothers and sisters together again. A man that would guide their path in a world of desert, dust and ash, and lead them to a place where the grass was green and the water was clear. A place where the sides of their bellies would rub against each other again and they would teach him their languages and let him feed off the raw milk from their udders because they would know that he would be a capable herdsman, because he would have to be.

The universe answered in biblical fashion – and she was conceived of the Holy Spirit – and the herdsman was born. His is meant to be a life of sacrifice, a sacrifice he has been more than willing to make ever since he became aware of his existence. The thing is however, – in surprisingly un-Biblical fashion – his sacrifice is not as simple as dying. His sacrifice is living, living and fulfilling the wishes of his cattle, living to finally earn every drop of the milk that weaned him. He refers to the first of his herd – an old white cow with black patches behind her ears – as Umi. She is the one who offered up the prayers that conceived him, the one he believes to have birthed him. His first taste of milk and maternal love came from her udders. She has been longest with him on this journey and although, through intuitive forces beyond his comprehension, he has been able to unite Umi with a good number of her children, it troubles him, how impossible it seems to bring to fruition everything that is necessary to complete his sacrifice and end his journey. 

Perhaps it’s not so un-Biblical after all, one could liken the herdsman to Moses. Leading the Israelites through the wilderness to a land flowing with milk and honey, Canaan, the Promised Land – where the grass is green and the water is clear. The herdsman wishes Manna would fall from the sky, he wishes he could strike a rock with his staff and water would spurt forth, clear as the morning sky. He wishes he no longer had to depend on the milk of his livestock for survival. He wishes he no longer had to worry about his survival, so he could focus solely on finding this Promised Land. But everything, EVERYTHING, depends on his survival. On the survival of a boy born into a world on which the curtains have fallen, never to rise again, to herd cattle without any prior knowledge of cattle herding, to find green grass and fresh water in a world of ash.

He was birthed in as little glory as the Christian messiah (perhaps less) but no star marked his birth, no angels sang his praise to uninterested shepherds as they tended their sheep, no wise men came from the Far East to anoint him with myrrh and perfume the destitution of his birth with frankincense. He does not think he had had enough wisdom at twelve to educate Jewish scribes. He does not fancy himself a messiah and is not arrogant enough to compare himself to Christ. And as has been stated before, his, is a sacrifice that is not as simple as dying. But this isn’t the major disparity between the herdsman and the Christian deity, I’d like to think it is their respective unawareness and awareness of their ends. Unlike Christ who possessed the knowledge and readiness of and for his death and resurrection; the herdsman is oblivious of what lies ahead. He does not know if or when he will die and is far from ready for it. He knows though, that if he dies, he will not be resurrected and it scares him that this is the only thing he knows and is sure of.

The herdsman was not always a herdsman, he remembers. There was a time when it was just him and Umi, when he had followed more than he led. He remembers crawling on all fours, trying to imitate Umi’s slow, gracious stride and how the calluses on his knees and palms had formed when his height still only measured up to half the length of his staff. Through his growth, Umi had trained his tongue, mind and body to understand the languages of a herd, these were the languages that he now used to converse with the soul of the world. A conversation he had in expectancy of a reply he did not expect to receive because he knew that the world was dead – she had no soul.  During this period he spent revelling in the unknown, being beaten into shape under Umi’s tutelage, the herdsman believes he knew happiness and what’s more, he believes he knew peace. But the curse of every period, every season, every life, every idea, every sacrifice to be made, is time. 

Time births age, age births realizations, realizations birth responsibilities and responsibilities birth sacrifice. The herdsman has not been in a position that allows him to know many fears but with the little he has experienced, he has come to the conclusion that the only concepts worth fearing are the prospect of his failure and time. He fears time more than anything else however, because it is time that makes it possible for the prospect of his failure to exist. Time brought on age and forced him to realize how Umi’s stride had lost its grace, forced him to notice how the whites of her eyes had turned a diseased shade of yellow. It forced him to see how her hide had turned ashen and how it now hung loosely off her bones like a forlorn flag announcing surrender. These realizations forced upon him an understanding of the true use of his staff, an understanding of how he was to apply all that Umi had taught him and use the languages he had mastered in ways that would bring forth replies. Even if they were not expected, even if they were not acceptable. Finally, with an understanding of all these things, it dawned on him that a sacrifice had to be made. And then the pitfall – time had set up a perfect chain reaction that would lead to the enlightenment of the herdsman and the entrustment of his responsibilities but somehow, along the line, had forgotten to make provisions for an avenue through which the inevitable sacrifice tethered to these responsibilities would be carried out. No stone altars atop a holy mountain, no voices from above rebuking lethal actions and offering guidance, no spotless lambs hidden behind any bushes, no flames pouring forth from the sky. Nothing. Nothing at all.

Notwithstanding, the herdsman began his journey, unsure of every step he took, doubting every decision he made. He lost hope at every patch of grass or puddle of murky water he found and every patch of grass or puddle of murky water he did not find. For every stray cow, goat or sheep he added to his herd, he performed simultaneously in his mind, a baptism and a funeral. He was grateful for their complete and utter trust in him and he despised them for it. He hated that they never second-guessed him or challenged his judgment. He swore at the fact that there was no one but him who could veto any action or decision he was going to make. And why? He kept asking, why did they offer themselves up as his source of nutrition so willingly when he had done nothing to earn it and had so far shown no sign of a capability to do anything? It troubled him – the possibility that he might be their end.

Once, in his despair, the herdsman performed his own version of the sorrow in Gethsemane. He begged to be scorched by the heat or poisoned by the radioactive clouds that hovered ominously over the forsaken earth like Lucifer’s halo. He sought solace in death until the sheer selfishness of this desire dawned on him. It felt like he was betraying all the faith they (his cattle) had invested in him, like he was running away. There’s no way around it, help is not coming. Time is the enemy and you will lose to it every time so why go on at all? There’s no facing this fear, no conquering or overcoming it. It is weaved into the very fabric of your soul. It is at the core of the genetic makeup of all things – existent and non-existent. Why try at all? The herdsman pondered. Of all the things a man could fear, he had come to fear the one and only thing that was worth fearing at all. This fear numbed his bones, made him crave death and total oblivion, it made him loathe trust and hope and all his weaknesses. And there was nothing he could do about it so why bother? He resolved.

The herdsman resolved to simply proceed, to face his uncertainty and fear with action. He does not know if he will ever find this Promised Land, perhaps it is all just a wild goose chase and maybe he will roam this desert that is the earth for eternities, until the last of his livestock drops dead and he finally succumbs to the heat and dies of thirst. The herdsman is not a messiah and the full acceptance of this truth helped free him from an immense dark matter of parasitic self-hatred that had slowly begun to poison his mind and body. This hatred had lurked beneath his skin, feeding off the marrow of his bones. He had exhibited it by depriving himself of any milk that came from the udders of his herd and of all pleasures that he would otherwise have engaged in instinctively and although his survival and the chances of his sacrifice bearing fruit exist in a mutualistic relationship with one another, he did his utmost best to focus more on the latter. The herdsman began to dwell on the possibility that he was bad for his cattle, he began to hate them, their nonchalant acquiescence to his will and to the mechanisms of the universe. And how could they? He thought. How could they bend so easily to the will of a universe that had made it possible for their world to end, that had set them on this path without end or reason?

In the course of his journey, the herdsman believes that he has become less and less of a herdsman and perhaps, very slowly, morphed  into a parasite. A parasite of his livestock, a parasite with questions that have no answers. This is why he had despised himself. He wants to be a herdsman again, he wants to guide Umi and her children to that place where the grass is green and the water is fresh instead of just pondering how impossible it is in a world of desert and ash. He wants to put behind him the fact that the world has ended and live based on a saying he remembers from a time when he did not exist that said, “In life, the only real end is death.” This is why he chooses to go on, because in a world where all that is certain is uncertainty and the passage of time, the only thing that could make all the difference is a person who is willing to be engulfed by the despair that is sure to follow realization and not wallow in it feeling sorry for himself. A person who is willing to ask questions without answers and not be bothered by the lack of answers. A person who can understand and find solace in the fact that the world might have ended but his world hasn’t.

The herdsman’s life is ironic – he is on a journey without end, in a world that has ended.