Monday, November the 8th, 2004

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The God With Paws

There is a tribe of people who dwell beyond Those Purple Hills who worship a god with paws. It has no other name, or at least not one that is ever spoken aloud by the members of the tribe, nor written down, for they do not write as we would understand the term. The god with paws apparently forbids any image to be made of it, so we have no idea what it looks like. How many paws does it have? How tall is it? Does it have just one head, or many? What living creature does it resemble, if any? We do not know the answers to any of these questions, for the tribespeople are unwilling or unable to answer them. For the same reason, it is futile to quiz them about the part played in their culture by the god with paws, for they grow mute, or—the chatterboxes among them—change the subject, or simply wander away to check their stockpiles of macadamia nuts.

There has been some conjecture that by worshipping a “god with paws”, the tribespeople imply the existence of other gods—the god with hooves, perhaps, or the god with flippers—but no hard evidence has come to light.

The god with paws inhabits a hut on the edge of the tribe's village. No one is allowed within a certain distance of it, but at sunset each day, everyone gathers in a circle around the hut and stares at it in rapt, if somewhat ill-tempered, silence. It is thought that the people are given instructions by the god with paws, communicated in some unknown extrasensory manner, but the nature of these commands, and whether or not the people take a blind bit of notice of them, is unclear.

I have knitted myself a pair of paw-like mittens and intend to impersonate the god of paws, just to see what happens. I will let you know.