In the beginning, there was man.
Which, of course, is completely nonsensical. If life comes from woman, shouldn’t woman come first?
In the beginning, there was woman.
Then again, woman might be the place where life begins, but she can no more create it on her own than man can heat sperm in an oven and bake a child (yes, he has tried that. yes, he did fail.)
In the beginning, there was Kiava. And Kiava was lonely.
It always begins with loneliness, doesn’t it? We are given the world like a pearl spat from an oyster, polished and buffed from something ugly and small, and even so this miracle isn’t enough. It isn’t misery that loves company, it’s joy. Misery can exist alone; not so its kissing cousin. No, joy needs sharing.
Kiava was lonely, but Kiava was the world. So Kiava closed the eyes of the world and sighed, and pieces of the world split away like atoms in fission, and made the world again.
Is that lonely, to think that we were all once part of some greater whole, that we have lost our brothers and our sisters in the stars? Or does it mean we understand that the same things that make the cosmos make us, that science can be beauty and connection and spirituality? Does it mean that we are creatures of wind and sun, and every time we break apart we are still something? That losing a piece does not make us smaller?
And the pieces of Kiava knew themselves, and knew each other, and grew up and forgot the places they had come from, and the places they had been. But Kiava smiled, and was the world.
And is that not a wonderful beginning?
Photo and sculpture by Amy Fox. Amy is a writer, sculptor, painter, producer, actor, improvist, editor – and apparently she occasionally also sleeps. Check out The Switch, her latest project!