Oliver Jeffers

Those pictures we have made up for the clusters of stars only make sense from this point of view down here.

Their stories only make sense here on Earth, and only something to us, to people.

We are creatures of stories.

We are the stories we tell, we're the stories we're told.

Consider briefly the story of human civilization on Earth.

It tells of the ingenuity, elegance, generous and nurturing nature of a species that is also self-focused, vulnerable and defiantly protective.

We the people shield the flame of our existence from the raw and vast elements outside our control, the great beyond.

Yet it is always to the flame we look.

For all we know,

When said as a statement, it means the sum total of all knowledge.

But when said another way, for all we know, it means that we do not know at all.

This is the beautiful, fragile drama of civilization.

We are the actors and spectators of a cosmic play that means the world to us here, but means nothing anywhere else.

Possibly not even that much down here either.

If we truly thought about our relationship with our boat, with our Earth, it might be more of a story of ignorance and greed.

As is the case with Fausto, a man who believed he owned everything and set out to survey what was his.

He easily claims ownership of a flower, a sheep, a tree and a field.

The lake and the mountain prove harder to conquer, but they too surrender.

But it is in trying to own the open sea where his greed proves his undoing.

When, in a fit of arrogance, he climbs overboard to show that sea who is boss.