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narrative is a strategy for survival. so it goes—transformative sinuous sentence emerging even circular, cyclic Avebury, April-May leaps winged from buried. sheds lives, laps, folds, these identities, sine: fold of a garment / chord of an arc (active misreading). writing in monumental stones, open, not even capstone or sill, to sky (-change). (75) The figure of Edrys, linked early and late in the poem to images of birds, folds into images of the Bird Goddess, Bride or Brigit, the British incarnation of the Old European goddess. The narrator’s quest to understand her mother leads her beyond Edrys and beyond her mother, to the ‘‘squat stone mothers of Avebury’’ (64) and to the interior narratives of language. The focus widens to the integrating rhythm of myth. In Model V, ceremonies at West Kennet in approximately 3500 B.C.E. are the first fabula event. They are followed by the construction of Silbury Hill in late July 2660 B.C.E. Subsequent transformations are arranged along a timeline that dissociates them from the narrator and her quest. The fabula duration of five to six thousand years is dominated by the enormous ellipsis separating the Neolithic period from our own. The ellipsis itself functions as the sign of our collective loss of rapport with the earth and the matrix of creation, as symbolized by the arché-mother, or goddess. The subject/actant is the speaking community manifested by all the characters . Language is the power that makes transition from generation to generation possible. This version of the fabula merges with Model I, as follows: Model V 3500 B.C.E. West Kennet Long Barrow: ‘‘running to meet them’’ 2660 B.C.E. Silbury Hill: ‘‘April-May leaps winged from buried’’ 1890 Grandmother born 1941 Edrys brought out 1942 narrator born 1948 holiday in England 1951 emigration June 14, 1981 the narrator and her son fly to England June 15 landing at Gatwick June 16 staying at the stepmother’s house; taking the train to Exeter June 17 visiting Poltimore Village and the grandmother and uncle June 21 the grandmother giving photos, telling stories June 22 travelling to Ilfracombe, Combe Martin, where the narrator had stayed with her mother, sisters and grandparents as a child Fabula: Beyond Quest Teleology 63 June 24 staying at Ellesmere June 26 on the train June 28 Pilgrim Cottage with Jean and Nick June 30 ‘‘circling the power thresholds of Stonehenge—embracing the squat stone mothers of Avebury’’ (64) Conclusion: unspecified date, Trafalgar Square. ‘‘we want to be where live things are’’ (74) In this representation of the fabula, a collective subject-actant crosses the boundary of the generations, thereby reconciling chronological time with the narrator’s desire to avoid teleological closure. The model describes the process through which the narrator is freed from the claustrophic identification with her mother, indicated by the Models III and IV, and notable at the registers of story and text. With the exception of Edrys and Kit, all subjects of language are unnamed but familiar and familial, characterized by the ‘‘reciprocal ties’’ thematized in the poem through the extended etymological play on the Indo-European root ghosti-, ‘‘stranger, guest, host; one with whom one has reciprocal ties of obligation.’’ The fabula reflects the thematic evolution of consciousness which is able to go beyond telos, ‘‘our obsession with the end of things,’’ to finally hear, ‘‘the old slow pulse beyond word become, under flesh, mutter of stone, stane, stei-ing power’’ (75). Paradoxically, this model of the fabula, which explicitly reaches towards the Neolithic origins of culture, reveals the illusory nature of any quest for origins. If the family or the speech community is the subject actant of the fabula, origin and teleology disappear in the mists of time: someone always gave birth to the one before. This ‘‘mise en abyme’’ is suggested in the evolutionary image of the final passage: ‘‘ruffled neck feathers ripple snakelike movement of the neck last vestige of dinosaurs’’ (79). As long as humans survive, the story will continue, but human survival , the text points out, is in doubt. ‘‘This earth hospitable. . . . takes back what is given, ghost-i, hostly and hostile at once’’ (48-49). By neglecting reciprocal duties to the earth, modern society puts all life in jeopardy, ‘‘(getting rid of us)’’ (48). The fabula of How Hug a Stone can be modelled in various ways, ranging from the list of events in Model I, to the quest in Model II, to the more complex...

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