My Name is Blade

By Ulf Wolf

I am a blade of grass. I live in a field of blades of grass.

My name is Blade.

So is the name of every other blade of grass in this field, for we are all brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and cousins and cousins of cousins, and we are all of us children of First Blade.

And we are all one with the field and the field is all one with us. That is why I am never alone, and that is why I am always alone. That is why talking to my brother next door, or to my sister next door to him, or even to some distant cousin's cousin many doors down is just like talking to myself.

Then again, what does it matter? For I am deaf, and I am blind. But I can smell the air and I can taste the earth with my fingers (you might think of them as roots). I can also touch: the air with my stem and blade, the earth with the same fingers that taste.

The air smells sweetly of warmth and of lovely carbon. The earth tastes muskily of life and of many other fingers all tasting and touching the earth just like mine do.

The air smells of freedom, the earth tastes of life, and food, and of safely ensconced. The air smells of water sometimes, and the water tastes of cloud and of far-away water rising, perhaps out of other fields of grass, or out of some bigger, endless water where no fields of grass sway in the wind.

The earth is a life-giver, and so is the air.
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Even though we are a peaceful lot, we still have enemies.

Some of them are very small and they tickle my fingers and many of these little ones like to eat them too (you might think of them as insects or worms—creepy crawlies). Not that their eating hurts, for we are blessed with a painless existence, but having your fingers consumed by something or someone that tickles and whom you cannot see is not a pleasant sensation, and it tends to uproot you—and if not uproot, then starve you since now (rootless or less rooted) you can no longer bring the earth inside and up into stem and blade as sustenance. And so you starve.

Sometimes to death.

Other enemies are bigger. Some of these (you might think of them as moles and such) dig and burrow and don't seem to care how many fingers they sever in the process as they tunnel away toward who knows what dark fortress they will then sally forth from and then retreat to.

They eat fingers, too.

They are blind just like us, but we don't eat them.

Other enemies are bigger still: portable mountains on four legs that do nothing all day but chomp, chomp, chomp our blades and stems to nothing (you might think of them as cows). But they are the lesser enemy of these three for they never hurt our fingers, leaving us free to take stock of the post-cow situation, tally the damage, and sprout again through the earth and into air and sunlight and blessed water.

There is a fourth enemy, the most devastating enemy of them all (you might think of him or her as people). Seeing us, the whole field, enjoying the sweet air and basking and swaying in sweet wind, they grow envious of our united happiness and then decide that where we live is precisely where they need to park small armies of their round-legged cars and so they plow us under and then rake the earth level and then pave it all over with tar and asphalt and concrete to kill once and for all even the strongest notion of bladely survival.

Certain death, that. ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ulf Wolf
• Release date: Aug 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370518371

Ulf Wolf

Ulf is a Swedish name that once meant Wolf. So, yes, Wolf Wolf, that's me. I was born Ulf Ronnquist one snowy night in late October, in one of those northern Swedish towns that are little more than a clearing in the forest. Fast forward through twenty Swedish years, ten or so English ones, and another twenty-four in the US and you'll find me in front of an immigrations officer conducting the final citizenship interview, at the end of which he asks me, "What name would you like on your passport?" And here I recall what a friend had told me, that you can pick just about any name you want at this point, and I heard me say "Ulf Wolf." That's how it happened. Scout's honor. Of course, I had been using Ulf Wolf as a pen name for some time before this interview, but I hadn't really planned to adopt that as my official U.S. name. But I did. I have written stories all my life. Initially in Swedish, but for the last twenty or so years in English. To date I have written six novels, four novellas and two scores of stories; along with many songs and poems. My writing focus these days is on life's important questions (in my view): Who are we? What are we doing here? And how do we break out of this prison?

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