The Floating World

By D.G. Voller

Containing over 80 original art works by artist/ author D. G. Voller, 'The Floating World' is a place of hidden secrets. Seen through the eyes of a small boy in a remote mountain village these secrets reveal the power of dreams and creativity to have a transforming effect on the world around him. Jiemba rises from rejection and adversity, by the gift of the imagination, to become one of the most exalted and influential people of his culture.
He dreams of a "floating world'. A world of new possibilities, elevating the ordinary into the extraordinary, for everyone who yearns for brilliance in life.
The story involves Jiemba, a crippled orphan growing up in an obscure highland village. He is facing both physical and emotional mountains but is taken in and educated by the village scribe, a man named Waru. This man recognises Jiemba's sharp mind and gift of imagination, but it is Jiemba himself who sees his own path and climbs to great heights, becoming esteemed as a brilliant innovator by a world that is hungry for change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: May 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781922439727

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Healers

Jiemba was a cripple. The mountains and valleys that surrounded his life were impressive in their intense, wonderful, and fearful beauty. It was a windswept landscape of rugged vastness. Jiemba often watched the clouds that touched the serrated peaks as they drifted between their sharp ridges. He knew well the storms that erupted from these wispy clouds which would quickly darken and become a deluge of raging waters roaring down the hillsides, transforming the rocky streams into fierce torrents in the narrow valleys. He also felt the gentle breezes which caressed the grassy plainlands of the lower slopes before silently rising through the deep valleys to the barren, snowy heights. It was a landscape that, in its expanse and complexity, mirrored his existence.

The Journey

Jiemba was told that his name referred to the bright star that appeared both in the morning and in the evening. It was called the laughing star, but he had never seen it. All his life he lived in a different dimension from the others among whom he dwelt. The proportions and boundaries of his world were defined by the physical limitations that he struggled with each day. No one in his small mountain top village would tell him how he came to have such twisted, malformed legs or how he had become an orphan. Whenever he asked someone in the village what had happened to his family, their faces became downcast and they quickly turned away. It was enough for him to know by the look in their eyes not to pursue the matter. Jiemba was raised from a young age by an older couple in the village, Waru, and Kirra, his wife, who took him into their home through pity. Waru was respected as the wise man of the village. He was intelligent, kind and generous, and being educated in reading and writing, decided to pass on this knowledge to Jiemba so he would have more of a chance in life.

 Waru quickly discerned that Jiemba was a bright and diligent learner who absorbed all Waru could teach him. As he grew in years, Waru was happy to have Jiemba assist him in his work as the village scribe, sitting beside him at his desk as villagers would come and dictate all manner of letters and other documents that needed to be written, or reading to them what had been written by others. Jiemba was especially good at composing and writing these letters for the mostly illiterate villagers. Of more significance to Jiemba, however, was something hidden in Waru's house. Concealed within a cabinet was a special treasure that opened a whole new world for him. It was a collection of books. The many varied and diverse volumes revealed a new world of thought and ideas that gave him inspiration and hope. Often he sat with Waru and listened to what the older man had learned from reading them. In many ways his time with Waru and Kirra provided an experience of family life and the consciousness of being an orphan seemed to diminish in this atmosphere of acceptance and hope.

Jiemba did have one friend in the village; a boy much larger and stronger than he, with a big, round face, unruly hair and bushy eyebrows that contrasted noticeably with his own slender and frail physique. But whereas Jiemba was quiet and pensive, his friend, Minjarra, was the exact opposite. A loud, boisterous and clumbsy lad who seemed to abound in all kinds of impetuous and outlandish foolishness that often pushed the limits of their friendship. In short, Jiemba found Minjarra intolerably annoying and mostly a painful companion. Yet, in the years of growing up together, Jiemba had grown to love the essential goodness of his character and his loyal faithfulness to him. This was always evident whenever the other boys in the village picked on Jiemba for being a cripple. Minjarra would step in and challenge them both physically and verbally in defence of his friend. The