History, among the people of Agara, is not a reliable source for the truth. On the other hand fiction, poetry, and the sonorous recitations of local (mostly village) myth-singers offer profound and indisputable insights into the existential nature of Everything. (If you understand Agaran.) I’ve been to Agara. Many times. I will go again. Many more times. On an early trip to that small, mechanical country, I met a guy who called himself an insect. He is one of my closest friends, though I don’t see him as often as I like. His name is Tērō. When I first met him, he delivered chickens to local markets. He smoked like a champion. I met him on my first trip to Agara, to the city of Pekkur. I was young. He was younger. I am older now. Tērō is still younger than I am: a distortion of my own youth. He knows things I do not. He has probably forgotten more than I will ever learn. He still calls himself an insect, and I believe his conviction. I can look at him and see only my friend, however. Not an insect. He looks and acts like the secret love-child of a Viking, fondled and seduced by some supernatural Hun; when he speaks, I can hear Icelandic volcanoes in his consonants and the Russian taiga in his vowels. In short, Tērō, who calls himself an insect, is the child of a culture scarcely understood. He doesn’t deliver chicken-corpses to markets anymore. He works, underground, tending the machine. I’ve never seen this Machine. I don’t think anyone has. It exists, secretively so, and even those who see it every day—those like Tērō—describe it differently each time they speak of it. “There is no truth in Agara,” Tērō said to me once. “But there is beauty.” I remember those words and they stir me profoundly. There is no truth in Agara, and yet Agarans are profoundly honest people. “What is truth?” Tērō asked me, one day. I don’t remember what trite cliché I’d told him in response. We walked together in a park near the river. He’d pulled off his shoes and his socks, and walked in the water, scaring ducks and laughing at their quacking, territorial belligerence. He showed me a Catalpa tree. I recognized it for its leaves and its bean-shaped seed pods. I’ve always seen such trees in the USA. I’ve heard them called by their native name, Catawba trees. Native Americans regarded such trees as totemic. A similar species grows, native, in far Eastern Asia. Catalpa trees are global, now. They are not native to the European continent, however. “These trees have grown in Agara for thousands of years; long before European political flatulence sent Columbus to the so-called New World, these trees grew in Agara. They are not related to the Asian species. No one brought them here…and yet they have existed for thousands of years, right here. Our local and most ancient gods were born in the seed pods of one such tree.” History, among the people of Agara, is not a reliable source for the truth and so there is no truth in Agara. Only beauty. Tērō said so. And whenever I see Catalpa trees, no matter where, I think of my friend and his strange, mechanical country, and I wonder how and why the paradox of Agara remains steadfast, when the entire world changes like a fickle wind: quickly and without warning. (—Excerpt from: The Dishonest Truth by Ian McHendricks/University of Chicago Press, 2003) *** 2011 might just be an interesting year for Agara and its continual, slow unfolding. Well, for me at least. As for this picture, the blur appealed to me for some reason, which is why I didn’t delete it. The tale above grew from my impressions of that blur, and as always: Thank You for riding along on this quick ride to Agara. This image and text are both dedicated to Helle (helanker) for numerous reasons, including friendship and her recent "Urban" posts; they feel like Agara. I wonder if she's been there.