[Music] the ones who walk away from omalos by Ursula K lwin read by Joshua Cashel with a clamor of bells that set the swallow soaring the Festival of Summer came to the city of omalos bright towered by the Sea the rigging of the boats in Harbor sparkled with flags in the Streets between houses with Red Roofs and painted walls between old Moss grown Gardens and under Avenues of trees past great parks and public buildings processions moved some were decorous old people in Long stiff Robes of mauve and gray grave Master workmen quiet merry women carrying
their babies and chatting as they walked in other streets the music beat faster a shimmering of gong and tambourine and the people went dancing the procession was a dance children dodged in and out their High calls Rising like the swallows Crossing flights over the music and the singing all the processions wound towards the north side of the city where on the Great Water Meadow called The Green Fields boys and girls naked in the bright air with mud stained feet and ankles and long Li arms exercised their restive horses Before the Race the horses wore no
gear at all but a halter without bit their Ms were braided with streamers of silver gold and green they flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another they were vastly excited the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own far off to the north and west the mountains stood up half encircling omalos on her Bay the air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the 18 Peak burned with white gold fire across the miles of sunlet air under the dark blue of the sky there was
just enough wind to make the banners that marked the Racecourse snap and flutter now and then in the Silence of the broad Green Meadows one could hear the music winding through the city streets farther and nearer and ever approaching a cheerful faint sweetness of the air that from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the Bells joyous how is one to tell about Joy how describe the citizens of omalos they were not simple folk you see though they were happy but we do not say the words
of cheer much anymore all smiles have become archaic given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions given a description such as this one tends to look next for the king mounted on a splendid Stallion and surrounded by his noble knights or perhaps in a golden litter born by great muscled slaves but there was no King they did not use swords or keep slaves they were not barbarians I do not know the rules and laws of their society but I suspect that they were singularly few as they did without monarchy and slavery
so they also got on without the stock exchange the advertisement the secret police and the bomb yet I repeat that these were not simple folk not dolet Shepherds Noble Savages Bland utopians they were not less complex than us the trouble is that we have a bad habit encouraged by pedants and sophisticates of considering happiness as something rather stupid only pain is intellectual only evil interesting this is the treason of the artist a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain if you can't lick them join them if it hurts repeat
it but to praise despair is to condemn Delight to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else we have almost lost hold we can no longer describe a happy man nor make any celebration of Joy how can I tell you about the people of omalos they were not naive and happy children though their children were in fact happy they were mature intelligent pass adults whose lives were not wretched oh Miracle but I wish I could describe it better I wish I could convince you omala sounds in my words like a city and a fairy
tale long ago and far away once upon a time perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids assuming it will rise to the occasion for certainly I cannot suit you all for instance how about technology I think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets this follows from the fact that the people of omalos are happy people happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary what is neither necessary nor destructive and what is destructive in the middle category however that of the
unnecessary but undestructible luxury exuberance Etc they could perfectly well have central heating subway trains washing machines and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here floating light sources fuess power a cure for the common cold or they could have none of that it doesn't matter as you like it I inclined to think that people from towns up and down the coast have been coming into omelas during the last days before the the festival on very fast little trains and double-decked trams and that the train station of omalos is actually the handsomest building in town
though pler than the Magnificent Farmer Market but even granted trains I fear that omala so far strikes some of you as goody goody Smiles Bells parades horses blah if so please add an orgy if an or would help don't hesitate let us not however have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man or woman lover or stranger who desires Union with the Deep godhead of the blood although that was my first idea but really it would be better not to have any temples in
omalos at least not manned temples religion yes clergy no surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about offering themselves like Divine sus to the hunger of the needy and the Rapture of the flesh let them join the processions let tambourines be struck above the culations and the glory of Desire be proclaimed upon the gongs and a not unimportant Point Let The Offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all one thing I know there is none of in omalos is guilt but what else should there be I thought at first there were
no drugs but that is puritanical for those who like it the faint insistent sweetness of Drews May perfume the ways of the city Drews which first brings a great lightness and Brilliance to the mind and limbs and then after some hours a dreamy Langer and wonderful Visions at last of the very Arcana and inmost secrets of the universe as well as exciting the pleasure of sex beyond all belief and it is not habit forming for more modest tastes I think there ought to be beer what else what else belongs in the joyous City the sense
of Victory surely the celebration of Courage but as we did without clergy let us do without Soldiers the joy built upon successful Slaughter is not the right kind of Joy it will not do it is fearful and it is Trivial a boundless and generous contentment a magnanimous Triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in The Souls of all men everywhere and the Splendor of the world's summer this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omas and the Victory they celebrate is that of life I really
don't think many of them need to take Drews most of the processions have reached the green fields by now a marvelous smell of cooking Goes Forth from the red and blue tents of the provisioners the faces of small children are amiably sticky in the benign Gray beard of a man a couple of crumbs of Rich pastry are entangled the youths and girls have mounted their horses and are beginning to group around the starting line of the course an old woman small fat and laughing is passing out flowers from a basket and Tall young men wear
her flowers in their shining hair a child of 9 or 10 sits at the edge of the crowd alone playing on a wooden flute people pause to listen and they smile but they do not speak to him for he never ceases playing and never sees them his dark eyes wholly wrapped in the sweet thin magic of the tune he finishes and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden Flo as if that little private silence were the signal all at once a trumpet sounds from The Pavilion near the starting line imperious Melancholy piercing the horses rear
on their slender legs and some of them nay in answer sober faced The Young Riders stroke the horse's necks and soothed them Whispering quiet quiet there my beauty my hope they begin to form and rank along the starting line the crowds along the Racecourse are like a field of grass and flowers in the wind the Festival of Summer has begun do you believe do you accept the festival the city The Joy no then let me describe one more thing in a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of omalos or perhaps in the cellar
of one of its spacious private homes there is a room it has one locked door and no window a little light seeps in dusy between cracks and the boards secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar in one corner of the little room a couple of mops with stiff clotted foul smelling heads stand near a rusty bucket but the floor is dirt a little damp to the touch as Cellar dirt usually is the room is about 3 Paces long and two wide a mere broom closet or disused tool room in the room a child
is sitting could be a boy or a girl it looks about six but actually is nearly 10 it is feeble-minded perhaps it was born defective or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear malnutrition and neglect it picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket in the two mops it is afraid of the mops it finds them horrible it shuts its eyes but it knows the mops are still standing there and the door is locked and nobody will come the door is
always locked and nobody ever comes except that sometimes the child has no understanding of time or interval sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens and a person or several people are there one of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up the others never come close but peer in at it with frightened disgusted eyes the food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled fill the door is locked the eyes disappear the people at the door never say anything but the child who has not always lived in the tool room
and can remember sunlight in its mother's voice sometimes speaks I will be good it says please let me out I will be good they never answer the child used to scream for help at night and cry a good deal but now it only makes a kind of whining and it speaks less and less often it is so thin there are no calves to its legs its belly protrudes it lives on a half a bowl of cornmeal and grease a day it is naked its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores as it sits
in its own excrement continually they all know it is there all the people of omalos some of them have come to see it others are content merely to know it is there they all know that it has to be there some of them understand why and some do not but they all understand that their happiness the beauty of their City the tenderness of their friendships the health of their children the wisdom of their Scholars the skill of their makers even the abundance of their Harvest and the kindly weathers of their Skies depend whol on this
child's abominable misery this is usually explained to children when they are between 8 and 12 whenever they seem capable of understanding and most of those who come to see the child are young people though often enough an adult comes or comes back to see the child no matter how well the matter has been explained to them these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight they feel disgust which they had thought themselves Superior to they feel anger outrage impotence despite all the explanations they would like to do something for the child but there
is nothing they can do if the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place if it were cleaned and fed and comforted that would would be a good thing indeed but if it were done in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and Delight of omelas would wither and be destroyed those are the terms to exchange all the goodness and Grace of every life in umalas for that single small Improvement to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one that would be to let
guilt within the walls indeed the terms are strict and absolute there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child often the young people go home in tears or in a tearless rage when they have seen the child and faced this terrible Paradox they may brood over it for weeks or years but as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released it would not get much good of its freedom a little vague pleasure of warmth and food no doubt but little more it is too degraded and
imbecile to know any real Joy it has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear its habits are too UNC for it to respond to Humane treatment indeed after so long it would probably be wret Without Walls about it to protect it and darkness for its eyes and its own excrement to sit in their tears at the bitter Injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality and to accept it yet it is their tears and anger the trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness which are perhaps
the true source of the Splendor of their lives theirs is is no vapid irresponsible happiness they know that they like the child are not free they know compassion it is the existence of the child and their knowledge of its existence that makes possible the nobility of their architecture the poignancy of their music the profundity of their science it is because of the child that they are so gentle with children they know that if The Wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark the other one the flute player could make no joyful music as The
Young Riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of Summer now do you believe in them are they not more credible but there is one more thing to tell and this is quite incredible at times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage does not in fact go home at all sometimes also a man or woman much older Falls silent for a day or two and then leaves home these people go out into the street
and walk down the street alone they keep walking and walk straight out of the city of omalos through the beautiful Gates they keep walking across the farmlands of omalos each one goes alone youth or girl man or woman night falls The Traveler must pass down Village Streets between the houses with yellow lit windows and on out into the darkness of the fields each alone they go west or north towards the mountains they go on they leave omalos they walk ahead into the darkness and they do not come back the place they go towards is a
place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness I cannot describe it at all it is possible that it does not exist but they seem to know where they are going the ones who walk away from omalos
