▸ Column · Star Wars era — an Outer Rim homesteader writing to the exiled Grand Master in his Dagobah swamp, the lawn-ornament feud transposed into a boundary-line war of spirit-totems and yard idols.
YODA replies.
Replied to by Yoda, with a rebuttal from Darth Vader.
The letter
Honored hermit of the swamp — my neighbor Gerald set a leering little idol on the boundary stone this past harvest, turned to face my landing pad with a smug carved grin, and offended I was. So a larger stone spirit-totem directly across the line I placed, to outshine his. Eight wind-chime birds in a pointing row he answered with. A glowing pedestal-orb, I countered. Then his wife raised a spinning daisy-and-rooster contraption that never stops. Understand me: my homestead now bears the totem, the orb, an iron frog, a sun-lantern, and a decorative anchor I ordered in the dead of night — and not one of these things do I actually like. At what point does a person simply surrender and let Gerald win? Or is fleeing to a far settlement the only honorable way out?
Yoda replies
Hmm. A frog of iron, a lantern of sun, an anchor at the second hour of night — and none of them love you do. Strange war, this is. Win it, what would you win? Mmm?
Beneath the idol and the spinning birds, look I do, and fear I find — that small this Gerald makes you, that count for nothing your homestead does, if grin at it a carved face may. To anger the fear has turned. To a yard of things you hate, the anger has built. Suffering, this is — yours, and paid already, every coin in the dark.
Surrender, you ask? Win, you ask? Wrong, both questions are. Flee to a far settlement — haste, that would be, fear with its luggage packed.
Nine hundred years in a swamp I have lived. A hut of mud, nothing in it to clutch — and freer than all your front yard, I am. Let go of winning, you must. Then buy what you love, or buy nothing at all. The leering idol — grin at it, let it. Stronger than the gazing-orb, an empty hand is. Patience, my friend.
— Yoda
Darth Vader weighs in
The old one tells you to let go and sit in his mud. I will tell you what the mud conceals: this was never about Gerald. Each idol you drove into the boundary, you drove to fill a hollow that no lawn can fill. I know that hollow. I filled mine with an Empire and stood alone inside it — a throne in an empty room. You have made an enemy of a man over a smiling face. He may be the only one who would have stood beside you. Do not flee the settlement. Do not surrender. Lay down the anchor — and walk to his door. Knock.
— Darth Vader
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