the larger picture is the rhythm of the whole
The people of rainy river have never seen the sun for more than a month in any given year. They build houses of bamboo and travel swiftly by canoe, but are altogether much happier than their neighbours of the towns inhabiting the hills that surround up and down the rainy river.
The people of the hills have no need for aquatic stilts, putting leather on their feet and leaping over craggy outcrops that separate their workshops looking over the river, where their goods are ferried further to distant neighbours south that they themselves seldom ever see.
The people to the south, at the river’s ocean mouth, engage in commerce with all peoples of the earth. Shipping flat pack bamboo houses and artisan mountain vases—their inventory balances with imported silk and spices, tea and tangy oranges, and all the books one could ever hope to read.
The people of rainy river might never see the sun for as long as other citizens of foreign lands, but the craft of their hands has a place in the plans of those they will never know, except through trade possible on a stage at a time when the larger picture is the rhythm of the world as a whole.
