Lunar Punk Press

Written by Shekufe Tadayoni Heiberg

Translated by Jennifer Russell 

Prologue

It began like this:

A mother gave birth to a nut. A mother felt an urge, she spread her legs, she squatted, she pushed. A mother gave birth to a nut the size of a small moon. She sat on the nut and waited. For nine years she sat there waiting. Inside the nut beneath her warm body, life grew. It grew until there was no more room to grow. Then the nut hatched and out came a foal. The very first foal.

Or, it began like this:

Before there was anything, there was the mother. The mother squatted and with her hands she dug a hollow in the ground. Then she sowed a nut, a walnut, she dropped it into the hole and covered it up. Then she watered the nut with her milk and gave it time. Nine hundred years went by. Then the nut erected a tree on its shoulders, then the nut let a tree spring from its loins. In the glorious crown of the young nut blew no wind, for no wind existed. Only the Moon existed and gave the tree strength and direction. The tree unfurled its consciousness, twig by twig, one root tip at a time, and leaf by leaf she grew. After nine thousand years she was fully grown and full of will. Her will was this: She wanted to bear fruit. She wanted to bring children into the world, and she wanted to cradle her children in her crown, she wanted to rock them from her stems, she wanted to draw up thick milk from underground rivers, lead the liquid through her body and let it gush into little hungry mouths. This was her will, and her will was the beginning.

Or, it began like this:

First there was the mother. Inside her was a heart, a blue heart that had awoken from its slumber. Now it pumped to a steady beat. Below the mother’s heart, inside her belly, was a smaller heart, a white heart that belonged to her child. Then the mother gave birth to her child, then the mother gave birth to her foal, the mother gave birth to her sun, her berry, her blossom, the mother gave birth to her lake, her fern, her nut. The nut found its way into the Earth. The nut grew inside the Earth’s warm body until it was the size of a small moon. Then it let life sprout, then it let life flow through a trunk, then it turned itself into the pantry of the world. From its young branches hung small planets. The small planets let themselves fall, they let themselves be eaten. The mother laid an egg, and the egg was a melon, the mother laid an egg, and the egg was a lemon, a raspberry, a ruby. She laid a rosy egg, and when it hatched a sea anemone crawled out. She laid a translucent egg, in the egg was a whitespotted shark, in the egg was a sticky cub, in the egg was a slimy lamb. The mother gave birth to a blackbird, a starfish, a mushroom, she laid an egg, in the egg was a bird, in the egg was a flower, in the egg was the Moon. The egg was the Moon. The Moon looked like a white heart, pounding quickly. The mother gave birth to her Moon. The mother gave birth to her nut, her tender nut, she gave birth to her whale, she laid an egg and in the egg were offspring, she gave birth to living young, she gave birth to nine hundred at a time, nine hundred tiny perfect foals were squirted into the world and stood on their own legs, the mother gave birth to a seal, a sun, a planet, the mother squirted out the planet’s insides like a volcano, the mother squirted out white lava, she gave birth to liquid ice, she laid eggs and the eggs were berries and the berries were full of seeds, they hatched and out came sea anemones, out came salamanders, out came blue nymphs that crawled ashore and sprouted wings, out came white caterpillars that crawled into water and sprouted fins. The mother gave birth to a fuzzy beetle, an oily whale calf, a woolly plant. The mother’s young gathered nuts for sustenance and then they went out to inspirit the Earth.

Or, it began like this:

In the orb-blue heart afloat in space all was silent and nothing moved. Life had not yet thought of living. The will had not awoken yet. At the core of the liquid blue was a nut, sleeping. Sleep was the sole condition. Slumber was the cosmos. Then the Moon was born. Its creation was so electric, so electrifying that the moon began to shine, enormous and perpetually full. When the Moon was born, it roused something in the ocean. That something could best be described as restlessness or chaos, and this chaos set the primordial soup in motion. Until then, the primordial soup had consisted of particles aimlessly drifting about. Now they were charged by electric emissions that cascaded from the Moon into the ocean. This thick electric current connected the Moon and the ocean, charging the primordial soup until it flowed over. Then, a column of northern lights rose from the blue heart to its moon, and the ocean was ignited. Then, the ocean’s particles flashed for a single supercharged moment. The ocean woke up. The nut inside it woke up. The nut sensed that the time had come. The particles collided and sent sparks flying, and the sparks blew life into a peculiar force that stirred its fortune-bringing formula into the waters. The will had been awoken, and the ocean began pumping rhythmically, like the aftershock of a cosmic orgasm. The nut at the core began to sprout. The mother machine of the primordial soup was on a roll.

Then, the first particles joined to form a cell. Then, the cell divided into two.