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croagh: a fable
a project by amy hauber, assistant professor of fine arts

October 17– December 14, 2007



There once was a girl who was compelled to climb to the tippy top of a mountain. The mountain that was given to her was the tallest, pointiest and holiest in the land. All alone, and with thousands of others, she climbed without shoes. Her feet were able to navigate the loose rocks (that some people called “scree”) that shifted under her like slow-moving waves.


Even though she thought she would die on the mountain (she was a girl who was plagued by visions of a premature and tragic death) she did not fall off. She did not magically catapult upward into the sky either. Instead, she, alone, reached the holy tippy top.

The summit was so steep and so pointy that only she could stand on it. There, she turned on the small point and could see for miles in all directions. Birds whizzed by her and said “Hi hi hi hi!!” The islands in the sea looked like delicious steaming biscuits floating in a soup of blue gems.... perhaps aquamarines? That was her birthstone.


When the lucky girl was almost completely overcome by the beauty around her and she started to feel her chin shaking and tears bubbling in her throat, the tip of the mountain opened up under her feet and just like a soft mouth it swallowed the girl down to the center of the earth....