This place I now inhabit is littered with memories and stinks with the stench of a thousand human souls.
To run and leap and sprint with others of my kind as we exhilarate in the locking on of prey, running against the wind, hearing the squeals of the spiny hedgehog who is now fair game, feverishly making its way to safety in the dense hedgerow.
To taste and smell the air and hungrily lap from pools of cool spring water, sniffing the fragrant earth and stopping to smell the astringent scent of the lofty pines, souls swooning and soaring toward a darkling sky.
Panting from exhaustion, I recite my nightly ritual:
I circle once, then twice, painstakingly turn around and look back at the deepening shadows creeping across the still meadow floor like clockwork, blotting out the fragrant purple Larkspur and yellow Elf Wort.
The slow advance of shadows stifle protested cries from this this once sun-drenched field and I, like a drug addict needing its nightly fix, pushes the needle deep into my veins, blotting out the day, thus allowing the body to be put asunder, so the black and vile mysteries of duality and human existence can converge and emerge in the darkening twilight, while the senses throb and are summarily subdued, dulled to their true nature.
The Truth of existence is blotted out for a while, anyway.
My eyes are focused on the tree line, as I quietly bed down under an old oak and a canopy of twinkling stars, looking for any sign of life: a wayward peasant, an untoward child, a hound perhaps, or a solitary drunkard who has lost his way.
I am jerked back to reality as I spy a dirty bowl lying on the floor, half covered by moldy straw and just out of my reach.
My body shudders in the damp cold.
The sun's muted, bleak rays filter through the castle's tower window, splaying themselves hopelessly and irreverently on the stone wall.
I am once again devoid of any human feeling.
I look up and watch as specks of dust morph together, quietly descending to the depths of their brief and futile existence, joining together with one one another in a detached repose, falling helplessly, soundlessly upon the cold, hard floor.
Damn you, sun, if you're going to shine, do it splendidly, not halfheartedly! Do it with vigor and radiance and with promise and with warmth and hope and passion and cheer and all the other good things we've come to expect from you!
I have so much I want to share with all of you, the Truth of what I have learned on my journey through this life, and the Wisdom I have acquired.
But, alas, my pious human friends who have cast me asunder, know nothing but only what has been spoon fed to them and shoved down their throats, my ignoble, ignorant, sumptuous, pious friends who spout of virtue and honor, law and order, embracing good, resisting evil, but who really are so full of fear of the unknown and only interested in profiting from it, so full of themselves along with the unwise who follow them in lock step, these peasants who refuse to acknowledge their blind ignorance all the while professing their false piety to any and all who will listen, have single handedly taken it upon themselves to be my judge, my jury and Executioner.
They plotted together to deem my fate.
They stumbled and mumbled and gathered together after imbibing heartily, conjuring and conniving to plot my capture.
Now they conjure and connive in plotting my demise.
Ah, the speckled dog, the hideous Hyena who lies in wait for the unwary, the foolish.
I reach up and touch my hair.
It is the color of autumn and full of dead leaves, spittle, dirt and grass.
I touch my face. It stings with wicked scratches inflicted by my captors and full of dung, dirt and clotted blood.
I slowly move my tortured, aching body backwards toward a dark corner, warily lowering my face, my nose turning slowly into a menacing snout and blackened lips curling back to reveal rows of needle sharp teeth along with two very long incisors.
I continue to surmise my surroundings from the shadows, eyes glinting in the scant sunlight, like the colors of brilliant, blue gemstones.
I was able to spy a piece of rope in the corner of my cell and secure my sumptuous, flowing auburn locks before they mercilessly throttled me, threw me to the floor and chained me up.
At that moment I managed to stifle a low gutteral snarl that worked its way up from my belly and deep throated, catching my captors completely off guard, terrifying them to their very core.
As I catch my bearings and look around my small cell it reeks of piss and vomit, excrement and other forbidden, fearful, foul, bedeviled and loathsome things:
Fear and loathing, scorn and derision, longing, lost dreams and mournful lamentations, futile wails and sobbing, myriads of souls holding on to long forgotten human wants and pleasures, images of lives filled with meaning and rich with purpose and intensity but were cut short by the sword or some grotesque disease, freedom and promise, anger, hatred, love and redemption, savagery and ambush, lust-filled orgies and ardent love affairs, drunken stupors and exuberant flights of fancy, all somehow exquisitely and yes, somehow, beautifully and sublimely intertwined with a soft gentleness of spirit, a subtle grandeur of purity and prose with a sad cusp clinging on at the end.
Ah, the Human Condition.
We are not Immortal yet we live out our lives as if we were.
These silent comrades who came before me, once oppressed and held in bondage in this same cell, they and I have something in common as I am able to read their thoughts and, overcome by their grief and a deep sadness and compassion for their suffering, am able to connect with their abstract fears as though I was sifting through their lives, reverently turning the leaves of a lost and banned book.
Haunted and spectral, nocturnal and lovely, its binding warn and scarred, continuously spliced together as if an adept artisan had taken it upon himself to safeguard this primal prose, doing the mending and overseeing the editing of its yellowed pages in which script was hastily underlined and scribbled notes here and there, dog eared pages hungrily read by but very few, and all the while I am looking nervously over my shoulder to see if I have been noticed by anyone, totally entranced by what I am reading, unable to put the primer down, continuing to indulge my fantasies.
My curiosity being wholly embraced by the powerful message contained within its pages, a rich perfume filling the air and my soul as well as I salivate in anticipation, overwhelmed by the truths it proclaims yet acknowledging that in my heart there are those same, deep dark shadows that lie in wait, overshadowing any happiness as they now silently reemerge, encroaching across the pages and my soul, as well.
"What happened to those years that I remember oh, so well? Where did they go"?
This, my friend, would be well for Thee to contemplate, as well.
Will these memories once again be summoned forth by the ringing of a bell?
Humanity, oh Humanity, how I love Thee.
Not just because I am a part of you but because you are a part of me.
And the soul, in its morbid and confused condition, deals more with what is wrong with this world than what is right.
Do Thee not know that Our worldly inheritance is what we will it to be?
You, my canine friend, that part of me that lies buried, deep and still, dormant until summoned, called forth you, you have sustained me on my journey through this Life and always will.
You and I, even though we are part of one another and of different origins, are made for each other.
You balance me, I balance you.
Why is that the Almighty could not have made us two (too)?
From the canine's perspective: Your human essence smells of shit and sweat, posies, lush vineyards and ripe grapes, family and festivals, plowed earth, mutton, cold beer and fragrant wine, warm sun and a soaking rain.
From the human's perspective: Your essence smells of wet earth and warm dens, playtime and comaraderie, commitment to family, loyalty and courage.
We're not so far apart now, are we?
~ Nightshade
No comments:
Post a Comment