At three in the morning I crawled down on the ground and asked, "What the hell do you think you're doing? Helloooo? Get out of my stash. Yo! You!" The thing didn't even flinch until I found the light switch. I couldn't sleep after that. I had visions of mouse eating my face. As a kid I raised gerbils, and the mother gerbil sacrificed its life for its starving pups. (I swear, I fed them!) Anyway, the little pups devoured the tail and the face of their mother first.... I remember the smell; the scent of blood mixed with cedar shavings; and the scent of leather, as I ran outside with my baseball glove to play instead of cleaning up death valley. Like most kids, I had learned that if I ignored something for long enough, it would eventually go away. *Close your eyes, close your eyes, close your eyes, this is not happening, this is not happening. You're not really here, you're somewhere else, dreaming about this. You're okay. Everything's the same.* But the blood didn't go away. In fact, it got more bloody before it got less bloody. My world had changed. I just couldn't think of the cute little gerbils in the same way after that: "You ate your mother...! You bastards! Eww, and I let you play in my mouth! No more!"
The gerbils that I had once begged for and wanted so very badly to care for, became a weighty bloody mess on my conscience. For a long time afterwards, every tragic scene was a haunting reminder of my deferred responsibility: squished squirrel on the road? Dead gerbil I neglected. Bloody scenes in movies? Gerbil guts. Zombies eating people alive? I wonder if the mother was alive while the little buggers nibbled off her nose...?
Okay, the gerbil was 4 years old and probably died of the shock upon realizing: "holy shit, I'm a 90-year-old mother." Maybe. Or maybe, she recognized an opportunity for uncredited greatness and thus forfeited her life so that her young might flourish with healthy, bright shiny coats. Is a rational explanation really going to help me to feel any better about the event? Hmmmmm, Yes. Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies. Tell me that all gerbil mothers die for their young. Oh, they don't? Well then, tell me that my gerbil was a member of a secret religious sect that prided itself on its bleeding edge occultist practises. Yes, that's gotta be it. Damn religious fanatics and their pride. I'm absolved of all responsibility now. Not my fault; her choice. In fact, I should feel angry for having been subjected to such a shocking display against my will! Yes.
No, I'm full of shit. I wonder if people who are full of shit, know that they are full of shit...? Oh, they know that they are full of shit -- that is why they must recite their beliefs over and over, lest they forget their convictions and their worlds fall apart. Back we go to cognitive dissonance.
Um I don't really know what I'm getting at here, but I'm fairly certain that the words "chemical" and "imbalance" make an entrance in Act 3, Scene 1. That's the extent of Hamlet in my story, 'cause the next scene is out of the Hitchhiker's Guide. Nothing exists in a vacuum; all touches all. Sweep away until there is nothing left to trip over. Nothing is as it seems, so look to the source and not to the writing on Schrodinger's Wall. I like to change things after the fact and reuse the past to make something new. Brahma - Shiva - Vishnu. (I'm sure I'll read this later and wonder what the hell I'm talking about.)
Oh, here's a rat near my house:
No comments:
Post a Comment