Anthropomorphia
Anthropomorphia (Animal Talk) by Jeff Hunt Now this is the law of Jungle As old and as true as the sky And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper And the wolf that shall break it may die As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk The law runneth forward and back The strength of the pack is the wolf And the strength of the wolf is the pack -Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book ---------------- My name is Grasshopper Nascent. They either called me Grasshopper �cause I�m small and from the country, or because I used to carry around a cricket in a cage like the frigging Emperor of China. Same little chirper for years, like he was the soundtrack to my life. A country boy�s boom box. But that was a long time ago now. A couple years, but it seems like more turns around the sun than that since I came to writing this in my pickup in the parking lot of Wal-mart. I could almost swear I�ve come to here, like I�ve been shanghaied, like I was born again here with this humid differential between my body and the night air outside fogging the windows, and with a knot on my head too. You could say I�d been lulled to sleep by the deceptive rise and fall of daily life. Call it reality, call it whatever, but I�d gotten used to things until I got caught out in this storm a half hour ago. You might immediately assume that�s a bad thing, a storm, but it knocked sense in my head, opened my mind to another street in this world I�d long forgotten about, the one where the animals live. I�ll get to that in a second. But first, maybe you want to know what this storm was like? After all, you weren�t there, and it�s too soon for it to make the news. Well, you know how dreams are? You know how sometimes when you sleep, crazed versions of your everyday reality, and great outpourings of emotion are reassembled in your head? Well, this was nature�s version of those dreams. I was struck by lightning. They say Utopia is Greek for �no place,� and that�s where I was for one second, lit up like a brush fire. Sitting here now in the cab of this old truck, sparks practically still flying off me, I now recall when I used to wander my town with a cricket as my best friend. And that�s the beauty of memories, isn�t it? That they refresh themselves. In my case, I was something you just needed to add water too. Just add a little water. And lightning. I recall the old philosopher who near then end of his life in Europe was hit by a trolley. It almost dragged him to death. At the hospital, he said that at the time of his accident, all he could think was �Finally! Something is happening to me!� Crackle, spit, pop, I was struck by lighting, by divinity, a nerve of the universe. It was so bright flowers opened. A vision where I saw time backwards and forwards. I saw myself walking to the door of Wal-mart and finding it closed for the night. I saw myself laying in the vacant lot watching the clouds gather. The first lightning broke to the near west and the branches were illuminated. I lay there like I was tied to the ground, each crack of lightning illuminating something different to me, like a hectic electrical version of finding shapes in clouds. Zap! A herd of spiraling pronghorn antelope�s horns. Zap! Field-goal posts. Ker-zap! A girl�s legs in the air. Then last, like the trees were DNA totem poles where I saw my past and future, a creation story, a family story of man and animals and plants with a shared root system of underground wiring, something connected like a herd. It was like those Mexican murals that show a bi-section of the earth, starting with Hell or the underworld at the center of the earth, then moving up to the roots of the crops, then up to the fields, people and houses, and then the sky. In this stacked up vision of history, lit up on the trunks of trees, there were animals ever step of the way. We won�t even talk about here how we�ve ridden a river of hides and furs through history, warmed through winters that would have killed off the human race if we hadn�t borrowed their coats, or how they made the trails through the mountain passes and led us to water by trails they forged to every place we�ve settled on the planet, or how they�ve fed us so much and we�ve fed them so little despite the fear we sometimes give to some of their most carnivorous. So what about the little guy? These stinky guys, these growling, chirping, four-legged finned guys? Moo! I screamed in the field. Moo! It seemed like the smartest thing I ever said. And that�s not just the lightning talking. The lightning crashed again and I saw the future too, me as an old man, with what I guess was my future dog, muttering: �By God, Murph, if I ever get so old . . . I mean, if somehow things are so out of control that you or one of your offspring have executive will over my fate, don�t put me in one of those places. Just put me on a driftwood raft down the Mississipi, or the Rio Grande� � All of these chronological images were stacking in the shape of a double-helix, like DNA, a double-realix, planted in the ground by the lightning. My suspicions were true, if only in a mild way, I realized. I�d always thought that somehow, in some way, I might have superhero qualities given the right biological or industrial accident, like Spiderman�s radioactive spider. I was already picturing myself with lightning bolts on some fine headgear and a cape, finally something was happening to me. I wasn�t changing, only remembering who I really was, remembering a world that used to color my thoughts before adulthood dimmed them. Voices I could hear, concepts I could realize. So this is what they meant by illumination. In the seconds after, in what follows bright and incredible inspiration, it was if I was reaching around me to gather myself and my belongings, and found on the ground this old memory at arm�s length, my talent. I remembered that as a child, I could actually talk to animals. I was freaking Dr. Doolittle, very in touch with nature and all that. If this seems useless or ridiculous, consider this: Animals are a medium that people sometimes connect through. For example, a couple that can�t communicate straight on, instead bouncing their relationship off the antics of their cat or dog. Truly, sometimes cats and dogs were surrogate children, or marriage counselors. As in, �Look at Sweets! She�s so funny when she�s hungry, run to the store and get her that bone marrow she likes,� actually reads, �It�s so much more natural to show our affection for this cat than directly for each other. Run an errand for her and you�ve run an errand for me.� Animals, if anything, for these sort of people, are surrogate children, and perhaps more. Strange roommates who live on your dime, sometimes run your life, and who, somehow, we are indebted to. Life loves life, Rudyard Kipling said. I could hear all the animals again, large and small, like they were writing their diaries in my ears. Back at home that night I could hear my own dog in the backyard journaling the day, and his was the most provocative, almost burning my ears to learn what he thought of me. I also learned he was even more of a mutt than I�d realized, proofed by his Creole accent. �Man was all over my ass today: Laugh out loud he frustrated! Don�t sit on this, no, no, no. But what he no understand when I jumping all over him (mud can�t stop the way I feel) or trying to make love to his hat is that I never going to hit the big shot to win the game, was no going to college, would no have little family (am fixed in fact) that in short, Man and Ma�am are everything to me. Ma�am knows this, and when she speaks, ooh boy, it really make me cock my head and listen!� And last I heard one of the rats that plague my garage confiding to my dog. This little rat with a nervous Hispanic accent was looking to my dog as he put a tentative foot on a fallen twig in this path: �Do you think it�ll hold?� My dog scoffed. �Jesus, and if it no you�ll what, shit, fall de whole half-inch to de ground?� Life loves life Rudyard Kipling said. Or take St. Francis of Assissi, a wonderfully crazy bastard. I mean, he was my grandpa�s patron saint, and there are statues all over the world of him with a dove on his hand and so forth, but he was actually a little bit more fun to be around than that (the word that comes to mind on this night is �electric.� He had that same ker-zap Van Gogh had). For instance, when some people at the time (whose names didn�t go into history books) were holding a fiery poker to St. Francis� eye for being a so-called heretic, he became distracted by some better conversation, reputedly cocking his ear to some avarian chattering in a nearby grove and asking �What�s that brother bird?� And so my one goal on this night, like St. Francis, like that great one Noah filling up a boat, was advancing animal society. My skill, my superhero trait was anthropomoporhpia, was animal talk. I went into the backyard and buried my nose in my dog�s fur. I remembered him at the pound where I found him. You are my friend, I told him, and that�s not just the lightning talking. Later that night he added an entry in his journal absent-mindedly as he pushed an empty and beleaguered Gatorade bottle across the driveway with his nose: Long time ago, the Earth, she splitting in two. This crack had Man and Ma�am on one side, me and animals on one side. I ran and jumped. Man thanked me tonight, told me good jump, good boy, good boy.
Copyright © 2005 Jeff Hunt |