Toward a better tomorrow

Dear diary,

When wandering thru the wilderness, I feel dissatisfied. So I ask myself: What would please me? And the answer is: Companionship.

As always, however, I stress that it would need to be wild beasts that chance upon me and then stick with me voluntarily. So as I’m wandering along, if an elephant and a camel were to join me, I would be satisfied.

Additionally I would like it if some birds would fly along by my side. But not buzzards — for that would signify that I might die soon. (Buzzards are extremely fair-weather disciples.) And, as long as they don’t bite, I appreciate the company of alligators and crocodiles.

I don’t want any fish, tho, cuz they can’t figure out how to swim on land; and nobody wants to drag a heavy aquarium thru the desert. Plus, what can a human say to a slimy fish? There’s little potential for conversation.

But I would like to have a dolphin, and also a squid — make that a Giant Squid. I like those two sea creatures. Also any type of “monsters of the deep”: the fabled Leviathan; and the Serpent of Loch Ness: Spinosaurus, I think he’s called. (The name means “spine lizard”.) Plus I like jellyfish, if they don’t mind floating along with the birds in the air.

*

Now that I have my congregation of followers, what should we do?

I don’t wanna preach to them: that’s boring. They’re all good souls, anyway; they don’t need my advice — there’s absolutely no room for improvement, in these creatures. That’s why mankind was smart to fall from perfection: that way we have something to pretend to strive for… and (best of all), if perfection comes within reach, you can always elude it; like the deer who thinks I actually care to hold her, in that poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt:

. . . as she fleeth afore,
Fainting I follow.

Don’t tell the hind, but I alway purposely miss her with my arrows. (I learned this from Cupid.) For, anyway, once in my grasp, she would only prove a letdown: I’d notice her coat is filthy, & there are ticks all over her skin.

Yes, the reason I chase is to watch her rollick away.

So I don’t want any deer or gazelles or antelopes in my company. They can trot on ahead of us, but let them maintain their distance.

I would, however, like one chamois.

And, as I said before, I love goats; so as many goats as want to join us: the more the merrier. I even welcome sheep and pigs.

*

But what should we do? I still haven’t answered that.

We can’t play sports, cuz animals are too creative for such strictures.

I’d suggest that we perform a singalong, & alternate from hymns to drinking songs; but that seems too cheap & blatantly inauthentic, like those cartoon movies that anthropomorphize their wildlife.

So I guess we’ll just keep on wandering. That’s fine; I don’t mind wandering. I actually kinda like it. It’s refreshing, the way that just doodling on a paper without any aim is much more fun than fresco-painting a church ceiling. (Who wants to lie on their back, hanging precariously at such a terrifying height, with paint dripping in your face!? I’ll take wandering with my troop of beasts in the wilderness, any day, over working for the Pope.)

& while we’re wandering, I could teach my friends about the futility of commands. I’d say, “Listen up, everyone. I’m going to make it rain now.” And then I’d shout: “Let there be rain!” And of course the atmosphere would remain bone-dry.

So we’d continue pacing thru the wasteland, and the animals would not reply to my speech above. They would all just keep wandering. I wouldn’t feel like a failure or a success, because my friends did not judge me: they didn’t guffaw at my words, or publish a bad review of my prophecy. We all just keep wandering.

& the next lesson I’d venture to teach them would work even better:

I’d say, “Alright folks, Lesson Two: give ear.” Then I’d shout, “Let the sun turn to blood!”

Then an eclipse would cause the earth to grow pitch black at noon. This would happen cuz I’ve been paying attention to the sky, noting the behavior of the planets & constellations, over many lifetimes. So I was able to predict the exact moment this event would reoccur.

But the great thing is that my troop doesn’t care much more for this aberration than they did for my earlier effort:

When the daylight blackens, everyone slows their pace a little, and they begin to tremble, because darkness is a lot more scary when you have no street-lamps (and we forgot to bring any fire, so we can’t even light the wick on our barrel of whale oil); but once the sun re-emerges, we all just keep on wandering as if nothing strange happened. Only the gators act a little wary, and the crocs remain more suspicious henceforward.

*

So I love my friends, because they are resistant to learning. Anything too rigidly structured earns their disdain.

It’s true that they’ll agree to participate in the most basic system of sign language, but only for the sake of preserving the fabric of our society, which depends upon us all keeping a safe distance between each other throughout our wanderings.

And if any creature gets injured, the others will all try to help out, as long as it doesn’t require a great deal of effort. For instance, if one of the songbirds sprains her wing, the elephant will allow her to ride on his back, because songbirds don’t weigh much; whereas, when the donkey fell ill from overeating, we all just left him lying where he collapsed on the ground; and he receded into the distance as we walked off. That’s why our group no longer has a donkey.

Also: when any team member bears a child, those who are nearby when the birth occurs usually help to raise it. Obviously there are exceptions, but, even after our squid bore a squidling, and the poor blob sat there writhing helplessly in the dirt, our camel took it upon herself to nudge the newborn along with the tip of her snout, until the thing figured out how to swim on its own — this was despite the fact that these two species are natural enemies.

*

I’ve wandered countless miles with my motley crew; and we’ll surely wander many more. We have no idea where we’re going, and we don’t care. We simply enjoy moving forward & looking around.

It’s admittedly curious that we’ve never encountered another group like ours, in all our travels. One might assume that there are other packs out there, shuffling hither & yon just as leisurely, and it’s inevitable that we’ll meet each other eventually. But this hasn’t happened yet.

I often wonder what we’ll do, in such an event. Will we clans fight each other? Or will we join forces and merge into one single posse of wanderers?

Will our chamois run off with their chamois? That would devastate me, as our chamois is my favorite family member.

Perhaps these foreigners will have found a way to pull an oblong saltwater aquarium behind them, vast as an ocean; and all our sea-beasts will abandon us for this paradise. (Now that I’ve said it, I’m sure this will happen.)

& what if the alternate group’s leader is an attractive human female? Should I immediately step forth and declare my love for her, or should I play hard-to-get?

Or what if, in place of a regular human, they have a chimpanzee instead, tied with twine to a makeshift crucifix? Or what if they lack any primate at all, just as my own congregation decided against allowing fish to join?

These questions are frightening. To circumvent them, I’ll coax my followers toward the void that I espy in the distance. For I’ve come to the conclusion, on behalf of us all, that it would be better for us to confront the abyss directly.