~ a short story
The thrum of deep sound hearkens me to return.
Where?
As a child, I was quiet but mischievous. More than anything, I liked to make people laugh. I wanted fun and smiling people; I yearned for…
What?
A rain check in my pocket. Bank account numbers in my head. Remember to keep the batteries charged. The hum of electricity, the ticking of clocks. Chairs that swivel and chests-of-drawers. A forgettable Tuesday inside screens and on highways, with eyes on signs and other people, near and far away. Iron and steel, lights that blind and air that chills with exactitude and sandwiches that smell like a corporation. Everything is the same.
Why?
All these things are the things the trees tell me to flee with all my heart. Go down a dirty path and into the great big dark. Away, away from the trains and the brightness, from walls and concrete and the crushing weight of false urges borne entirely of words. Words…
From who?
This sound is the call. And it is from nowhere. It is from the World. From euclid wilderness and from sassy chaos and from the final shades of nearing death.
I yearn to answer it.
With blood and fire, fervor and bald, naked fury, I will heed such a call.
When?
By going into the wood without a plan, I feed myself to the world, enriching its reach and extending its life, scrambling for answers I can only summon on my own. Stepping over bulging roots, with slowly snapping tendons and sweating, slicking skin that sprawls over muscles and bones the colour of the cosmos, I run. I run from the muzak and mustard. I run through the decay and pheromones. I run into the evolving violence and penetration and bloody fatefulness of nature. I run into a life of destruction, away from the fadeaway of the new world and into the bedlam of the old one.
The dusty, howling void back there counters the screams from the wilderness with a silence all its own.
How?
Sun at last on my scalp, I return without a word, answering as only a beast may. ~
