Down to Earth

Sometimes.. I question the intellect of our leaders. Not that I’m Einstein by any means.. but I find our collective governments’ obsession with outer space puzzling. Looks like we’ve dialled down a little on the search for alien life forms, or at least we’re spending a little less on it than we were a decade ago. However, the focus hasn’t diminished, only shifted. Now we’re looking for other habitable planets, presumably to set up Plan B for when we’re done trashing our own place. Even if we could set up some kind of Brave New World someplace else, wherever we go.. as they say in the classics... there we are! - humans ready to keep on making the same old mistakes.

Many people believe that there MUST be other life forms out there, since the universe is so crazy big that the odds are in favour. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way, doesn’t it strike you as overly naive that we actually WANT to meet other creatures? Speaking of odds, what are the odds that those guys would be friendly? If you ask me, any aliens that made the arduous trip over to our galaxy are most likely doing it for conquest or for research. Either way that makes us bugs to be squashed or pinned to a board. Our earthly explorers of old were just looking to make friends with the natives... right? (Answer for those not au fait with history: No, they slaughtered the indigenous inhabitants and took the land.)

I’m not being paranoid, just practical. Take a look at us creatures for example. We have spent most of our history attacking and arguing with each other over greed for property and power. We’ve done irreparable damage to the planet in the process.  Why is it that we think any other species of creature would be any more altruistic? Why are we convinced that we’d be able to defend ourselves from life forms that found us and wanted to eat/annihilate/overtake us?

Where did we get the romantic idea that we’d most likely want to be friends with those aliens? We treat any of our own species who displays any kind of smidgeon of difference as freaks, weirdos and or outcasts. Since when are we so keen to embrace anyone not exactly like ourselves?

So meanwhile, here we are, like Red Riding Hood in the middle of the dark forest calling out sweetly..”Hello, anyone out there?” ...

wondering

Have you ever really thought about why you like.. any particular thing? Why do some foods make you drool? Why do some things mean more to you than others? Why do you like blue, or red, or mint green?

I do. I wonder about things like that. Cherries for example. Why do I adore cherries over say, strawberries? Why do I like to be kissed some places more than others?

Cherries is a simple one to practice such thinking on. Cherries are sweet, I like that. But they’re tangy too. Sometimes they have a little bite. They’re juicy as ... yeah. That. They come in so many rich shades of red, and the smooth shiny skin is beautifully simple with just one definite valley curving into a tidy stem. Cherries gravitate.. to other cherries, often found in pairs, kissing on the tree.

Cherry is to the senses what water is to the fish -  an all encompassing immersion in perception, a complete sensual experience, no receptor neglected. The cherry is satisfaction from all angles. A cherry demands your attention. No quick tasteless gulp is possible, since the pit anchors the eater to caution, to assiduous and thorough mastication lest it choke the glutton with purple stained vengeance. Cherries are serious fruit indeed, and paradoxically frivolous.

Perhaps it is all, or any one of these traits that finds favour with my choice. Maybe my first cherry was consumed on a cloudless day, and they have proclaimed summer to my imagination ever since? Surely a berry with such dark blood must have sprung from the fertile sweat of love’s inception! It is hard to conceive that Eve’s apple could have been more appealing.

I shall continue to wonder, looking for clues to my loves, my likes, my preferences. Why you? Why me? Something to ponder while I sit at the end of the jetty, demolishing my little handful of perfect maroon orbs.. spitting the pips into the lake. They make such a shy treble plip as they splash-land. 

The man who thought he was a banana had greater peel.

There are many things I could say about Animal’s qualities. His affability has more affs than anyone else I know. His suitability is pure Armani, and my excitability when we get together is torrential. I did already mention the carnival atmosphere we have going on, but perhaps it’s more of a circus. We have it all, the juggling, the acrobatics, plenty of elephants in the room and performing fleas which live in the pygmy forest of chest hairs nestled shyly somewhere above Animal’s solar plexus. Each flea has its own little hair upon which to practice its pole-dancing routine. Sexiest damn thing you ever saw.

We didn’t always have it so easy. Relationships are hard work – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Our first act was a tricky tight-rope walking number, and while we both firmly believed our shadows would catch us if we fell, we realized the ground was firm in its belief also. I always felt that Ms S and my own Mr Shady were out there with us, but a couple of times I saw him give Ms S the wink just before we put ourselves on the line.

A wobbly beginning isn’t such a bad thing. Turns out I’m an unnatural clown, and Animal is a barrel of laughs. We gave each other a few pies in the face, a couple of times he cut my suspenders and there I was pants down in the middle of the ring .. Awkward! And I may even have squirted him with my zappo-matic pistol-grip water gun once... or twice. The moral of the story turns out to be a good one though: If you don’t like bananas, stay out of the fruit bowl.

A season to write might be thyme.

Three’s a crowd they say. But four is not in the least bit squeezy. We discovered that quite by accident, my Animal and I, fairly early on in our carnival of a relationship. I had often sensed that we were never really alone but it took me a little while to discover who was shadowing us. Animal’s always been much more than one person could possibly contain; you’d be forgiven for thinking you were at a boozy party just having a one-on-one with him...  heaven knows his socks have a presence all their own.

When we first started dating, I’d be all oozing adrenalin and giggles while he sucked nonchalantly on one of his ciggies and we sparred away waiting to see who’d trip first over their own throw-away line. I thought it was his ego. He had one, that was pretty evident, and I knew mine was alive and well. But I can see looking back, that both egos stayed well tucked on the inside pockets, no, it was someone else who stood at a distance and whined. You know what that’s like, right? You’re all cosy and up close with someone you want to impress, and there at the corner of your eye is the annoying shape of another person hovering, like a horsefly, too far off to swat, but just close enough to be a buzzing in your ear. I’d look around but find nobody there.. a little unnerving to be sure, but I deliberately assassinated all doubts simply to be able to hang out with someone as magnetic as that sweet Animal. I wanted to shake him like a glitter ball and demand to know who he kept bringing with him but I’m glad I didn’t get narky because I don’t honestly think he knew.

One day when he wasn’t looking I snuck a glance over his shoulder and finally eye-balled Ms Spook. He was lighting up a new ciggy and had made a private little hollow for its butt in his cupped hands so the wind didn’t steal his flame, and that gave me a perfectly vacant full two seconds to pistol-whip the whore and demand to know her name. It seems she takes it in turns with various other types to hang about right there at his elbow. She was, she insisted, only the Next One. She stayed around sometimes to keep his cool, since a pessimistic streak he kept insisted that his current relationship could never last and was in fact already seconds away from implode. Apparently, when Ms S can’t make it, various exes fill in as possible Next Ones, but they get irritating and don’t last long.

I was pretty blown away by this revelation, and when he looked up with an impossibly alluring half smile of victory as he waved out his match I felt rather busted. Luckily he wasn’t in one of his observant moods. I was relieved. Relieved not only that he hadn’t noticed any increase in my awareness, but also that I wasn’t alone in not being alone. My own constant companion, part-time hustler and practically full time accuser of my soul, is never far off. No wonder we were so right away comfortable with one another, Animal and I. I’m almost certain our shadows hit it off marvelously from the start, finally provided with a full-time distraction themselves. The two of us make a tight little clique, enthralled and distracted in our psycho-pad for four.

a new thing

I remember the pain of newness.

Joy is the carpet underfoot,

but as I tread each step,

I know there must be suffering

as birth takes over the mind and will.

What can come from nothing?

Bringing forth is a process full of

dynamic agonies and unfettered

release.

Do we wish to walk the way of creation,

committed to making a new thing, together?

Anticipation of beauty and life

becomes a narcotic to the reality of change.

Even with the goal in sight,

still the travail must be borne,

until we hold in our arms

sweetness and understanding.

What can we truly have without effort?

I remember, and I am willing

to walk that way again.

Half Light

The half light is here.

My eyes have welcomed the dark and the bed

is done sighing

under the weight of my night-clad body.

On the other side of the window

the moon is dancing

a sedate fandango with the cirrus.

My legs twitch to their lunar music

painted zebra through Venetian slats.

Far from reverie

my imaginings clamour to fly

through the glass perhaps

to steal a set or two

in silver arms,

treading lightly on a stairway of rays.

But the air in my room soon

eats the wings from those

Peter Pan notions.

It curls from nostril to tongue

in a slow waltz to the sand,

lashing down each lid

with the dull thread of sleep.

I am delivered into the night

as Cleopatra

mummified in a pile of dreams and

binding cares.

Small snores from the tomb

mark the hours until the moon

has gone and rude daylight blares

on the other side of the window,

ordering blinds open with a

brassy authority

even I cannot evade.

One last

fleeting memory clings hopeful

to the half light muse,

but she is merciless and flits

to be extinguished by the sun.

© Lottie 2014

Creative Challenge 274 .. understated

 *link to the challenge*