7:4 On Companionship
Sure, I like other people. I mean, nobody likes to be alone all the time. But I also like to be able to shut out the world when it gets too full of itself.
The thing is, a large portion of society is incapable of grasping the weird physics of the human system. Look at it this way: people scoff or frown censoriously when I say the world revolves around me. But that’s not because they think I am being selfish or arrogant. No, it’s because it means the world can’t therefore be revolving around them.
And that’s where they are wrong: it can. Just because we grew up with some weird life-metaphor based on Galilean physics as the basis for our love-your-fellow-man drivel, that doesn’t mean it’s actually right. That’s how metaphors work, right? They stand in as a representation of an idea you are having difficulty grasping in some sort of attempt to get you to think outside of the box you call a braincase. And all too often the metaphor gets away from you and suddenly it’s leading you and a hundred other lemmings off a cliff.
So stay with me. The galactic metaphor has bodies orbiting around other bodies, right? And since some guy, born 40 years before the invention of the telescope, gets his hands on one and declares the celestial truth for ever and ever, then that’s that right? Really? Try selling that to your 10-year-old and he will tell you to take a flying leap.
Anyway, we’ve got bodies orbiting around a central point, but there is no way, given the additional 400 years of science, we can still believe there is only one central point. Hell, the astronomers have us talking about the entire universe pulsing in and out, and we all know galaxies are sure as shit are revolving around something. So it stands to reason there are whole heck of a lot of revolutions still unaccounted for.
Back to me. I never said the whole world revolves around me. It doesn’t. The whole anything doesn’t do anything; as far as I am concerned, there is no whole, just a ton of pieces. And my piece, well it revolves around me and mine.
But like I said, no man is an island. And sometimes I get lonely like any other guy.
—excerpt from The Beaver Monologues; published 2013
7:3 Kill d’wabbit
Busybodies are annoying. I mean, what is more teeth-grindingly, hackle-raisingly aggravating than someone sticking their twitchy nose into your business? What is? That’s right: nothing is. Except maybe a self-righteous genius who thinks by dint of his superior whatever, he has the right and obligation to keep you from straying off the path. Doesn’t matter to him if you aren’t even on the same road; oh no, there is but one way, and one way only. Fricking know-it-all.
Now I am not by nature a violent fellow. Live and let live is a pretty damn good motto. I rarely have the urge to bite off a leg or wipe out entire towns by flooding the streets, but I have to tell you, a person can be pushed too far. and it’s usually the damn busybodies that do it.
I mean, people usually have a plan. Sure, sure, sometimes people jump off a bridge at the spur of the moment or reach and plant a big smooch on the lips of the CEO just because, but generally people have already come up with the idea and at least mulled it over a bit before committing to frenching the boss. And if a guys wants to do something that seems to be a bit, well, on the stupid side, then let him have at ‘er, I say. Live and let live.
Really it;s just an extension of cogito ergo sum: I cog’d already, so just let me sum… I don’t need, or want, your help. And if I find myself keeping the sun off some pompous English twat, then it’s just my bad luck, ain’t it.
But that’s not good enough for some ‘people’. Nope, they got to go out of their way to spell out the errors of your ways, all in some vain hope that they can ‘improve’ the world or some such asinine fecal matter as that.
And just try telling them to mind their own business. It doesn’t work. Because, you see, they really believe your business is their business. And if they are smart enough (my aforementioned self-righteous genius springs to mind) they will chew off your ear with a bunch of indisputable facts and convoluted and twisty logic that just proves their point, thank you very much and please now desist from that self-destructive behaviour before someone gets hurt, pat, pat pat.
Oh, someone is going to get hurt and it isn’t going to be those of us who think self-determinism is more than a six-syllable word meaning pushover. I have a plan for that egotistical, overgrown chinchilla that will make him finally realize the world is not populated with gun-toting Elmer Fudds for him to bamboozle.
The plan? Nope, not telling. We’ll all just wait and see, shall we?
—excerpt from The Beaver Monologues; published 2013
7:2 Angry Ist. Ah!
Just what is with all the ists? Angry ists, stupid ists, happy ists, even wimpy ists: they are all of the same cloth and they, quite frankly, get on my nerves.
It would like to say I dislike the Marxists more than the capitalists, or despair of the pacifists more than the creationists, but really they all are a pain in the patootie. A bunch of otherwise supposedly thinking creatures wandering around espousing some cockamamie theory to the exclusion of every other thought or opinion. Hell, to the exclusion of the reality right in from of their furry little noses.
And it’s all based on belief. They believe! Really, at the end of the day, they are all a bunch of theists, believing in something greater than their acorn-sized noggins are capable of encompassing. Frankly, I’ve had more sophisticated conversations with a poplar sapling than I’ve had with some of the supposed “scholars” who hawk their istic twaddle in the guise of science or religion or humanity or {shudder} common sense. But they believe. They believe so fervently that if God himself were to show up at an agnostic convention, they’d sit him down and try to convince him to give it all up in favour of of sitting around with his thumbs up his ass, questioning his own existence.
And don’t get me started on the Marxists. Granted they were smart enough to name their ism after a real guy, which entitles them to the capital by default—everyone else had to work for it— but really, the fact that they can’t see that the maundering of some guy already dead for more than a hundred years shouldn’t be taken so seriously, given that he didn’t know what computer was, or that fascism hadn’t been invented, or that frankly instantaneous global communication has kinda changed the playing field ….Oh, no, never mind those and oh so many more interesting tidbits. What some lunatic exile wrote as a mental mastubatory exercise to impress his cronies must be taken as gospel.
Gospel. Huh, that’s ironic. Now that i think of it, Jesus and Marx have a lot in common: exiles, revolutionary thinkers, issues with women, and of course, the beards…
Man, I hate beards: they make my teeth hurt. And you’ve got to know that’s a world of pain…
—excerpt from The Beaver Monologues; published 2013
7:1 The Triscuit Reality
Humidex: pah!
Wind chill: bah!
Hot is hot; cold is cold. Hot or cold, cold or hot; just get over it already. The wind chill was bad enough. “Uh … did you know it’s colder if you stand in the wind?” Sheesh. But now they are trying to push the idea that hot is hotter if it’s, you know, hot. I don’t want to believe a Canadian came up with the humidex, but it’s true. Why couldn’t we have just sat the whole silly weather game out? That way we could have been quietly smug: totally the Canadian way and a perfect way to celebrate Canada Day.
Anyway, my predictions for July? Well there are going to be some hot days and some cool days. Oh, and some rainy days. If you want to know which is which, just open your door and step outside. It will be pretty apparent without having to resort to made-up measures.
—excerpt from The Beaver Monologues; published 2013
6:30
6:30
Step One: Get some sleep. Get lots of sleep.
One of the most annoying things about being a rabbit was that sleep was a built-in function. Rabbits don’t hibernate, but they do spend a lot of time resting and processing energy. The dumbest thing about being a vegetarian was that vegetarians spend a lot of energy generating energy. These were the kind of inefficiencies that drove Edward crazy.
Step Two: Stay out of the heat and away from the crowds. It had been bad enough the past few weeks, dealing with everyone without deliberately going out of his way to seek social interaction. Let the people do as they may. Edward was sitting this one out.
Step Three: A little research was in order. There were a few things about the last couple of weeks that didn’t quite ring true and since the next few weeks’ outcomes were going to be completely predicated on what had just finished happening, a little peek into what was going on under the surface just might make things easier to foresee.
6:29
6:29
Edward glanced up at the faded old promotional clock on the sign above the door of the corner store. It was too late to start anything today. And worse, it was the Friday of a long weekend and it was highly unlikely that he’d get through half of what he needed to do with everyone out traipsing around the woods like a herd of drunken elk.
No, it would better to hunker down and wait; take the weekend off, so to speak, and start fresh after the kerfuffle was done. But that didn’t mean he would be wasting time.
Edward had a plan.
6:28
6:28
A dark and moonless night, far from the highways and towns with their hustle and bustle, spreading their noise and light pollution regardless of time of day, month or season. The stars glittered across the sky like a smear of opal dust. They lay on the velvet background of the night sky: a cloudy brush stroke that cast no light of its own, existing only as a background to the fears and worries of a day now gone.
No shadows, no shapes, just a smothering, omnipresent darkness casting its claim of silence and engulfing the present, seemingly blocking out time and hope and all thoughts of the future.
But the past, ah, the past, it leaked through, didn’t it? Under the folded edges of the darkness, through the weave of the night’s fabric, from the very air itself, the past and its pain, regrets and unbearable finality crept into this close and empty void. And there seemed to be no escape, no way to turn aside the tide. For it came not in waves but as a mist. It was not there to grasp or confront but still moved through, over and around everything that made up the moment she now confronted.
The moment she did not want nor had ever cared to see. That moment had arrived with the darkness, and she was powerless to push it back. This was not a Pandora’s box to wail and scream over with regret and cries of denial. There was no lid to slam shut, no box to hurl and smash against a royal wall. There was no symbol of failure or self-inflicted misery to rail against. There was just Meredith, alone with Meredith. And with nothing and no one by her side. And with no excuses left.
6:27
6:27
At night there is a certain kind of silence, as if the lack of light diminishes all the other senses. As nightfall comes, the feeling of being alone grows out of proportion to all else. The evening scents, the touch of the bedclothes, the dying sounds of the day all fade to nothingness as our eyes lose the last rays, the last photons of the day’s sun.
But it is the quiet, the quiet, that drives one mad. No matter what sounds still weave through the night, that legendary cloak of night muffles and strangles their last gasps, leaving us alone in a mindless, soundless void.
6:26
6:26
Meredith elbowed her eBay through the screen door and placed the remnants of her dinner on the counter. She had been sitting on the veranda for hours but it hadn’t really had any effect on her mood.
But then she really hadn’t expected it too. Odd. She really hadn’t felt this way since that incident with Barney but of course, it was just a continuation of that sordid event wasn’t it.
The antique dining room table was just as she’d left it. The dark wood inlayed with elegant traceries and polished to mirror finish contrasted with the dilapidated cardboard box and and it’s even more disreputable contents. It had been 2 days since shed deposited it there and 12 hours since she had mustered up the courage to open it and flip through it’s contents. The unwanted feelings that were engendered by the simple fact of its existence still ebbed and flowed through her psyche like the turbulence at the base of a giant cracked dam and she feared the dam could not hold much longer.
She knew it was time to give in, open the floodgates, and hope and pray that after the pain and destruction, the waters would once again run clear and clean. And that would be worth it. Years of aching and doubt washed away in one cleansing wave, with the flood waters bring renewal and new life. She knew it was time and yet the godfather of all emotions held her back from hope or succor.
Meredith was still afraid. After all these years and all that unending struggle to stay sane, to retain her pride, and to prove to herself she had not been broken, Meredith was afraid.
And yet the box remained on her elegant dining room table, destroying any hope that she could recede once more into the depths. The box, and it’s contents demanded she face that fear because there was no longer any escape, no longer anyplace to hide.
The beaver had seen to that.
6:25
6:25
The sun set slowly over the hillside, casting its dying light against the clouds and bringing their chameleon-like shapes into relief, changing over and over the colours and tones of the evening sky.
The rains had gone and there was now a little warmth in the air, soon all that would remain of the dying summer sun. From the coulee the evening song of the frogs and crickets slowly replaced the happy chattering of sparrows and chickadees. It was unusually humid, and moisture hung in the air, making it as close to muggy as it ever got on the desert-like prairie.
High in the sky an angled line of geese slowly descended over the horizon returning to the lake after a day of feeding. It was early for them to be making their way back south, but the goslings were all grown up and perhaps it was a sign that these summer days were also slowly setting. A last forlorn chorus of honking and the geese were gone, leaving nothing and no one to share the moment.
And ever more quickly the waves of light faded, rippling out against the clouds, winking in and out, in and out and then fading to nothingness; one by one, slowly leaving nothing but darkness in their wake.
And at last the light was gone. The clouds spread across the sky to brush out the light of the stars. And the prairie was quiet, dark and a most suitable canvas for the feelings of loneliness and quiet fear that were all that remained of a long and unmourned day.