Fresh Oil - Monologue

We live at the footstool of a jungle mountain whose presence begs one’s attention at any hour. I’ll sit on occasion, musing in its general direction through the sun-soaked morning haze. Something closes my eyes sometime after the neighbors dog fails to resume its barking cycle, silence descends like fresh oil. It runs through my rebelliously long hair and down across my closed lips. I open my other sight and can hear the jungle’s morning crew as they talk to Aioue about today’s sustenance. It’s a minimalist’s symphonic work with other lessor voices in the mix, no less important.

Then Blackie hops up on my lap and wants his belly to be scratched. He too plays his part in that symphony. In those suspended moments I simply am, nothing more or less, and I’m in the amniotic waters of my own personal universe. I have no voice or communication gadget because there’s no use for either. I am not a son, a father, a husband or an artist. I just am, nothing more or less. Lingering, I’m quite unaware of a ticking clock, until that is, the dog resumes its cycle or the cigarette smoke from the incoming contractors next door gang rapes the virgin jungle’s perfume, or until the sun works it’s willing way past the roof line and on to my hairy toes. Then I detach and begin the daily swim of pretending to be human.

Whether I spent ten minutes or an hour and a half up there I could not tell you. For me, these potent moments are not measured in minutes and are medicinal only when unplanned. You would think that I would be up there every morning but I’m not, because I don’t want to loose the wonder to a perfunctory world. Or is that just a high-powered excuse that we use to keep us from living up to the transcendent lives, unbesmirched by the forth dimension, we pine for in our words of poetry?

I’m too hooked on comfort to risk finding out which of those, if either, is the truth.