Apologies for the tangent. 言歸正傳。。。
In my last post, “Perspective: The He Tihua”, I stated a falsehood (without knowing it). I said that I’d bumped into my classmate and friend David at the monastery outside of Zhongdian a few days before meeting He Tihua, but the opposite was true; David and I had first spent time in the Lijiang valley together, where He Tihua was, and that was weeks before we bumped into each other at the monastery.
Memory is a fickle beast, and the more years pass, the less I trust it. The brain seems to have a way of rewriting history. I’ve noticed in others, and I’ve noticed in myself. I guess that’s just life.
So anyway, after dwelling on the sequence of events some more and consulting my journals, I now realize that it was a few months after parting ways in the city of Kunming that we’d run into other in the town of Lijiang, where we then spend a few rather eventful weeks getting into trouble together (to say the least). Rendezvousing in Lijiang had been total coincidence; neither of us had know the other would be there. I think the last I’d heard David say was that he wanted to see Beijing, which was thousands of miles to the northeast.
When we left Lijiang, we headed off in separate directions. I hitchhiked up a valley to the north and crossed a couple of snowy mountain passes, attempted to cross another (stubbornly, for I’d been told by a truck driver that the pass had been snowed in and was too dangerous to travel — to which I, teenager that I was, had of course thought, Too dangerous? Pffft, not for me! ). After witnessing a couple members of a road crew very nearly (and literally) knock each other’s heads off, and then make up afterward by drinking toasts with the most disgusting alcoholic beverage I’d ever tasted (before or since), I had no choice but to accept that the pass would not be clear for a couple of weeks at least, so I backtracked to try another route. My destination? Tibet. Which was why I went to Zhongdian, which was where I bumped into David the second time, weeks after Lijiang.
So, anyway. Lijiang is an ancient town traditionally populated by the Naxi nationality, though nowadays there are way more Han Chinese people living there than the former. Interestingly, the Naxi written language, “Dongba”, is one of the few surviving (at least I assume it’s still alive; this was in the early 90s) truly pictographic scripts in the world. …Okay, I just looked it up; it’s still being taught, so it hasn’t died yet. Excellent. Anyone interested in linguistics and written languages should have a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongba_symbols
Alright, not going to let myself go off on another tangent. Asserting control over the caffeine in my system… NOW.
Towering over the far side of the valley was the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and its massif. David and I decided to take a day hike, with the goal of exploring its thickly forested southern foothills; we’d misjudged distances, gotten a bit lost, and knocked on a poor woodcutting couple’s door well after dark. They were very hospitable and generous, inviting us in to share their turnip soup with them (as well as some baijiu which, for lack of a better comparison, is basically white lightning). We thanked them and made to leave, but they insisted that we stay the night; “bu anquan, bu anquan,” they kept telling us. It’s not safe; not safe. So we slept in their spare room and got up early the following morning, enjoyed some tea and rice with leftover turnip soup, thanked them profusely. We tried politely to give them some cash for putting us up and feeding us, but they wouldn’t hear of it, so we headed back down the mountain.
At the bottom of the long slope, we exited the forest and had to traverse a series of very watery square ponds, walking along the dikes in-between. I don’t think I cared what they were at the time, but now I’m wondering whether they were rice fiends or eel fields or both. On the other side was a big lake, blue as a baby’s eyes beneath the cloudless sky (the above photo is not mine — I still can’t find my slides), and it was on its shores that we came across three guys taking a smoke break from busting rocks. One of them was He Tihua.
Now I’m second-guessing myself, wondering if the rice/eel fields were after the lake or before…. Nope, they were before. Def-def-DEFinitely.
The men hailed us cheerfully, beckoning us over. Back then, it wasn’t every day a person might bump into foreigners in those parts. Not even every year, that far outside of town. Once the ritual of offering and accepting cigarettes had concluded, we began to answer their questions — mainly asked by the tallest and strongest of them, a guy who was clearly their leader. I reckon he was probably around 28 or 29, and the other two maybe a couple of years younger at most. We introduced ourselves using our Chinese names — Lei Zhibo and Baishitao, names we’d been given by a teacher — and politely asked them their names.
I’ll never forget the tall one’s response. He had no shirt on, and was rippling with muscles — not the kind formed by working out in the gym & sucking down protein shakes; these were true, tough-as-nails, honesttogod muscles, formed from doing years of manual jobs like busting up boulders with a sledgehammer in the freezing alpine wind. Rather than simply tell us his name, he took a drag off his filterless Chuncheng cigarette, leaving it dangling from his lower lip, and then struck a pose — feet far apart, flexing skyward with both fists like he was drawing back to take aim with an imaginary 100+ pound bow — then puffed out his chest and hollered so loud his voice cracked: “I AM… THE HE TIHUA!!!!!!!”
When David and I cracked up laughing, He Tihua smiled even more broadly, and did it again, even louder this time, not even caring that his cigarette had dropped from his lip to the rocky ground. “I AM THE HE TIHUA!!!!!!!!!!”
I suppose it was only fair; after all, we’d introduced ourselves in Chinese, so he had clearly felt obliged to introduce himself in English. With gusto. And in the only English he knew, we later found out.
After introductions were finished (sorry, I honestly can’t remember the other two guys’ names, but they, too, were quite friendly and welcoming toward us, just not half as loud), He Tihua got right down to the important business at hand: “Lai lai lai, hejiu!” Come come come, let’s drink!
This was not the first time I’d had baijiu, but to this day it most certainly was one of the most enjoyable. Lounging around in the sun, staring into the wind and waves, smoking cheap-ass cigarettes and drinking down shot after shot of burning hard liquor that went down like fire and turned our insides and faces cozy warm against the cold — this was late morning at best, you have to understand; what people recently have been calling “day drinking”, I suppose? — well, the only way I can describe it is that time froze. We were existing, neither in the future nor the past, but right there, right then, right in that moment and in that moment only.
Carefree, people call it. Well sure. That’s what we were. Language didn’t matter; we all communicated together just fine without it. Clocks didn’t matter. Schedules didn’t exist.
I can’t speak for He Tihua and his buddies, of course. I’m sure they did have a schedule, at least a loose one. I only have my perspective to go by, and can only imagine theirs, as a sort of uneducated guess based on the look in their eyes, the firmness in their handshakes, the cheerfully clapped shoulders, the camaraderie, the smiles at parting, the unspoken We might never see each other again and we are from different worlds but bygod we just had a bloody good connection and a most excellent few hours drinking together and we will be friends to the very end of the world.
So no, I have no way of truly knowing what He Tihua et al were thinking deep down. But I believe they genuinely were enjoying it too. At the very least, they’d met a couple of nineteen-year-olds who had given them an excuse not to have to work so hard for part of the day, though I suspect this was probably their normal pace anyway. Get there, work up a sweat, take a break, work a bit more, have some more to drink & maybe a bite to eat; work a bit more, drink a bit more, pack up, call it a day. Then the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, and next week, watching the seasons change, ripening beneath the sun and alcohol buzz, making the day’s dollars (yuan) over and over, putting food on the table, maybe heading to the karaoke on a Friday night, flirting with girls; maybe play some pool, get drunk, wake up the next morning and bust some more rocks while nursing yet another hangover; dream about the distant future when you have a better job and can afford a family and you don’t have to work so hard, when you can afford to smoke Hongtashans instead of rotgut shitass Chunchengs; maybe even save up and visit Shanghai someday or take the kids on a river trip down the Five Gorges….
It’s funny, and tragic, when you meet people while traveling. The fleeting nature of such encounters puts a big fat lump square in your throat. I am not sure if we traded contact info, but even if we did, there’s not much chance it would still be current. Who knows, those guys might not even all be alive anymore.
But I hope they are. I hope they have grown wise and are happy in their golden years, but mainly, I hope they are still smiling in the sun, still young at heart if not in muscle anymore, their eyes still twinkling with positivity and their hearts just as big and jolly as they were on that sunny lakeshore in the valley of Lijiang.
Thank you for reading :-) Please feel free to comment and/or share your own perspective or related anecdote, ask questions, or whatever! Yarns is what this forum is all about.
You can do so at the link below: I’ve decided to start a Substack (despite my feelings about the policies of its CEO and shareholders). Why? Well, mainly because it seems like it might be a good platform for not only posting entries like these, but for starting a forum / conversation that can facilitate the swapping of yarns. You are welcome to join and comment, and can do so 100% free. Here is the link:
See you there :-)
His name was (is?) He Tihua, pronounced “Huh Tee Hwaa”. He knew only one phrase of English, and this he bellowed every time with gusto, bare-chested, head back, and fists pumping skyward: “I AM THE HE TIHUA!!!!!”
If I could somehow find my slides, I’d be able to post a photo of him doing just that, with the gravelly shore of a lake in the foreground and the massive slopes of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in the background. Alas, they were lost long ago. But his image and the sound of his cheerful drunken hollering will forever be etched in my memory.
It was Spring of 1993, and just a few days before, a friend and I had bumped into each other quite unexpectedly at a monastery a ways outside the tiny Tibetan town of Zhongdian. I had hitchhiked to get to that northwestern part of Yunnan province—an area off-limits to foreigners; hence the hat, sunglasses, and gongan (police) trenchcoat I’d acquired to disguise my foreignness as well as I could—and upon seeing that enormous monastery sprawling across the opposite side of the valley, my nineteen-year-old imagination had of course been fired, so I’d set off on foot to explore it. On the way, I crossed paths with two boys. I put them at about eleven years old, and they were clearly close friends. One was a monk, with shaved head and maroon robe; the other had short scruffy hair and wore the drab army greens and dark blues typical of so many people I’d met in the countryside. I remember wondering why a person so young would have opted to leave his family to make his vows and become a monk. It was a long time later that I learned about how so many impoverished families with multiple children were often faced with the choice of seeing their children go without food or sending one or two off to the local monastery or nunnery, where they would get fed for free. The choice would be a no-brainer, of course, but I was naiive and sheltered, so such things didn’t occur to me. I had no idea how harsh a land I was in.
Neither kid had shoes. It was cold out, wind cutting and the occasional speck of sleet blowing almost sideways, but that did not seem to have any effect on their spirits. They fell into step alongside me, their boundless youthful energy enabling them to keep up with my long-legged gait with ease. The unexpected camaraderie made me feel welcome and homesick all at once.
“Ni shi waiguo naiguojia laide?” The secular one asked. His friend the monk, the shier of the two, stayed silent, occasionally throwing furtive glances my way.
I’ve always found that children are easier to talk to and understand when learning a foreign language. It’s not so much that conversations are simple; to the contrary, they can become surprisingly complex very quickly. But children in general are much more honest, open-eyed, and patient than adults (at least with strangers, anyway). Perhaps it’s the lack of personal agendas that makes conversations with them flow more smoothly. It’s also nice that formalities tend to be dropped; or, perhaps it’s that they don’t think to use them much. The resulting interactions are often relatively casual and friendly, I find.
I answered in my broken Chinese that I was from America. The shy monklet’s eyes went wide, and he cupped his hand and whispered something into his friend’s ear. The latter scoffed and chuckled out something in Tibetan, which I could not follow, but the curiosity in my eyes must have been obvious enough for him to feel obliged to explain. “Ta xiang zhidao, ni renburenshi Maike’er Qiaodan.”
It took me a while to work out the name; I repeat it out loud a couple of times before I realized the kid was wondering if I knew Michael Jordan. I smiled and shook my head, then attempted to say “No” in Tibetan. Both boys corrected my pronunciation in unison, then laughed and chattered away cheerfully in their language. Something like “jinx buy me a coke”, perhaps.
It took us nearly half an hour to reach the monastery. As soon as we arrived, the monk placed his hands together and bowed toward me, smiling politely, and muttered “Tashi delek,” the Tibetan phrase I’d learned which served as both hello and goodbye, combined with “may you be blessed”, that sort of thing. I replied in kind, and he hurried off up a muddy slope (the roads within the monastery compound were all dirt, and rain had bucketed down that morning).
“Ta you ___de shi,” the other boy explained. I put a blank there because at the time, my Chinese was not good enough to know what word he’d used or what exactly he was talking about, but in retrospect I imagine he was telling me that his friend had either a class to attend or chores to do, and the fact that he had hurried off likely meant he was tardy or about to be. I nodded and followed as the scruffy-haired boy led me along a muddy road in the opposite direction.
As we rounded a bend, a deep male voice hailed us from the top of a hill. A monk—a young man, from my current perspective, but who was probably eight or ten years my elder at the time—was squatting with his back to a stucco wall. My companion sang out in rapid Tibetan, a string of endlessly fascinating sounds to my ears. I waited as they conversed; a minute later, the man stood and waved at me, smiling. “Tashi delek,” he said.
“Tashi delek,” I replied, wondering if I should bow or something. I was much more familiar with Chinese customs; here, I was a complete alien.
The boy must have communicated to the monk that I spoke some Chinese, because he then said, in his thick Tibetan accent, “Nide pengyou ye zai zheli.” Your friend is here, too.
Friend? I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “Pengyou?” I said, glancing at the kid standing next to me, who was nodding confidently at me. “Shenme pengyou?” What friend?
“Lai lai lai,” the man beckoned. I squelched up the slope after him, resigning inwardly as the six-inch-deep red mud breached my boots’ defenses. The eleven-year-old charged ahead, making me suddenly feel very soft and unfit by comparison. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt that way since entering these mountains.
The man led us through an open door and up several stairs. “Lai lai lai,” he kept repeating, waving me on with his big muscular arm and shoulder, his voice deep and resounding from the close walls.
The structure felt old to me. One of the few great religious structures to have survived the Cultural Revolution, I assumed, recalling a bit of history I’d read for one of my East Asian Studies classes the year before.
At the top, we went through another big doorway, which opened out onto a broad, mud-floored courtyard with a temple on the other side. Dark wooden decking ran left and right from where we were standing, encircling the courtyard. Halfway toward the far end on our right, a figure was leaning against the railing, smoking a cigarette.
I stopped dead in my tracks. “…David?” The last time I’d seen him had been back in Kunming, months ago and hundreds of miles away.
My friend turned and smirked. “Holy fucking shit. What are the chances, dude. You lost too?”
Maybe that’s not what he said. Memory is a funny thing, and this was more than thirty years ago. But what I do remember, quite clearly, was my friend’s smile, as well as the surge of emotion welling up from deep within me. Because whether David actually said those words or not, and whether I’d have admitted it or not, I was, indeed, lost. I was absolutely gone; I’d disappeared into the Unknown, and with little or no intention of ever trying to find my way home.
Okay. Reading this, you’re probably thinking, “holy fucking shit dude, you started out writing about some guy named He Tihua, and now yeah, congratulations, you’re lost. Well done. What gives?!” And you’re right. This whole blog post has been one giant tangent; a big fat trip down memory lane.
In truth, I noticed it happened all the way back when I was writing about my escorts, the two kids who walked with me from Zhongdian to the monastery. While I was typing, I thought, Oops, I’m gonna have to delete all this, because it’s changed the subject. Or do I keep going, and change the title of the blog post to “Zhongdian” or “Friends” or something like that?
But I forgive myself, because a) it’s been a long time since I sat down and wrote like this, since I just flowed—which I’ve been doing over the past several paragraphs—and it feels really good. [Sorry, readers, if there are any out there; it’s been way too long since I wrote a proper blog post—I hope to get back into a habit of it! Thank you for bearing with me.] …And b) I can always just continue this in a follow-up blog post, in which—I promise—I’ll actually write about the He Tihua.
So yeah. I’ve decided that’s what I’m going to do. To be continued.
Hey everyone!
I’m excited to announce that Of Time-Cracked Granite is now available on Audible, iTunes, and Amazon as an audiobook (narrated by yours truly). Click the image below for direct buy links. Thank you!
Pressure.
So much pressure.
Coming from myself, mainly. From within.
I’m holding myself accountable, which is good, but I’m also beating myself up, which is bad.
It all started when I announced to my Kickstarter backers (thank you again for backing the launch of my novel, by the way!) that a few of the reward tiers would include the audiobook version. I naïvely thought the entire process would only take a few weeks.
Now, nearly four months on, I’m still working on it. /facepalm
The recording didn’t actually take all that long; I think I was done in just over two weeks. It’s the sound-editing that has been so tedious and time-consuming.
I also lost over a month’s worth of work due to a filing error; I stupidly overwrote a few files with files that were not up to par, and when I went to undo them, realized I had not kept the originals… so I had to re-do all that work.
Now I’m still plodding along, getting through it, but very slowly. I am quite happy with the product; the product is good. I’m proud of that, at least. But I feel awful that it’s taking so long, especially for the three people who only pledged toward the audiobook tier of the Kickstarter campaign. I feel really bad to have kept them waiting so long.
Time is running out: My wife and I leave for a month-long trip to Japan in just over two weeks. I’m in a bit of a panic.
I also have an album of songs to record (yet another of the Kickstarter rewards; and yet another thing I thought I’d have finished months ago). ‘Haven’t even started that one.
And a short story to write (I have the outline down and some of it written, but it needs work).
It all feels like a train, hurtling along, quickly running out of track.
And I’m the idiot who failed to plan the journey properly.
Okay, enough whining. I’d better get back to work I suppose. Wish me luck!
The other night, while browsing through our streaming services, looking for a movie to watch—our criteria were that it had to be “something different” from the norm, and “something good” (another very relative qualification), we stumbled upon a flick called “Vesper”. Now, whatever streaming service it was on had categorized it as “fantasy”—and to be fair, there are fantastical elements about it, in a broad sense—but after having seen it, I have to disagree; this movie was very solidly in the sci-fi genre. Why do I say so? Well, just about everything in it was based on science—biological sciences, to be exact. Especially genetic engineering, botany, and mycology. Was the science in it far-fetched enough to call it “fantasy”? I don’t think so, but you might disagree.
I haven’t given anything significant away yet. If you’d like to watch this movie and don’t want to read any spoilers, then stop here, and go watch it, because the gist of my blog post is that Yes, this is a movie worth seeing, especially if you are a fan of hard science fiction. Fair warning: The pace is a bit on the slow side, but if that doesn’t bother you too much, then you can be reassured that it’s well-made; the acting ranges from not bad at all to superb, and the writing is refreshing.
But the world-building…! Goodness. So refreshingly original! I get sooo tired of seeing the same old cookie cutter crap iterated over and over (How many times can you re-make some version of elves and dragons? Ok, fine, I can’t knock those things, as they are classics… but do you know what I mean?). Sometimes you just want to see something new; something original. Something that is NOT the same old bug-eyed aliens, the same alien invasion plot, the same “protagonist goes to space; protagonist encounters alien on ship” stuff. Those plots can work, and have many times, but now and then it’s time for fresh blood in the whole imagination pool of speculative literature, movies, shows, etc. Well, in my opinion, “Vesper”’s world-building is quite original and intriguing.
According to Vocabulary.com, “a vesper is an evening song. It also refers to evening prayers, and then it’s usually plural as vespers. Whether it’s a church service or a jazz band at sunset, if it’s in the evening, it’s a vesper.” I wasn’t thinking about any of that while watching the movie, but now it’s interesting to reflect on. I’ll have to mull it over while I write this. Already a few things about the ending come to mind. I don’t doubt they were intentional on the part of the moviemakers.
This movie may or may not be your cup of tea. There has, admittedly, been quite a dearth of **good** sci-fi movies lately, so my excitement over this one could in part be a result of hunger being the spice of life. But the uniqueness of this flick, its originality and pure creativity, make it stand out from the cookie-cutter rest, in my mind at least. Give it a go and let me know what you think in the discussion forum (link below) :-)
Well, if a US president is now legally allowed to commit any action he wants while in the office of the president without any risk of a court being able to question the motives (needing only to intertwine said action with an "official" action to meet the criteria of immunity), then I think it's time for Joe Biden to order the Justice Department to put certain supreme court justices on trial for corruption. And sexual assault, in the case of one of them (kavanaugh).
It’s a very black day for America, and for democracy in general. The supreme court’s decision (notice I’m not capitalizing that court’s name anymore, out of utter disrespect) will further embolden the likes of putin et al to cosy up with and manipulate powerful Americans who care more about personal gain than the good of the country (*clears throat* donald trump! tucker carlson! elon musk! to name a few examples).
There’s also all this extreme christian nationalism bullshit that's been happening. Books being banned by the score, various states forcing public school teachers to teach the bible (in a country where church and state have been separated for centuries), the continued onslaught against women’s rights, the persecution and prosecution of homeless people, etc etc etc. This fucking “supreme” court. It’s become a corrupt joke. It needs to be dissolved and rebuilt. I could vent more, but I should stop now, for my mental health.
Still not giving up hope, but wow. The country of my birth is looking more and more like the Taliban than anything else. Or, perhaps Gilead would be a better analogy.
Wow! I am in the middle of quite the learning curve. Last week I began recording the audiobook for my new novel, Of Time-Cracked Granite, and let me tell you, it’s proving to be significantly more challenging than I expected!
I’d always considered myself to be at least halfway decent at reading out loud, but goodness... the amount of times I’m having to repeat sentences because I’ve stumbled over my tongue or gotten the tone wrong is doing my head in!
Thankfully (in this case, anyway), I’m pretty stubborn, so have pushed through. That first day was brutal though!
It took me a few hours to set up my “recording studio” (rather ghetto-style, I realize; see the image below). This mainly involved covering as many reflective, hard surfaces as I could with blankets and pillows, so as to deaden the sound. The room has a hardwood floor, so I dropped a big fluffy one on top of it straight away.
Another (the main?) problem is the sound from the computer’s fans. I have done everything I can to isolate the microphone and separate it from that contraption, but there’s bound to be some ambient noise from it. Thank goodness for the noise reduction function, or whatever it’s called :-)
There are a couple of things I’ve been unable to do anything about: 1) the cats (hey, when they are hungry, they are hungry; Arya will even start head-butting the door if I ignore her for too long, and they both make a godawful racket when they are using the litter, which is just down the hall from my study); and 2) the fricking (ok, pardon my French, but I’m going to re-spell that -- f u c k i n g) birds. Don’t get me wrong... I love the birds. LOVE them. They are gorgeous and wonderful and endlessly fascinating. But ugh! The sulphur-crested cockatoos are loudest and most aggro, of course, but even the wattle birds are constantly carrying on in the trees and bushes just outside the window. So so so many times, I’ve been about to start narrating a sentence, and then all of the sudden, rrraawwwwwwwwwrrrrk!!! or chirrtleuput! chirrtleuput!!, and I have to wait until the bird shuts up so I can try again. And then there are the planes passing overhead. (Incidentally, this is a national park, and there used to be a law that keeps planes etc from flying through this airspace. Whatever happened to that?! Billionaire companies convinced the government that their profits were more important, no doubt... but I digress, sorry!)
Once I had the study converted to a sound studio, I got to work testing the mic. I’d already done some research in advance, so putting the microphone and Audacity (the recording program I’m using) to the right settings did not take very long. I then double-checked Audible’s and Spotify’s policies and guidelines (just in case I decide to distribute through them), and started recording the first chapter.
Zoiks. What a mammoth project I’ve undertaken! After four hours of recording, I had barely made it through half of Chapter 1, and I ended up scrapping most of that. This shit is hard!!!! Lol.
Any of you with narration experience might be laughing at me right now. Fair enough lol. I now have so much respect for people who can do it smoothly and consistently!
It has gotten easier as I’ve gone alone, and I am no longer panicking about being behind schedule. I should just make it in time, fortunately. Of course that could all go out the window if the nextdoor neighbours decide to start a massive construction project, but hey... fingers crossed they don’t.
It probably sounds like I’m whinging my arse off, but I’m not, really. I’m actually having a great time doing this. It’s some pretty cool new stuff to learn, and I am getting better at it as I go.
The main lesson I’ve learned is that audiobook narration is much more about acting than it is about reading out loud. I'm having to dig deep to make it sound halfway believable. What I find myself doing is, I close my eyes, try to imagine the scene and put myself right in the speaking character’s shoes, and go from there. Usually that helps me read more naturally.
Hopefully, I’ll be finished with the raw narration in another few days, and then I can get to work editing (which I imagine is going to be a whole ‘nother learning curve in and of itself!) Wish me luck!
So what about you? Do you have any experience with narration? With voice acting? With reading out loud? Any or all of the above? I’d love to hear about it :-) Feel free to click on the “comment / discuss” button below, which will lead you to the Otherspect Discord server where you can join the conversation. Thanks for reading! I promise I’ll get back to writing blog posts more regularly soon; I’m finally getting close to finished with all I have to do on the book.
Have a wonderful week :-)
A Javan Rhino and an Amur Leopard sat next to each other atop a steep grassy bank, gazing out over the vast muddy river as it slid inexorably from left to right. Dead though the grass was, it felt soft beneath Leopard’s bum. He stretched and flexed his claws, taking pleasure in the anchoring sensation as they pierced down into the dirt.
The sky overhead had gotten nearly as yellow as the grass; the few faint wisps of cloud were almost indistinguishable from the daily parade of smoke and fumes and soot. From far beyond the horizon, just at the edge of earshot, Leopard more felt than heard a series of chest-deep thumps followed by what he thought might have been many dozens of howls, perhaps screams.
He flattened his ears back. “Rhinoceros, my friend, something has been bugging me of late.”
“Something has been bugging me, too,” Rino yawned, ears flicking in annoyance at the relentless flies that were buzzing around her head. “And I told you, call me ‘Rhino’. We are beyond formalities, now. Everyone is.”
The yawn was contagious, and felt good to Leopard. When his relatively youthful fangs and pink palate were again hidden from view, he growled a growl that was not half as serious as the worried look in his eyes. “Fine. Rhino.”
The water oozed past, appearing almost as lifeless as the grass.
“Well? Speak, child.”
“I’m not a child anymore, remember? I’m an adult.”
“Speak, adult,” the rhinoceros corrected herself.
Leopard balked, suddenly unsure of how to word what had been on his mind over the past hours, days, weeks, months, slowly building, slowly accumulating like piles or ash or plaque.
Rhino, all wise eyes and wrinkles, glanced sideways at the young leopard, but said nothing. After a while, she returned her attention to trying to land the perfect ear-flick in the hope that it might drive off at least one of her insectile aggressors for good.
“I guess….” Leopard trailed off, then began again. “See, okay. So, what’s been on my mind is this: If the world’s ending, then… well, then what’s the point, right?”
“What’s the point in what?” Rhino turned to stare into the young feline’s eyes.
“In anything. In doing anything, I mean.”
“You mean if the world’s ending, then nothing we do will be completed, so what is the point in even trying. Right?”
Leopard nodded, feeling a mixture of relief and moroseness at having finally given voice to the angst that had been plaguing him for so many sleepless nights.
Rhino nodded and returned her gaze to the far horizon. “Well, I guess it comes down to what you are.”
“What I am?”
“Yes. What you are. We are what we do, are we not?”
Leopard shook his head. “Sure. So they say.”
“And therefore, if you do nothing, you are nothing. So why not continue to be something for as long as you possibly can?”
“So you’re saying I should keep working? Keep on doing stuff? Even though everything is so absolutely fucked?” Leopard growled. Some of his irritation stemmed from the growing ache of hunger in his belly, but only some of it.
“Indeed, Daniel Jackson. We are what we do. And so the best we can do is to keep doing and therefore being the things we love. To keep on striving forward, keep on hoping, keep on working toward a better future. A better world.”
Leopard contemplated this for a long minute. During that time, at least two bodies floated past, and possibly a third, though he couldn’t be sure; the limbs, if limbs they were, were horribly scorched. “Okay, but then what about when the end comes? Because it’s coming. I can feel it. I can smell it.” He supressed what would have been a much too kitten-like whimper.
“Well, child… adult, I mean… if the end does come, then we die falling forward rather than backward. We die doing what we do; we die as we have lived: We die ourselves. We die in hope; we die in love. And in so doing, we are that. And that, in the end, is better than the alternative of not having tried at all. See?”
“Okay,” Leopard nodded, lifting his eyes again from the oily river to the distant horizon. “So, you’re saying I shouldn’t give up. I should just keep on going, regardless of what is coming.”
“What might be coming, yes,” she soothed.
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Anytime, friend.”
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve learned a few things.
I finally learned what it’s like to be sick with Covid. I also experienced first-hand, again, just how difficult it is to get a doctor’s appointment these days.
I learned that there actually are limits to the imagination, and that they can be felt most keenly while staring blankly at a computer screen after having been up all night racked by wave after debilitating wave of coughing fits.
I learned that “Comfortably Numb” can be introduced with a minor jig and sung in 6/8.
I learned that a trumpet can be played through a flashlight.
I learned that dolls have stories, and that “blythe” is not just a word from a Robert Burns poem.
I learned that the pick-up in my guitar is a piece of crap. But then I always suspected that.
I learned that Indo-Pacific corals are more resilient to climate change than Atlantic corals.
I learned that gravity is still gravity, but wounded pride can heal.
I learned that some people are greedy, selfish, and brazen.
I learned that some people are generous, kind, and considerate.
I learned that hot toddies taste best when you get the balance right between honey, lemon, whiskey, and cloves.
I learned that a bit of soy can take homemade egg-drop soup to the next level.
I learned that people do care, after all.
I learned that chocolate is at least as yummy today as it was yesterday.
I learned that the world is still turning, and that life goes on.
I learned that tomorrow is a new day.
What have you learned recently? :-)
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