Balloons as a base

They're not so big. I remember long days in a sunny piece of sand, sitting, my leg pulled to my face, just looking at them. It was on just such an occasion that the man with the electricity came upon me, crossing a field. Nowhere really, off all the paths for some reason, probably that it was my pasture. It was my sunning spot and everyone else just steered clear.

There were no deer trails laden with scat. There was only the peace of the trees and myself lying there soaking up all those great rays, protected by fur, glorious fur that warmed in that sun, those marvelous beams of glory raining down. All of us green with it. Letting the bugs crawl all over us, letting the flies swarm. It was worth it just to be, so living all over. Just feeling it.

I was in a trance, just staring at the bottom of my feet, letting them warm as well in that hard light, from all they endure over roots and through bushes. All that they suffer as I tromp around. It's a lot of work. But my people have big feet. That's all. Big feet. No different than any man.

In human terms I suppose you'd think us a kind of radical hillbilly, some hippy love child gone astray. But who cares about that. It doesn't matter. What matters is to see always such beauty everywhere. No matter what it is. And so I chose to look at man. I wanted to know what this electricity was all about. It seemed like the sun.

The truth is, that day, he electrocuted me. He'd brought a stun gun and some rope. I didn't mind. I wanted to know. And the sensation of all that power running through me, jolted me awake from my slumber and I wanted to learn.

He stood across from me in that field and all I had was smiles, wasn't it glorious? I threw open my arms to him, "brother otter" I cried, at last returned to me.

We stood that way a long while, like stunned and stalking cats, creeping so slow, so slow, testing each other's memories, trying to feel how strong the other might really be. The man slowly, so slowly lifted his hand and reached it inside himself and drew out this weapon.

I wanted only good things for him. I wanted him to forget. I thought I might hypnotize him into forgetting he had seen me. I was already retrieving those memories from him, but he was very clever, that electric man.

He had something in his hand when he pulled it from inside himself. I stared at it a long while. I thought it might be feces and that he was going to throw it at me. To stun me. To curse me. I thought for a second that he was a magician like they said men were. That he was never to be trusted. That's what I was told. That once, long ago, a crime was committed and that we had run away from man. We hated man. But nobody had bothered to worry about man for a very long time.

I thought I might help them. Might lift them over their assumptions about certain things. That we might exchange art and poetry. That we might sing to each other. How interesting that would be.

I reached out my hand to clutch a nearby pine. I intended to rattle it really hard and scare the man away. I thought, I was convinced already, that this exchange was likely not to happen and that if man stayed his side and we ours, all would be best. I would shake the trees till the needles rained down all around me. And then in the silent aftermath, I would grunt like a bore.

I had seen a boar once. They are not just lessons from a far gone age. Though they are not that at all. They have such strange feet! They are cloven like a deer, and when they canter, it is in comic little spasms. They are funny creatures! But then the big one, the bull with his tusks and his black spines like a porcupine. A hideous beast and rude to boot. Never a dull moment, I tell you. Never any peace when a pig's around.

So I grunt, real foul and phlegmy like a boar, real nasty, like someone snorting up the world.

The man reaches his hand like he wants to show me something. Something a little frightening, because I am so curious, I am completely entranced.

The next thing I recall, I was tied to a tree with thick heavy strong vines. He's making funny lip motions at me, as if he were somehow making fun of me. He was making me very angry, I'm afraid to say. I wanted to uproot the tree and bash him with it until I was free. What arrogance!

When I could stand it no more, I fell into a kind of catatonia. I couldn't think anymore. I couldn't see or hear. I had overloaded my mind. We have weak minds after all. Too much stimulation, too many events acting upon things all around was just too much for us to deal with.

Play dead. That's what it was. One of our strategies for invisibility. Become immobile. Awake with renewed energy, new fire stoked, ready to deal with adversity if it hasn't already wandered off.

During that dank slumber, there are only thoughts of blood and derangement. We are berserkers after all. We give one last heroic, ecstatic blood frenzy to save ourselves. Nothing can stop us.

And to die in battle. What an honor.

Little did the man know what he was bringing out in me. When I awoke I threw off his vines in one small flex of my pectorals. I took all my great expanse of chest, that lets me run, far and wide, where I choose, invisible.

I stood with great decorum. I was going to crush this man. But first I would taste his fear. I would soak it all in like some exotic beverage. I would terrorize him with great cruelty. Tie me with a rope!

But when the time came, he was not afraid. He stood there, no longer moving his lips. The electric man. He zapped me again with that horrible, beautiful power! I can't begin to express what it meant to me. That second jolt was the one that showed me, that shocked me into new reason. That second one and things began to come clear. I was his prisoner, if that was how it needed to be.

When I awoke a second time, I was in a more reasonable frame of mind. Going berserker can take a lot out of you. It is a sort of explosion. Electricity of my own crackles in my fur and it stands on end. I am entranced by a frantic star above the tree line, I am falling to the ground again and rising up as well. I am caught very much in between things.

The third jolt and all of those that came after, during our whole long friendship, were at my pleading. I would do anything for another sizzle, another halo of smoke above my head. I wanted all of it. Teach me! Teach ME!

The man became very patient with me. We negotiated a series of signals at first. I could ask for food and just what kind from my place beneath the great oak tree I was again roped to. It was a long time before I left that tree. Its energy became a part of my own as well. I grew so strong tied to that tree, basking in its glow.

I hear tell that the old people of long ago, the vicious ones who made us flee to our father otter, would hang small men by their flesh and spin them round until they tore free. It was like that. I had beaten a track around the tree and broke my bonds many, many times. I had a place to shit and a place to eat.

It was good enough to survive on. My people are great survivors. If a cave-in traps us, we can last many moons if we have to. There are times when our fathers had to gnaw off their own limbs to save their lives. We can survive anything. We grow right back. We are full of life!

We hear stories about the great mother who they keep sequestered in their great ideas. The one who loves them all and keeps them happy and strong. Father is just an idea perhaps as well, but his visage is grim and he sits in a dank room at the bottom of the world and just sort of broods over everything. He's not a happy man. We miss our mother's love.

As fast as I could make the symbols and gestures, I asked the electric man about the great mother. I'm not sure if he understood me. I suppose it doesn't matter. Given everything else that happened.

When I felt I had made myself plain enough, I gave him silence to try to explain.

He took up a rock that was too heavy for such a little one as he. Men are weak after all. They are like ants and must invent great monsters of metal to help them with everything. It is silly to think that anyone decides his fate. But man seems convinced he can rewrite the world however he likes. How fascinating!

He shuffled this rock, inch by inch, over into the clearing.

Then he took another one such as he, with his present resources, could manage. He pushed it up onto the other and scrubbed his hands clean of dirt.

Then he took a third one in one hand. He tossed it into the air a couple times and caught it. He turned his head to the left and to the right until his neck popped. I did the same. My people have big necks. Too big perhaps. They are for swinging into trees when it's called for.

He placed the third stone on top of the second with an air of finality. He did another cursory brush of his hands and ran them through the hair on his head as if he were waving his scent all about.

Then he made some funny lip movements again. It took me no time to realize what the strange charm of those sounds was called. The word was there in my head, though to my knowledge, I had never heard it. It was as if the strange warble of his voice were a sort of bird noise. He was working his magic on me. I could feel it. It was like the electricity again only more vivid. Music.

I learned this song from him, though it took me many years to decipher the full range of its meaning. I can only tell you of it. I can't sing it to you. I can't talk and sing at the same time like the great poets. I can only make these sounds.

The song was about a woman who seemed very happy to be free with herself. Who lived in a very perfect place and spread her legs wide for many men and everyone was happy and drunk. A country song he called it. Hillbilly music.

I tell myself I shouldn't be talking about all this. They can't know about this. But then, I don't understand it myself. Maybe if I tell it, it'll come plain to me along the way.

He sang me this song and then his face split open very wide and pulled apart. I thought for a second he was transforming, turning into some other creature all together. My people never look at each other. We don't really think about faces. We have our other senses. We don't see real well, except in the dark. In the dark, everything is different.

Later he explained to me that he had been smiling and laughing, because I was crying. I was heaving with sobs and moaning helplessly like a small child. I was completely crushed with emotion I could not express. I wanted to just die. Such beauty! Such beauty!

What saved me at last was sitting there in my tears and my snot and my piss. I stared down at my foot. It just lay there, forgotten. I'd been tied to a tree so long already. What could I do? I thought of all the times I'd stared at the foot, all the times I could recall.

And I had never thought about the passage of time like that before. How things change. They had always just been what they were. If things changed every few minutes, well, so what? It hardly mattered. Everything is beautiful after all.

I'm tired of all this talking just now. How the tears well up even now. That this thing was also that thing and that thing from back then. How it all was connected. At last! The great wisdom the elders had spoke of. The great wisdom that came from the sky with the rays of the sun. Only here it was again like an electric shock, ravaging my mind with fresh ponderance.