John Swinburn

Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

~ Chinua Achebe

Leaning over the deck railing, I felt as if I might lose my balance and tumble twenty feet to the rocks and shrubbery below, so I stood upright and stepped back. Then, I heard it again; a loud rustling, the sound I might make if I trudged through the heavy layer of leaves at the edge of the clearing below. I look down again, this time clutching the top railing with my hands to keep myself an arm’s length from the edge. There they were; two deer, heads down, foraging for breakfast. The second I spied them, they saw me. They froze in their tracks, staring intently at me. I remained still. In less than a minute, satisfied I posed no danger, they returned to the task of finding food. But they did not ignore me; they kept watch over my actions, ready to sprint away if my behavior warranted it.

This was several days ago, but it’s so fresh in my mind that it could have been this morning, except it’s not yet light out. But they, or creatures like them, may be there now.

We could do worse than live our lives as scavengers, seekers of the used and discarded. By giving new life to the the too-early-abandoned outcasts deemed by others wrung of practical value, we enrich our lives and give the planet on which we live time to breathe. I rarely buy new clothes any more; not because I can’t, but because I find distasteful the idea of feeding the greed of the clothing and fashion industries.  The fact that I am denying those same greed-mongers the opportunity to sell me something produced by people paid immorally low wages is icing on the proverbial cake. Thinking of scavenging and immorality harkens me back to a book I read a few years ago, Beyond the Beautiful Forevers. It was a painful but beautifully told novel, a story of a young man who lived in a slum in the shadows of Mumbai airport; he survived by recycling the discards of people far more wealthy than he. I hold such people in high regard; people who laugh at and heap scorn on such people are beneath dignity. My “scavenging” is nothing compared to people who must do it or die. We should all be more like those people.

When I hear the word ‘serpent,’ my brain conjures a willfully angry and vengeful creature, a beast slithering toward its prey.  The monster’s aim is emphatically malevolent, its mind filled with animosity. ‘Snake,’ on the other hand, does not arouse in me the tendency to ascribe the same sense of bitter acrimony to the creature.

I assign blame for my decidedly different reactions to synonymous words to ‘psychologically induced linguistic perturbation.’ If that phrase is actually used in the real world, I should get royalties.

Standing outside late at night, after lights have dimmed and eyes have adjusted to darkness, the brilliance of stars in a clear sky is overwhelming. It literally takes my breath away. Only then does the unfathomable scale of the universe become apparent; only then can I see where time begins and ends.

I can stare at the yellow lines on a desolate asphalt highway for hours, creating my own fantasy with nothing but wishes as fuel. Why can’t I, instead, imagine the joy of making intricate carvings in wood that’s hard as steel, using only a fine axe as a tool? Why, indeed. I think it’s the understanding that choices have consequences; every option has positive and negative outcomes that may be utterly unrelated to the original alternative but that follow as surely as water flows from a melting mass of ice.

Life is not a cathedral; it is a cauldron. Despite promises that staying ‘in the moment’ brings tranquility, that pacific state carries emotional risks unmatched in their fury. Desire is a bastard with sharp teeth and claws.

Disappointments are inevitable, but not necessarily damaging. Failure to attain one’s goals or otherwise stumbling when an objective is in reach tends to build one’s humility. Humility is a characteristic that speaks volumes of a person’s experience in the world; it suggests one has confronted tough times and moved on stronger and less arrogant.

Our misguided youth becomes misaligned adulthood. Our early flaws and foibles come to define who we are. We’re on a pathway that was destined, from the start, to reveal the mistakes that made us who we are. Old age is the penance for youthful indiscretion.

Hidden beneath tangled layers of memories modified by time and experience are clear, true recollections that remain pristine and unaltered. I believe those recollections, those brilliant reminiscences etched so deeply into the brain that neither time nor experience can change them, hold the keys to our true selves. Those crystal clear memories are few; they are disconnected from one another. They suggest we consist of delicate armatures to which the balance of our lives adhere. The strength of the bond between our experiences and the underlying armature determines the degree to which we weather the vagaries of life. If we do not withstand the forces against which we battle, we surrender control to something outside ourselves; that is the definition of tragedy.

Honesty is a dangerous trait when it accompanies primal passion and raw lust. Those might be the words of a character I write, or they could be mine. Where does one end and the other begin? Or, is it possible, they are one and the same? Writing may be the only safe way to explore one’s sordid side. Then, again, that may not be it at all. It’s all about risk and reward.

If we had no television, no electric lights, no natural gas, no books, no internet, and no battery-powered devices awash in music, night-time would be a radically different experience from the way it is now. We’d watch the stars and, perhaps, imagine giant beings scampering across the night sky. Our minds would have more space for ideas. We’d spend our time thinking. Entertainment would be something we do for ourselves, rather than someone else doing it to us.

The answer probably resides somewhere on the internet, but I have never looked for it there. Instead, I’ve just wondered—for quite some time, actually—when razors were invented. Before razors, people with beards like mine would have been pitied; they would have looked a little like dogs with a bad case of mange. The advent of razors, though, has spared us the humiliation. Yet some of us with sparse and spotty whiskers continue to try to see if a mustache or a beard might be cajoled from our faces. Vanity, thy name is [insert name here].