aaron_the fall of america_chapter_23

Chapter 23

On various parts of my body, I've small scars, some of which I have no memory of their origin. On the under side of one finger, starting at the second joint, is a two centimetre long thin scar running up the middle. I've always had it. On one of my biceps, I have a scar shaped like a skinny football or mechanical lips. It was formerly a non-malignant growth that John Junior referred to as my third nipple before I had it hacked out. A friend of my grandmother thought I should have it removed to be safe. I always liked to play it safe, especially if it meant getting a nice scar. On my middle finger is a scar from a wound I inflicted on myself while trying to chop a branch off a tree. I was using a large hunting knife my father had brought back from Amsterdam when he was in the navy. I was camping with the boy's from the Baptist church my grandmother took me to.

It was one of our canoe trip adventures. We paddled away from civilisation into the wilderness. Closer to God. No one really knew if the Christian god could follow us into the wooded wilderness, he was more of a hot desert climate kind of god made by Moses to get his unruly hoards through some trying times. We were told to believe in him even if we were inclined not to, at least whenever we had a bible study around the fire at night. Mostly, the other gods ruled us the rest of the day. The element gods.

Prayer and bible study was the price we paid to be with each other on an outdoor adventure. It gave us a common ground. Belief is the most common ground even if one is inclined to doubt it. Unfortunately, the scar it left me doesn't even leave a good mark.

There's a good scar on my right thigh. It's the biggest, visible one, stretching nearly five centimetres. It required five stitches. It doesn't stand up to many scars I've seen but I haven't the nerve for motorcycle accidents or sport injuries involving entire limbs.

This large, yet relatively small, scar was an ingeniously stupid one. It was clean up time in shipping at the plant and there were a few forty once bottles I didn't want to pick up to put in their proper place. I stomped on the necks to send them into the air, then with the law applied, 'what goes up, must come down’, they smashed nicely on the concrete floor. As any conscious monkey might know, it was a little dangerous to add more glass to the already cluttered floor. Regardless of this not thought of fact, I was enjoying my demented little game behind the ten once cases, will out of sight from Art, the manager. That is, until I stomped on one hard enough to break the top before flight. The bottle sailed gracefully through the air, spinning past my leg. I gasped at the sudden awakening of danger. I stopped the game. Unfortunately, it was a decision post incision. I didn't want to look at my leg for a minute, hoping that if I stopped being destructive and was resolved to be more loyal to the company, then I probably only imagined that I felt something on my leg. I looked to see a large cut in my jeans. Upon farther inspection, I noticed there was a gaping hole in my thigh. I was fascinated. It was a clean straight line that had spread opened. Inside, I could see different layers of tissue: skin, fat and muscle. Although it was deep, it hadn't started bleeding.

I walked over to the seven-fifty bottle sorting area to where Midget was working. I showed him my wound as if it was a needed baseball card or a picture of a naked woman. I wanted to share the event with him. His frantic reaction made me understand what was happening. My pants were now dark with blood. The sight made me light headed enough to sit while Midget ran off to get Art. After I stretched the truth of the event to Art, one of the full timers, who had nothing to do except wait to punch out at twelve, took me to emergency. Since it was a Friday night, I had to wait two hours to see a doctor. There were crowds of mangled drunks coming in with much better wounds.

Sometimes, especially while collecting financial assistance, I wondered about reincarnation. Normally I knew it was mind manipulation to make fearless fighters but other times I believed I had died once from multiple knife wounds. A large barbaric kind of knife. Sometimes I thought I might have died once from being eaten by vultures as I lay on the scorching, desert sand. The images stay strong in my consciousness, especially the hooked shape of the flesh ripping beaks.

You can not know your subconscious.


At other times I fancied that I remembered other past life events. When I was young, I had vivid and horrifying feeling and images of being so extremely fat that I was nearly a blob. At times, I would feel it so physically that I could almost believe I was as I felt. My head would spin with the image of abstract fatness tumbling through my mind. As soon as I would notice I was sensing this, I would lose the feeling.

Another strange feeling I had only a few times as a child was complete and timeless emptiness. It would happen after being in bed without falling asleep. As I laid waiting for dreams-state to swallow me up, a pure and blissful vacuum would suck out my consciousness. Although it was likely only a fraction of a second that I was gone, it felt like billions of years. It was a state of non-existence, yet an exciting euphoria. I wished I could do it by willing it but it was foreign to will.

Another event that was equally refreshing was the times I lost all thought but instead of disappearing into oblivion, I was transfixed on what I was looking at. The most resent episode was a narrow view of a small patch of grass. It lasted for as long as I was unaware that it was happening. As soon as I tried to hold it, it symbolised and vanished.

A woman stood over me. I couldn't remember where I was. Either I had fallen into sleep again or I was about to be brain washed. When I sat up, I learned a few things: I was naked, I was hungry, I was conscious and the woman was Karna.

"Karna."

"Have you slept well?"

"Yes. How did you find me?"

"You might call it instinct."

"Okay."

"I brought you some food."

"Excellent. You have no idea how hungry I am."

"I do."

She dropped her robe and slid silently into the pool. I didn’t really want to think about apples but I thought she should have one for the picture.

I followed her into the pool and held her to me. Holding her made me feel secure and at rest with the conflicts that raged in my head.

After we ate and dressed, I followed her out to the quiet highway.

"So where are we going? Is there a dinner party? How'd they make this place? What's it made out of? What happened to all the people? What powers everything? Why is everyone beautiful? What did they do to process the waste? Are there any diseases? How long do you live? How often do you masturbate? Do you have birth control? Do you have a pope? Soap pope on a rope. Did you ever discover metal or fossil fuel? Do you know about internal combustion engines? What about fire? Do you have that? I'd drink a bottle of Coke if you had one. What kind of drugs do you have? Beer and cigarettes? Did you know that you would get paid much money on my planet just to look the way you do? I'm not suggesting that's any reason to go. Have you every seen a porno movie or read a romance novel about lame rich people? Did you know that people are murdered every day all over the world, mostly over political or religious reasons, or something important such as twenty dollars and a pair of tennis shoes? You don't even have chocolate bars. I could drink a proper chocolate shake, not a fast food farce edible oil product, that wouldn't do it. Did you know that the balance of the human psyche is under question? There seems to be a problem deciding who, where, what and how we are. Never mind why. At least we kind of know when. But no one quite knows what now really means in relation to anything. It's the year 2,000 one might say, not this year but soon. Yet another may say it’s the year 3,987 or 12,698 depending on when you start counting. If you started counting 40,000 BC then that would be almost 42,000 in the year or what's his name. Do you know what that means? I suppose it means nothing and that's exactly the problem. The problem is reference. Let's agree to be definite and pick something arbitrary and stick with it a few years. Let's take six. The number six is relevant. Isn't it?

Karna smiled and held my hand.

"How many people live here now?"

"I'm not certain. Not many."

I had to lay down. Since the road was taking us, it didn't matter. I stared up at the ceiling or where I thought might be a ceiling. When I sat up, the scenery had changed. There were no more dwelling places and a few less trees and plants.

"What do you say we stop off at the library?"

Karna sat down beside me.

"Do you have any books on how to evolve an ignorant race into intelligent beings? What about energy? You must know something we don't. Do you have philosophy or theology? Do you do anything reckless? Do you have music? You should have music. Zeppelin, Ludwig Van, The Duke, Madhouse, The Luckless Pedestrians. You haven't heard of them? Everyone has. I can see not having most of the things you don't have but you shouldn't be without music. Not having music is like not having a backbone, which is fine if you're a slug. What's the range of your hearing? What about salt. Is there salt in your ocean? I guess there must be. You have no polar ice caps, did you know that? I wish you would give me some answers so I could get this on the eleven o'clock news."

"You are a little excited."

"Say something in you language."

She made some sounds that sounded like a cross between a songbird and a whale. I was a little frightened.

"That's frightfully beautiful. It makes my talking sound like a growling swine that's just about to fling himself over a cliff."

She took hold of my hand again to lead me off onto another path. She kept changing paths. Each path was narrower that the one we left. I guessed we were off the highway and onto the side roads.

One more new path and we promptly came to a jungle. It looked like a jungle. It didn't sound like a jungle. It didn't sound at all. It didn't have much smell either. I bent down to pick up a hand full of sand.

"Did you know you were growing this jungle in sand?"

"Yes. These trees are being bread to live in desert conditions."

"Why?"

"We have much desert area."

"How can you make a tree grow in the desert?"

"You would have to ask my father that."

"I'd like to."

"I will have to help you. He has not learned your language."

We had a fare hike through the indoor desert forest before we came to a small clearing. There we found Karna's father.

"This is my father and my father's sister's daughter."

"Pleased to meet you," I said stupidly.

"Pleased to meet you," he repeated.

He led us to another clearing in the foliage where we sat down to an assortment of fresh fruit. Although I didn't think they matched a Florida grapefruit, they were very satisfying. He wanted to know about trees on my planet. I told him all I knew of trees. I told him of Greek philosophers and Roman domination. Despotism and democracy. Isms and schisms. I told him about our quick acceleration in science and technology. I explained how young we were. I told him about empires rising and falling. Eastern thought verses western thought, war and peace, wealth and famine, tropics and Antarctica, myths, fables and literature, media and mindocide, cars and pollution, industry and prostitution, drugs and desperation, video games and delusion, money and fossil fuel, third world and Semoza, terrorism and the CIA, greed and crime, monkeys and lizards, aeroplanes and sailboats, and I would have kept going on but everyone eventually became tired from so much unedited information.

When Karna had finished explaining to her father what I was rambling about, we had an evening meal of assorted vegetables.

I tried to learn a few things about their world. They had advanced in technology so much that they were no longer part of any of it. The city would operate on its own indefinitely and in the last generations no one knew what made things work. Even general history had been lost. In a city that used to house billions, there was now under a million. But he sounded hopeful for the future explaining all about the projects on which the people worked. He asked me again about animals. After the complacency of the village people it was good to see his enthusiasm. I thought I would like to stay and help in their efforts to start again but he never suggested he wanted me to stay. I started believing that I should get back to Earth as soon as possible and see what I might be able to do there to improve deteriorating conditions.



read on. book_01 chapter_24



by Joanne B. Washington

© 2001 | the jose wombat project