Deep within the crevices and wrinkles of my cerebellum, which is tucked snugly beneath my occipital and temporal lobes, a small bolt of electricity was generated with the express purpose of conveying a message to my inert limbs. The message, having been clumsily written by the part of the brain which resembled that of an ape, was simple: Be. Among. Trees.
There is no doubt that the technically unconscious organic material which produced the message had ulterior motives. The impulse was most likely the vestiges of the reflex ingrained in humans to escape from tigers and sharks. You must get high. Climb. Get up in the air. To be high is to be safe from predators.
However, we as humans have long beaten those lower beasts in the footrace to evolutionary dominance. I suppose if we had lost, we would be calling it a paw-race, or perhaps a fin-race. But no, it is a footrace.
We have drubbed the dumb creatures who had no comprehnsion of how planes remain airborn. Or how a text message is magically sent throughout the air without ever physically materializing. Or why it is necessary to force a woman to carry an unconscious mass of flesh inside her womb to term despite the host’s best wishes. Or how it is actually very prudent to vaporize children with nuclear bombs etc…
We had beaten these ignorant animals of the forests and jungles so thoroughly that we had to invent our own terrors. Terrors such as fascism, racism and innumerable other “-isms” filled the absence left by the animals which were no longer sufficient in challenging our life cycle. With no natural arch-villains left, it was necessary to invent our own.
However, ironically, that same silly impulse; Get high, climb, go UP, UP, UP! NOW! provided the same salve to my mind, and relieved it from the wanton terrors of the modern world. I, being a modern man with modern clothes and modern thoughts, chose to return to a state of animalistic zen. The straps on my hammock were secured to the cranky, old oaks, and I clumsily thrust myself into the cocoon. I stared through the cracks in the canopy of the forest into the infinite void beyond, and felt the gentle breeze of the ever crispening fall air wash over my cheeks. Things weren’t good. They were actually quite bad, all things considered. However, in this precious, fleeting moment, I was a happy ape swinging in the trees.
Millerwiller 