Scrambled Eggs and Brains

Scrambled Eggs and Brains

Fttsssk?sss. Butane. Inhale:
I-don't-smoke-that-much-cut-down-after-this-pack-good-forme-psychologically-expands-my-social-circles-opens-my-mind.
Exhale.

Here I am, three steps off a skinny and dangerous road, three steps
into one of the last holdouts of the forests that once dominated this
land of the Billerica Indians. This is Billerica, established 1635 (as
the welcome sign says) in the fadingly beautiful northeast corner of
America. It was a tavern town where the settlers of Boston came to get
drunk far from their homes and their wives. Today it's an oversized
suburb full of second-generation laborers whose roots are in third-rate
cities like Somerville, Lynn or Lowell.

This brief strip of undeveloped land is preserved by the towering
presence of the power-lines. The static crackle of these framed metal
giants descends through the air and somehow mixes with the sandy salt
smell of old snow as it reaches the unassuming creatures below.

I nod gratefully to these man-made tree gods. I am thankful both for
their protection of this scant strip of nature and for their function
as a constant reminder of our human presence in nature.
power-lines.

Inhale. I begin my walk down the trail. Snowmobiles have packed the
snow hard and slick, so I find that I am falling as I lift each leg and
each step is really only an effort to keep myself from tumbling over to
one side or another. This snowalk creates a generally pleasing and
amusing rhythm of travel. Slick snow for the body and nicotine for the
mind. Exhale.

The mind. I am stuck all alone with it save for my cigarette. I look
right and left: two thin walls of snow laden pine trees. Above the sky
is low and grey. The ground is a bare and glistening white. Yes, I am
trapped here with my mind. I might as well make conversation.

Inhale. "It's like a live-in divorce?" it says to me drawing my
father's words out of my memory. His description is apt though I think
a bit dull. My parents would strangle each other, but they can't
stomach the physical contact long enough to crush each other's
tracheae. At least they gave up yelling and throwing things. That was a
long time ago. I was so young my memory really only holds rumors of
flying saucepans and butter-knives. The yelling lasted considerably
longer, but even that they gave up several years ago. Now their knitted
brows and tight-pursed lips reveal that they're conserving their energy
for the Jedi mind power necessary for long distance strangling. If
Darth can do it so can you. Exhale.

"Well?we weren't sure about the morality of birth control." More of my
father's words. If you're the last of too many children, never ask your
parents why they had you. Inhale. The smoke is playfully rough on the
throat and lungs.

Besides, it's not half so interesting as thinking about how they had
you. Exhale. Thin cloud of blue-grey smoke and the rustic smell of
fresh tobacco.

Let us follow the general western mythology and say that all humanity
began with two humans, one of each sex. It seems that either by
instinct or accident these two humans discovered that if they should
come together and wriggle in a certain way they could derive for
themselves a tolerable amount of pleasure. Inhale.

Exhale. To make a long story short, the humans discovered that there
was a distinct connection between wriggling and the development of
lower abdominal tumors on one of the sexes. Furthermore, they found
that these tumors, through an incredibly painful and seemingly
unnatural process, eventually separated from the body and became new
humans. These new humans also discovered the wriggling process, and
soon after the species acquired global domination. Inhale.

Exhale. There occurs to me one very important peculiarity concerning
this process of wriggling. I am now a removed observer of two humans
involved in the action. Just in front of me these two humans, perhaps a
couple not unlike my own parents, seem to be stuck together and are
wriggling like a pair of snakes with tangled tails. And herein lies the
mystery: I am at an utter loss to determine whether the two humans are
trying to get closer to each other, or, as would be in the case of the
snakes (as well as my parents), trying to separate after some horrible
accident that left them painfully conjoined. Taking into account the
audible evidence from the two participants and their expressions of
relief when they finally do separate, I determine that it is far more
likely that their goal in the act was to get away from each
other.

There are perhaps a few centimeters of usable tobacco on the
cigarette, but my mind decides this is a good time to pause. My
thoughts are lost in the curling, drafting smoke escaping from the
burning end of the short butt. My eyes glaze over. All is the thick and
pungent smell of good tobacco. Through the haze of smoke all is quiet,
blurred and gently drifting upward.

I am suddenly brought back to my body by the sharp sensory distinction
between the heat of a burning cigarette on my fingertips and the cold,
bloodless chill of wind on my knuckles. Moving only my forefinger, I
send the cigarette flipping off into the pure snow. There it leaves the
smoldering stain of human presence.

I walk on.

To my left the heavy melting snow suppresses the ground as it forms
into rolling hills. These are covered with low underbrush, reduced to
thin switches of brown by the cold of winter. Here and there birds
betray their unseen presence by rustling through the otherwise deathly
still landscape.

I am suddenly reminded of a sacrament I have long neglected. I hop
lightly off the path, and, following the example of Legolas, I trot
swiftly through the dormant underbrush to the crest of one of the
hills.

Here at my feet is an old stonewall mostly covered in snow. I take
this wall to be as old as any European structure on this continent. It
is an early property line of the kind that aren't loved by something,
that are wanted down.

I select a finely shaped grey rock and brush the snow from it. Laying
my bare hand on its cold, hard surface I close my eyes and
listen.

"Out, out, damned spot!" it cries. I blink in surprise and then listen
again. "Out, out damned spot!"

Suddenly everything is changed. The snow is gone, and the air bears
the coming friendliness of spring. The trees have entirely taken back
the surrounding area, leaving only the path that still lies a few yards
from me.

I am some years younger. My cheeks are still bare and smooth, and my
eyes are wide and bright and fearful like those of a wild hare. I am
crouched behind the stonewall with my head leaning against the very
stone that brought me here. I am intently listening to the sound of
voices muttering and cursing in a British English.

Curiosity overcomes fear as I force my head to turn around. The
speakers are visible. They are three young men like myself. They walk
slowly along the path all dressed in tattered bright red coats that are
so full of briers and thorns as to be almost comic. One of the men is
hugging a sprained arm to his stomach. Another is holding a musket by
the muzzle, letting the butt end drag through last autumn's rotting
leaves that cover the path. The third has his musket resting lightly on
his shoulder. His back is hunched, and he is dragging his feet moping
and swearing the whole way.

Two fears grip my heart and paralyze me as they battle. The one is of
action. I realize that these young men are the very ones I am told are
the enemy. While they don't look much like my enemies, I know that
their presence requires a certain active response that it is my duty to
perform. The other fear is that of inaction. This latter fear is
irrational and therefore stronger.

My hands grip a loaded musket that I apparently have been holding for
some time now. Slowly and deliberately, I turn and rest the muzzle on
the stonewall behind which I am crouched. I point the musket in the
general direction of the three unassuming enemy. Again there is a
battle; again the fear of inaction is stronger. My finger slowly begins
to squeeze the trigger as the inner battle rages. Somewhere something
clicks.

Ftssk. Flash! foomBang!

I am blinded by fire, deaf from an explosion. My nose burns with the
grainy smoke of gunpowder. This is death.

Warm urine against my thighs and the cries of "Fuck!" and "Oh God!"
from the enemy confirm against all odds that I am in fact alive. I spin
quickly and again lay my head against the stone. I am panting
desperately for air.

The enemy is speaking. "There!" one cries. "Yes I see," and "Bloody
bastard," the others say. The meaning of these words is
incomprehensible to me.

Fsstk. (The sound is a bit farther away this time.) foomBang!

My body relaxes comfortably. I am aware of only one sensation: a warm,
soft and almost pleasant wetness at the back of my head where the rock
was.

Suddenly I am looking down into my own dark, fearful eyes. My face is
frozen in an expression of terror. My head is lying on the stone in a
stream of thick black blood that seems to be springing from the rock
rather than flowing from any part of my body. My thoughts are entirely
confused. I try to gather them, but they are lying in scattered chunks
all around my head. As my own body begins to sink farther and farther
from me I am aware only of a poignant feeling that something is
horribly, horribly wrong.

Fsstk. Damn wind. Fsstk. Damn numb thumb. Fssstk?sss. Butane. Inhale:
better-to-trouble-the-doctors-for-a-few-months-with-lung-cancer-than-the-psychatrists-for-a-lifetime.
Exhale.

Back in the present I try to shake the cold out of the hand that was
embracing the rock. I look down at this stone. "Out, out, damned spot!"
it still seems to say. Though two hundred years of rain and snow have
washed every rough spot from the surface of that rock, the black stain
of the young boy's blood and brains remains. Inhale.

Exhale. How does one boy, so very like myself, end his life with
bullet-scrambled brains, when another boy, just like both of us, grows
old and rich and fat until he dies of gout, happy and full of years?
Inhale.

Exhale. I suppose it all goes back to that wriggling, the great
wrigglottery. Scrambled eggs and sperm. The only difference between one
person's life and another's is who wriggled with whom, where and when.
Inhale.

Exhale. The great tragedy seems to be that there is not enough space
for everyone to wriggle where and with whom they like. This tragedy
breeds the bad blood. Once again the young boy with the musket lies
before me. Flies are buzzing in and out of his open mouth while crows
peck at his eyes. Gall in the blood. Alcohol in the blood surrogate.
Someone threw a rock at him, broke his head open, and left him there,
dead.

Some time ago physicians let the bad blood with the barber's razor.
Humans generally do the same thing though the process is a little
different. They throw rocks at one another.

I reach down and randomly select a stone from the wall. It is large in
the palm of my hand. "Couldcrushaman'skullwithis," the words race
through my head. Smerdyakov, Bezhukhov, I am like the Russians with
their paperweights. Inhale.

Exhale. But not even wriggling can explain this obsession humans have
with throwing rocks at one another, for animals also wriggle. Animals
too feel jealousy, envy and desperation in wriggling, and animals also
fight. But animals butt heads, bite, kick and scratch. It is only
humans who throw rocks, who let out their own blood.

Another cigarette has expired. In front of me the path curves to the
left heading recklessly for the evergreen wall. After a few paces I
reach the sunset line drawn hard in the snow. All around my feet the
snow is a glistening gold. Across that line it turns to the dull but
beautiful grey of twilight.

I take the step, and the sun sets behind the pine wall. The trees are
visible now.

Silent.

Watchful. Their energy and concentration are centered on one thing.
Living.

Life's gerund.

One tree is very conspicuously holding a branch low over the path. The
effort is unnecessary. I'd have bowed anyway as I entered the wood.
Only a stone's throw from me is a house, but I cannot see it for long.
The trees press their will upon me until they dominate my vision. I am
submissive. They cloud the static crackle of the power-lines from my
hearing and place their rough sturdy trunks before my eyes. Above me
are only heavy green and white branches.

The trees and their path eventually lead me to one of their own.

Deceased.

Before me hundreds of tiny roots glare from the round ball of an
uprooted tree.

Fttssk?sss. Butane. No wind here. Inhale.

Exhale. I lay my hand gently upon the bare and frozen roots of the long
dead tree.

Inhale. It is winter no more. In a matter of seconds I am drenched by
heavy, warm drops of rain that are coursing through the treetops.
Before me is the same tree, still dead though now upright and rooted in
the ground.

Ckssssk. Crack! There is a brilliant flash of light. I can see through
to a street where a transformer burns bright orange where the lightning
struck. The power is out. A vague discomfort begins to develop in my
chest.

The wind is heavy. I am not standing but leaning constantly.

Sllll?pop?pop?pop. The dead tree is loosing its footing in the muddy
ground. One by one the old and withered roots break. It leans far.
Pop?pop?pop. Too far.

Exhale. There it is laying black and dead half covered in snow. Black
and dead, like the boy with the bullet-scrambled brains.

Gaia is a hamster goddess. She is bloodthirsty for her children. Humans
blame it on bad blood. They live. They wriggle. They spread. Live.
Wriggle. Spread. Until the bad blood comes. Then they spill it in
offering to the earth. They slit a throat, throw a rock, spill the bad
blood until it's spent. Black and dead. Black lambs. Inhale.

Exhale. I am glad the snow is between my feet and the earth. I am glad
the soil itself is frozen. The bloodthirsty beast beneath me lies
sleeping. Here my own bad blood is safe. She is still digesting the
life of the uprooted tree.

Inhale. But still I can feel her breathing. Her geothermal lungs pump
slowly and hungrily. She breaths life into her creatures then sucks it
out again.

Exhale. Conception. A fetus swells, expands. Out from the womb.
Stretching limbs, reaching fingertips.

Inhale. Bullet-scrambled brains. Deep draught of thick black
blood.

Exhale. A single seed germinates. Grows, erecting itself to the heavens
spreading full, green, beautiful branches.

Inhale. The green turns brown. The black bark flakes away. The tree
shrivels, dies and topples.

Exhale. Another seed. Life again.

Inhale. Death.

Exhale. Life.

Inhale. Death.

Exhale.