Heaven Is Paved With Bone/I Should Be Careful What I Wish For
I fail to exactly comprehend what I want, specifically, out of life. The rest of the world seems to have these long-term goals. I have much ambition, but not in a long-term goal way, more in an ongoing pursuit of happiness and perfection. My actions are definite and bold but without planning, and as such I tend to be quite erratic. I've been told I'm hard to understand. I can see why this would be so. I stopped trying to understand myself long ago, resigning myself to just Be and Do. This doesn't bode well for any kind of financial success, however. What artisan has ever been financially successful while not hating themself for it? Perhaps I'd be better off poor and happy.
To do that, however, means I need to sort out the more detrimental aspects of my life. Whatever little parts that still need to be pruned away, the things that make me angry or sad or trapped in some way. That sounds easier and simpler than it is. My complex mental pack heirarchy has shifted and changed considerably in the past year; unfortunately, many of the people in that heirarchy do not know this yet. I suppose I should merely be happy to be above omega status, but then ambition has always been my downfall. Or is that pride? And is there a difference?
I need to go back to the museum, on some bright new day I can spend a good 8 hours. For a dollar an hour, then, I can spend in quiet contemplation of ancient artifacts and replicated bones of monsters, converse quietly with long-dead beast and bird. Stand in the older halls and collections and let the thousand voices wash over me, a hundredscore screams and howls and whimpers, tales and epics of lives and sudden deaths and slow demises of disease and, every now and then, old age. Where else can you hear the voice of a tiger in the same room as a buffalo? If you listen in just the right way, of course.
I'm seized with unreasoning restless panic today, starting from the 5-minute delay between waking and the rush-back of dream memory and continuing until now and possibly continuing all day. The idea of leaving the house today is unconscionable. My only wish for today, oddly, is horseriding; to take off across grass and treeland, borrowing a four-legged gait from the helpful, benevolent equine, becoming in essence a centaur in fuction if not totally in form. But my sudden agoraphobia, coupled with a lack of horses, makes this a foolish wish.
Asked for dreams, I did, and dreams I did recieve. Not the ones I wanted. Perhaps I should be more specific.
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I had finished the footpaws, somehow putting in green and blue LED lights. I was unsure how I'd done it, and worried that they wouldn't last long as I hadn't attached any batteries or other power source. I boxed up the set and sent an unknown male, a friend of some description though his face was unfamiliar to me, to take the box on a bus, thereby to get it to a postage place. His phone went off, and with every repeated ringtone another of the bus doors slammed shut. He was moving so slowly, fumbling the phone and I grew very anxious, mindlessly panicked because the doors were closing and I could do nothing to hurry him. The rain came down, sky dark with black-grey clouds, and the panic drove me off the street. As I fled I yelped my fear to the sky, who did not care for my anxiety.
I found myself in a park. The rain had stopped but the grass was still wet, glistening like green glass shards. Decorative pebbles lined the flowerbeds, and the park was full of the usual groups of humans, students and lovers beneath the trees, lone and paired singulars walking dogs, that sort of thing. My gut seized in sudden pain; something I had eaten was not digesting. I was torn between the sudden inescapable compulsion, instinct-driven, to swallow a few of the smooth pebbles to aid my digestion -- the pain had bent me double by now -- and the fear of those hundreds of humans eyes upon me, expecting human behavior, which I simply could not do as the pain drew me down to pant upon the ground. I felt a sharp piece of bone twist in my gut, punishing me for ignoring my instincts and I could barely breathe.
And now somewhere else, rural, dry. Baked yellow and brown by the sun, dead grass limp and dry like dead hair clinging to a skull. The sun beat down upon me, unforgiving, leaving me ashamed for leaving the dry lands of my birth. My skin burned and tingled with the sun's righteous fury.
A man, around mid-40s and unremarkable in his typical farm-dweller appearance. He was speaking to me, though I did not trust his words, describing this area as a 'refuge for animals' that had been 'abandoned', saying that people didn't think about their safety or their wellbeing enough. He painted himself as a savior of the unfortunate, offering them a place to stay where they would be sheltered and looked after. As I looked around the pens, I saw this to be only half-true. I wished I could have been surprised by this, but I knew it to be typical.
There were a few straw-lined pens under a roof of corrugated iron that superheated the air beneath them despite the open front. The animals in these pens were obviously hot and thirsty, but I saw no water or food aside from the straw they lived on, which did nothing to help the carnivores. A litter of three lion cubs looked thin and mangey, with no mother I could see anywhere. A Suffolk ewe lay in another pen, obviously unshorn in many a season, strangely nursing a litter of kittens. A dog and her pups lay listlessly in a corner, and I saw one of them was dead, a smaller pup that did not get enough nutrients. From the gaunt pups that were left and the glazed eyes of the mother, I knew her milk had dried up days ago. A bison bull stood in the sun in a small exercise yard with two horses and a few rams. He stared dully in my direction. I wondered how he'd gotten here.
I left the man behind, who had disappeared into a shed with a strange alkali scent emanating from it. I made my way along the outer pens, the ones out in the sun with no relief in sight, made of ramshackle assortments of wood and wire. A large, proud-looking albino ibex stood and allowed me to touch his coat, bearing the sun's punishment with silent dignity. He had but one horn, the other hacksawed off fairly recently and leaving a bloody stump that drew flies like honey. There were eggs already laid upon it, and on the burnt-raw skin of his face. He would die soon. I carefully pulled away a section of the weak fence, but wasn't surprised when he didn't move; what was there for him out there but more sun? He seemed to thank me nonetheless, but still said No quite clearly, gently.
Two foxes, one on either side of a fence. The red, wild-type fox in a larger pen, circling and pacing in obvious distress, barked repeatedly in frustration. His mate in a smaller pen, the size of a sheep holding or inspection pen, a beautiful amber-coated vixen with pale green eyes, thrashed and yelped. Wire was tied around her neck in a crude leash attached to the far end of the pen. I saw in the larger pen the corpses of many other dog foxes, called there by her cries and shot in the gut with a large-grained shotgun shell. The vixen was terried of me, but did not bite when I let her loose. I pushed the dividing section of fence away and she joined her mate, but the two did not leave the larger pen to my frustration, until I saw the glint of traps outside the pen's walls.
I caught sight of a spool of barbed wire hung on the fencepost. A kestrel, obviously a young male, was impaled upon its many points like a crucifix. He appeared dead, and I apologised and prayed under my breath as I reached out to free him from the wire. When I touched him, he moved weakly, eyes on me as he tried feebly to flap his wings to get away, tearing them nearly into pieces. And god, the hunger was upon me, unbidden but unyielding, and despite my sincere wish to help him somehow my mouth watered at the scent of blood and the sound of his weak cries. I begged forgiveness and leant forward, my mouth close to his neck, smelling his dusty plumage and his fear. A chorus of silent accusations, and I turned to see the wall beside the pen covered in the bodies of birds, mainly crows and hawks, nailed to the wood and staring at me, and suddenly shrieking and struggling against their pinned wings. I did not know what they wanted, if they were angry at me for wanting to kill this beautiful little prince upon the wire before me, or if they too wanted death and release from this sunbaked hell.
The ibex looked at me, walked out of his pen toward me on stiff arthritic joints and stood before me. Leaning his head right back, his one remaining horn dug deep into his back, releasing fresh blood to enflame my hunger. Looking into my eyes with understanding and acceptance, he stood by the dying kestrel and tilted his head back and to the side, baring his throat to me and patiently waiting for me. I wept for him, and reached toward the kestrel once more to begin my long, grisly task.
The phone went off then, disorienting me. It was Amber calling, and from the clock it appeared to be midday.