Monsters of his hallucination

6/20/15

Og klt. Og was so cold in fact it is hard to imagine how he stayed alive even with his three layers of bear skins and his huddling close among the pack of wild dogs pulling his primitive sled.

His tribe followed the caribou south. Og did not know the concept of south... Only that he had to hunt, kill caribou, eat, keep moving.

He had a son. Stronger than Og. Son, a few years later, a few hundred miles south, buried Og -- praying to gods lost to winds of prehistory. Sog choked back tears, disappearing into the summer -- but still frozen -- wilderness: many days, many nights. When returned he was somehow different. More sure of himself. Soon everyone asked his council. Grunting, gesticulating -- language was a mélange of music, dance & speech.

Sog. Son of Og... His great, great grand children were born in a temperate forest. The youngest of them felt that old family wanderlust and kept moving south finally settling - where more generations of great grand children were born - in a hot place. Less and less hunting. Something new was happening. Plants were food. Thousands of years passed.

The family was able to grow plants, eat and stay in one place. There was more time. A daughter made beautiful clothes. A son built a strong house.

A nephew built a small temple. An aunt healed the sick with magic words and herbs picked from Forest. Elders danced Wisdom circles. Adolescents danced mating rituals. Song, dance, prayer, speech, instrumental music so closely knit together they barely existed separately.  More and more each become separate, differentiated. Each mode of communication developing its own grammar. Each dancer his own style.

***

A hundred thousand years after Sog buried his father, descendants awoke in a Tropical rainforest. It was now only 50,000 years before our time.

BuRoomahBrrr! felt a morning chill as he surveyed the light of dawn through Forest canopy. This was his favorite time of the day. Alone full of life, he needed this time of day - to be alone with dawn sunlight on -and coming through branches.

Shrill Loudbirds broke sky, colorful, dangerous. Too colorful: striking greens, blues set off by black wings and beak were meant to hypnotize prey. Look to be aware. Staring will invite death or at least a ferocious confrontation - a ferocious and completely unnecessary confrontation.

He climbed a tree to scan for large tiger-like danger animals, grabbed a coconut for breakfast; ate a second breakfast with his wife, ten children. He was in awe of the very, very hot which they made with flint to warm the night and cook plants and meat.

*****

Og's brother hit him. Og swung a club missing his brother's head by inches. They grunted; moved apart; never saw each other again.

The brothers went in different directions. Nine thousand years later, the brother-with-no-name's descendants were living in a less intensely hostile climate...

Altamira, Spain. 17,236 B.C.E.

Rrrtre went deep into cave. He said his name. Names were important to him. Words were magic. Not to be used lightly. The fewest words which were needed. This concept was well known to him. He would not have been able to articulate it. He lived it.

Crawling on hands and knees  Rrrtre found an opening; stood up slowly, carefully. Painful experience taught him what might be above; stalactites were the least of his concerns. They too could hurt if he stood too rapidly ramming into one at the wrong angle.

Standing now his full four feet two inches - he was tall for his tribe - he took off his deer skin pouch, found the gourd of boar fat, struck flint and set the cave's recess aglow.

Looking around, he was alone. Silence. The sounds of the savannah a memory. He breathed relief. In shadows he could see more clearly what had brought him here - and to places like this before. He saw it in his mind. The image almost as vivid as the painting would be when he completed it on the wall. He felt the walls - to find the chosen one. He always felt the correct wall chose itself when he opened himself to a patient exploration. He had good hands. He felt with his fingertips, his palms, the side near his small finger. Slowly, gently then suddenly! It was obvious. He started to paint:

The herds of bison running across the plain.

His mind focused on one proud bison. He painted it. It was enough. The herd move on. He only needed one - that one.

At fifteen years old he had a mate and a child. He was courageous in a way few of us in the West know today but was common then among all people. It was survive or die. A life made too easy was a living death. He certainly could not have articulated this either.

To help his tribe kill bison, Rrrtre went deep into caves, painted a bison on the wall in its death throes. He was killing the bison. After this magic, this planning, this visualization, the task of hunting the meat needed for survival was merely self-fulfilling prophecy.

Man's prefrontal cortex - the planning part of our brain had reached a critical stage of development.

Before beginning to paint, Rrrtre laid out his tools, plant resins, fruit skins, bison blood, charcoal, fats mixed with special plant oil serving as lacquer. It was a really good lacquer. Rrrtre knew it would make the paint stay until his old time when he would come here to breathe his last. He had no idea or even concept his work would be preserved for twenty thousand years, that it would bring not only bison to his family and tribe, but his work would bring joy and solace to millions of people, that his bison - this particular one - the chosen one on the chosen wall would someday be photographed, treasured as one of the great achievements of all time.

Not only did he not know: Of course he could not have known, but it would not have mattered to him. What was important was helping his family, his tribe -- and the process - the joy of his work.

There was something about this place, this cave, the painting he was about to make that called him. This was the work of his life. He would bring his family to see this work.

He did not have a desire to share most of what he created. This - his present work - he needed and very much wanted to share. It was not that he thought his present work was good - that was not the issue. He felt a desire - a visceral need to share this bison work.

Then -- in the family tradition

-- he closed his eyes. Rrrtre saw the hunt to come. Furious pounding of the earth from thousands of bison roaming running as far as his eye could see. He did not know a word for horizon. He knew it in his skin.

His father taught him well. Kneeling on his bear skin coat, he saw what he needed to see.

Dignity. Strength. The dying bison curled into itself as the magic spears took its life.

He lived in admiration, in awe of the bison. He understood its life was important - sacred. All life was sacred. He prayed for forgiveness for taking the life of such a mighty creature. He had no choice but to live off of this animal. His first devotion and obligation was to keep his family alive. That meant killing bison.

They used every part of the animal for something: clothes, tools, pigments. For to kill, to take a life could not be done except with the greatest reverence and then only when the need manifest so there was no other way. Suru, his wife, was of the same mind. Her courage matched his. She and the baby, Rrsur, lived in the front part of the cave.

*****

Frank may have been an ex con but this - what he was doing now - was no crime. That's what he thought as he pumped bullet after bullet into the intruder's heart. The huge grey guy could not be brought down. Even if he were wearing metallic body armor - nobody can take that many bullets from a semi-automatic. The intruder seemed to have lost consciousness but was still standing. Frank had an image of the guy having metal plates where his heart should have been. This monster had no feeling.

Across the river, the tiny island nation prepared as best it could for the coming onslaught. Frank called over as they were pulling a futile canvas curtain over opposite sides of their city-state. "Don't you have a boat or something?" Not that even a battleship would do much good. A flotilla of battleships... maybe. The oncoming forces were just too great.

Frank knew on some level, despite his innumerable flaws and spotty education that he had some good in him. It was not always manifest.

Right now, amongst his animal fear, flirtation with the paralysis of despair he felt arise in him a dignity and strength his ancestors possessed almost twenty thousand years earlier.

The demons were real then as now. There were also the demons in his head which at times felt as real as a Sabretooth tiger attacking his ancestor in a time Frank only barely knew existed.

It was Frank's internal demons which he inherited if not exclusively biologically from his chronically semi-depressed and occasionally rageful father which drove him years ago to drink and crime.

He felt guilty that his overly comfortable childhood did not make him appreciative; it felt like a slow warm bath of an ever more self-indulgent life which was no life at all: A living death.

Frank never forgave himself - even though the Law forgave him. He had served his time; had been a productive member of society for almost twenty years. Demons were at bay - not in charge.

Could he summon the rage of his demons to fight the intruders? All this was so rapid and only semi-conscious, Frank was empowered. He felt little fear, only the resolve of what needed to be done. Was it anger and rage he summoned? Or was is it the wisdom to act forcefully now. There was no time to debate. He remembered hearing: anger clouded your thinking. This distracted him. Frank returned his focus to the horrors in front of him.

Frank was not given over to endless paralyzingly self-reflection - anymore. These thoughts- often monsters with no feeling - intruded but he sought to focus on external reality.

The court appointed anger management psychologist had done her job. Done it well.

He did not understand the concepts his social worker used to help him. He only knew he had a choice: to keep intellectualizing or to live his life in a balance which felt more natural. He chose life.

Frank felt a spontaneous ray of hope. Its message surprised him. He had always thought if he ever got it together - by which he meant having a loving relationship, being competent and therefore comfortable with his job, reconnecting with his son, taking care of his health, being respectful of himself and others, not being - and this pained him perhaps as much as anything - not being addicted to the fear he felt by projecting the power he saw in his father when he was an infant onto everyone which caused him to try to be nice and liked - approved of, so his infant self would not be annihilated by his Cronus - Greek god master of the universe devourer of his own children - father. Yet he loved his parents - both mother and father. He had gotten past his resentment and rage and was able to be a loving care giver in their old age. There was something about caring for others which was his salvation.

Frank always thought these bounties - if he would ever attain them - would happen one at a time. He realized - he felt with mastering the one central disconnect his parole officer told him about - all would resolve itself into - if not Nirvana - a workable, livable, full, rich life. All fell into place. As he took control of his situation, live or die, he knew he was on the path.

He could not say why, but cave paintings fascinated him -especially the one of the bison from Altamira. Half asleep, late that night he sketched it from memory, having traced it so many times before…

Monsters of his hallucination were vanquished to pen and ink.