August and September, 2009
"Do you suffer from what a French paleontologist called 'the distress that makes human will suffer daily under the crushing number of living things and stars'? For the world is as glorious as ever, and exalting, but for credibility's sake, let's start with the bad news."
-- Annie Dillard For The Time Being
The sky keeps filling with clouds. A goose down comforter shields this piece of Earth from its sun and one giant fish-belly cloud hangs low and swollen. We shiver. How can these clouds not bring rain?
This drought is the worst that anyone can remember. It has draped the landscape in zebra pelts and lain them out like the watches of Salvador Dali. Stripes melt. Faces seep into the ground, baring a toothy grimace. Innards writhe with maggots. Cows, calves, wildebeast, elephant, buffalo. They are dying in droves. Forget sleeping holes and water holes, you could map this place by its dying and dead, pushpins marking the intersection of space and time. What is the distance between corpse and carcass when the scavengers are full? Stay braced, my friend, for it is around the corner and underfoot. Scientists counted over 3000 wildebeast carcasses and teh World Food Program got an emergency infusion of cash. Open water is contaminated by death if not illusory. Ungulates, born to run, now only run in place, fallen down and pawing the dust. Tracing and retracing, a halo of dying effort is recorded at the base of their hooves. They are schoolkids making snow angels.
I am beginning to wonder who is dosing my morning coffee because, god help me, this is a very bad trip.
Even some baboons--famous for their ability to make do--have dropped dead and so have their infants. Drought conditions are not required for significant infant mortality, but this year's must surely be worse. One mother three-legged hobbled and carried her Raggedy Anne for days, long loose legs combing the ground and head lolled back. Another carried and groomed her dead infant until it was flat as a pancake and dry as a bone. A baboon cracker. A very thin wafer that might pair nicely with caviar or brie. By then she could carry it conveniently in her mouth, up the tree, down the tree, and across the plain. Still another mother lost not only her infant, but its body too. There she was that morning, alone, heaving deep, repetitive, distance-traveling "lost calls." I found her one week later, still calling lost.
Am I boring you with tales of dust and suffering? Another drought in Africa. How cliche.
What did I expect, what with nature red in tooth and claw? Protracted and gratuitous suffering has never really been my cup of tea. Still, I can stomach the pain that accommodates death and dying and can even kill when necessary. But I have a thing for symmetry. Mantles and shelves, nooks and crannies, bookends and tabletops, living and dying.
This asymmetry is under my skin.
