Large Fierce Mammal

First published on October 13, 2019

“Man is the ultimate apex predator by design, and our footprint upon the world bears this out without question. Yet the Human brain, with all of its baggage, regards the world no differently now than it did when riding astride the skull of our cave dwelling, fire building, flint knapping ancestors.” ~ Dark Sentiments Season 10 — Day 12: Predator and Prey

You’ll remember those words from last night’s Dark Sentiment. Tonight we will be staying the course. First, a story.

It was the Summer of 1972. The place was Montreal in La Belle Province. I was 15, there visiting my Maternal Grandmother who was walking with me.

We were on a busy sidewalk bordering Ste-Catherine Street when I saw her, and the first thing that grabbed me was the way she walked. I had seen pretty women before that day, but she was something else entirely.

I remember how her long dark hair moved in the warm breeze that gently pressed that black dress against her body with just the right amount of intention. The cut was demure, the effect everything but. I remember that just to look at her was to experience an exquisitely physical pain that couldn’t be pulled away from.

The closer she got the less anything else existed, and for the first time in my young life, I knew what a beautiful Woman looked like. Moved like. Smelled like, for as she passed by me on my left I caught the slightest tantalizing hint of her scent. As though attached by a string tied to the most primal part of my brain, my focus remained where it was and followed her, thankfully still sufficiently under conscious control to prevent my head from turning to crane awkwardly over my shoulder. Still, in mere seconds I found myself looking the way she had gone to find her looking back at me with a slight smile.

The angels sang.

Je me souviens.

Je me souviens.

My ever observant and astute Grandmother brought me back to what remained of the world with a softly spoken observation — “I think she liked you.”

The next time I met a Woman who affected me that way, I married her and made babies with her.

With this story in mind, go thou now to any busy street or publicly accessible space wherever you can find one, select a vantage point from which you can watch the throng without looking like a stalker (the most important part of being one I might add), and observe what goes on. Be patient, and enter into the enterprise absent any time constraints. It will take as long as it takes.

You will come to realize that almost everyone in sight is somewhere else, riding in a vehicle running on expectations to a destination the passenger — certainly not the driver for there isn’t one — has already arrived at. Ignored by each is any hint of realization that the concept of the “self-driving” car is less technological achievement than metaphor.

That you, Goode Reader, have kept your head in the game long enough to successfully complete this exercise brings joy to my black heart, for in so doing you have joined the blessed ranks of those who understand how Splendour is missed in the world, reserved only for those deemed by the Universe as worthy of its revelation. Those who know unseen to be something quite different from absent.

Weep not for the willfully blind. They will leave more for our kind.

Until tomorrow.