The fennec, or desert fox, is a canine mammal species of the genus Vulpes.
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preface
Aren't I cute?
"Why the fox?" You may be asking.
I am a cunning creature, furry, cuddly, and can even be kind of cute at times.
"OK . . . but why the fennec fox?"
Well, I do so love the erg, am curious, playful at (appropriate?) times, and I am primarily nocturnal. And I fear the saker, no longer in love with it. Wary of its shadow as it crosses the dunes, listening with these sensitive ears for its cry- clear as the sun; fair as the moon; terrible as an army with banners.
To be clear, by "cunning" I mean more or less street-smart; I
navigate through my life avoiding conflict as best as possible, evading,
for the most part, the serpents and raptors that would love nothing more
than to rip and eat or swallow me whole. I am solitary mostly, and aloof
but pleasant until cornered. If I must be with other animals, I try to surround myself with those that make me feel good, discarding, or minimizing time spent with, those that vex my spirit.
Read on . . . perhaps you'll see.
Shall I continue? Splendid!
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I
“Love You Dizzy.”
These three sad
words were a promise she made to me. The whole thing goes, “Mon
Cher . . . I will Love You Dizzy . . .”
I capitalize these
words because they meant something. They were more than words. They
were HOPE, something I had not felt in many years. Something I once
dreamed about when was afraid to tell anyone my dreams. I regret overcoming that fear. Hope breaks
like something fragile; hope gets stolen like the priceless gem it
is. And like the frightened animal it becomes when cornered in the
caves of our hearts, Hope dies. It dies as surely as if its heart is cleft.
She was beautiful,
and I loved her. She knew me and said she believed in me. She saw
my heart and, brave creature that she was, stroked it like her very
own unicorn despite the terror she surely felt. She gave until she
did not, and I wept at the loss.
And here am I,
wondering if I think of her, of us, too much. I obsess that I may be
obsessing, and it ruins me. I am afflicted; I am . . . unsound.
Yet I also know that she thinks of me. How often I'll never truly know, but I know that I left her irrevocably changed . . . altered . . . crippled perhaps, as if by polio, though her heart never worked properly to begin with- some spiritual congenital heart defect. A karma murmur.
And I too am changed. I made myself, through a life-long regimen of incremental and painful inoculations, immune to the fucked-up feelings (love?) that I felt for her. Against my better judgment, I bore upon my heavy heart the burden that her love is. And she bore my own, until I suppose, she could do so no longer.
“I should have
known,” she told me once, prefacing with this, this fresh arrow,
nocked and ready, “That I could never live that life . . .”
My life. The one
she knew. The one in which she was to love me dizzy. This horrible life of mine; school, home, guitar, entertainment, movies, etc. Not the nightmare she somehow imagined. But she asked of my past, didn't she? Knowing it all already and quizzing me for honesty and disappointed that I was so truthful. I kept from her no secrets.
So I find myself
banished from Eden, behind me the flaming sword which turns every
way, keeping
me from the Tree of Life. She of the “Love You Dizzy” was my
subtle serpent, beguiling me, and I did eat. Perhaps this is why I
know all there is to know of The Knowledge of Good and Evil, yet
know so very little about Life.
Thusly
perhaps, is why I leave behind me this procession of spectres.
II
I have
met many women since, yet none of them have moved me so much as she.
Dana*,
a woman I know from the local college, had even called me a
“beautiful man,” shamelessly, and in front of witnesses. Her
young coworker, a cute woman of 20 or so years, readily agreed. Yet
even after a coffee date, I have yet to allow it to go any further. And Dana is wounded too, it seems . . . even a beautiful man cannot breach invisible fences.
* Names
have been changed to protect the guilty
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