Contemplations on Donkeys, and Road Trains

Sweet serene leaf floating
at the very top of the emerald tree,
already you fight
the long (lost) fight
with gravity.
How do you know when to
begin?
To divide one cell, two, four
eight thousand times more—
creating enough surface to
catch light, create
energy, add entropy, and force the birth
of others exactly like

you.

More surface = more sunlight = more fuel.

How do you know when to kill yourself in one last gleeful (and disappointing?)
swoop down?

On the earth is where the real killing begins anyway.
Once the rain
and the critters move tunnels of you through
yourself, and the
freeze and thaw cycle churns its own season of
decomposition;

then whatever golden cells were yours release
that same manic, leaf-making
energy
back into the next root to strike its
valiant heart
home; into
the aching remnants of your
green back.

At the very top of that next emerald, that gem,
do you begin again?

Is all of life simply death, waiting
to fuel another life?

--
Today I’m struck wondering how the hell a donkey ever evolved to make the sound that it does. I’m wondering because there is a donkey on the farm that brays when he’s: Excited? Hungry? Afraid? It’s hard to know because it’s the only sound he makes. I wasn’t more than five meters from him today when he let loose. The bray is first like a great roar, so awkward and off-kilter that for a moment you think something is wrong with the beast. After a few seconds he sucked in so much wind that I thought he’d surely asphyxiate himself, but then he unleashed a series of gasping, whistling, ridiculous guffaws. Afterwards, he seemed quite proud of himself. It was all so quick and loud and unnerving that I was shocked and began to laugh, nervously. Then I felt strangely like trying it myself.

And the roosters. They make their own signature sound, surely. But not just at dawn, the damn things cock a doodle doo an hour before sun-up, and even now, at twilight. There are even several of the chickens that hoist themselves into a tree, about three meters off of the ground. They are all in the same family, seven of them, and they hop up the branches one by one, using each other as temporary branches if need be, until they are all snug up above. Then they begin to nod off. Why? Well, to avoid the foxes, of course!

Animals are freaky little things aren’t they? The way they have evolved, and continue to do so, and devise their own little ways to adapt to our hellishly foolish and destructive asses. The cockroaches will outlast us all. There is no doubt about that. They will run amuck in the markets of New York City while the last bits of human civilization smolder somewhere in the streets…

Happy thoughts!

A note on the dolls. Tonight on my second tour of the doll trailer Kay told us about the “Companion Dolls.” These dolls were made in the early 1900’s specifically for spinsters—women without children. The dolls are very lifelike, and bigger, like real children. They were kept in parlors and the women dressed them, brushed their hair, and talked to them, as if they were real children. Very creepy, but also very sad.

Alas, no matter how scary I try to make the doll experience over here, it just hasn’t happened. I honestly feel like I’m walking around on the set of a campy horror movie—where you can easily envision all kinds of nightmare-fuel and epically creepy shit happening. But I find when I walk through the doll trailer that I’m just not afraid. So many of them actually look sweet and I’m curious as to their histories. And besides, Kay is so lovely (and treats all of the farm animals as children, which really puts a warm ember in my heart) that you feel bad making jokes about something she has obviously put a lot of energy, passion, and time into. She’s been collecting the dolls for 26 years and has over 1,800 of the beady-eyed little things. I asked her why she started collecting them and she said simply, “I had four boys.” And it’s not a half bad hobby money wise: She reckons the value of the dolls in the trailer is near 100,000 AU (about 75,000 US).

So that’s that with the doll house, but I do have a pretty amazing setting for other possible scenarios (i.e. stories) that could evolve out of the whole thing, AND, there is something in the woods out this way. We don’t see what it is but we hear it moving about in the darkness when we go to and from the toilet. I’m not saying the dolls AREN’T alive. I’m not saying that at all. They very well could be running in the woods, laughing at us, and plotting midnight attacks. What I’m saying is simply that I don’t have any proof of doll activity.

Yet.

Lastly, the road trains. Do you want to know the best way to have a truly unique and intimate experience with a road train? Well, try running 12 km along the side of the highway for starters. Road trains are quite extraordinarily imposing. These consist of three or four huge trailers barreling down the highway towed by a high-powered truck. They are akin to semi’s back home but longer, and they seem more menacing because the highways are much more narrow in Australia. I wasn’t so much afraid of the road train whilst running, but more so of things flying off of the crazy cargo that many of them hauled and hitting me in the face!

Peace for now,
laura