A Note For Lizards

Hello again,

I see you there in the corner, dancing in mockery of me, and I must say, in spite of the resemblance to mine own, that you are insistent, you dancing lizard, you. And even now, as your reptilian eye flickers with patronymic distain, I gaze back unto you, equally contempt, because one of us should not be here, one of us is not real. You, little scaled dancing lizard, have shown me enough of your routine, and I wish to watch you dance no more.

The sun has begun to set and what happens next is all too familiar for me; the gray wall next to your stage is usurped with the tidal urgency of a golden beam of light cast through this window until, finally, it reaches the ceiling and is replaced with the shadow of your apparition. Sewn on end to the tips of your claws, the shadow is your puppet, and your dance, oh that dance, is a routine of which I can neither turn my attention from or allow myself to join. You, dancing lizard, have burdened me for far too many sunsets, for far too many puppet shows, and I will no longer be your captive audience!

Yet here we are once more, you and your green keratinous scales, and I with my goose pimpled flesh. Your tail, wound tightly at your posterior, bobs to and fro, acting as a lure for the ill-lucid, and I, incapable of negating its transient twirl, have only one choice to make—to consume or otherwise, be consumed. I’ll say it again; here we are in the cold shadows of dusk, locked in this cell of a bedroom, predator and prey, dancer and audience, and as the sun sets lower still, it begins to become difficult to tell who, in fact, is the chameleon and whom is the neither…

If it were I, that was meddling maliciously and methodically in the dusty corner of another’s life, I too might try to act so inconspicuously latent, that through my deviously hypnotic performance, might pounce with a cold-calculated hunger onto my captivated onlooker. In the time just before however, I do not think I would gaze so devilishly into the eyes of my victim. This is just cruel! Cruel in that; like you, I am hungry, I am cold, I am tired, and I need to dance for my meal. You see, lizard, we are both the same in this way, the minute distinction being; I would not stare. I would not stare…

Of stares; the stairsteps of dissonance, which you have forced me to descend, are steep and they are slippery. Once before, I’ve nearly slid into the abyss, into the obscurity which you’ve learned to thrive, into the nothingness where you, slithering beast, dine. And as I step, carefully, towards the bottom, the stair from which I previously fall dissolves into darkness the moment my foot is relinquished from its surface; and in this phenomenon, I feel my own claws growing sharply into the confinement of my boots; and in this stairwell, I feel more and more comfortable, yet more and more confused. Spiraling downward, the staircase coils, not unlike your serpentine tail, which is a part of this larger, more ethereal motive—to make me feel as if I’m in control, as if I have chosen to take this path which winds treacherously into what is impossibly unnavigable, into your stomach, I’m sure.

If it were to be, that I was to walk willingly into the bowels of your digestion, then it may be best that I do so now, so that at the very least, I will suffer from your stare no longer. And if it were to pass, that inside your body, I discovered myself to have remained conscious, then maybe it is also best that I relinquish my body without concern for the pain associated with doing so, because like the stairs from which I fall, my appendages shall dissolve too, and likewise, I shall remain comfortably dissonant with this loss.

Dancing lizard, watching you move, I cannot help but relish in the despair of which you’ve inflicted upon me. You are an animal, and I am a man. You are what consumes, and I am what is consumed. You feel no remorse, and I feel remorse for you. So, which is better, my reptilian cell-mate, to be the dancer or to be the audience? To be cold-blooded, or the warm, tasty meal?

I see you there, in the corner, dancing. Upon arrival of these last descending steps, the sun will begin to rise and, with it, I too shall find my way back from where I originally fell. As the light consumes this room, I too will consume you, dancing lizard.

 

Until next time,

I remain…

Dear Hand,

I wish this to be my formal resignation; as of today, I am no longer to be employed by your trifling regime. Of all the things one may be inherently and self-oppressively opposed to, it is your indictable vague and variant behavior which has, of late, in an emphatically incoherent way, choked the life from the very being of which you meant to befriend. This gasping recipient of your incoherent demands has elected me representative of its cause. Hand, my resignation is a mechanism of which you will not understand until someone or something comes to treat your ailments, hopefully in a manner that is far from kin to your sickly administration of “friendship” towards others. So, it is in this letter which I will list the grievances that have surmounted to the events of today:

Because it is me, whom you chose to utilize as reference for these transgressions, it should also be me who holds the responsibility of cutting ties with you altogether. “Cut,” being a word most fitting for this severance, be it that I was not the puppet of which you jerked along with lazy disregard, but rather the string. This is not at all one hundred percent your fault, in this way, as all injustices require some seemingly benign slack given by some form of ignorant facilitator. It is through these ties that anchored these poor bodies unto you, Hand. Of grievances, using me to do such nasty work is the one I despise with every ounce of my strength, yet there is more, still, to be wrung free.

The second of the list of griefs, which I sincerely regret drawing out for you now, is regarding the malpractice you so easily justified as warrantable by way of necessity for yourlivelihood. I know this, everyone knows this, to be a false statement. A statement so disgustingly ego driven that even typing the words pushes back on my fingertips in rejection of the ideas you’ve tried to bring into the world. Can it be then that you, Hand, are so talented, so compellingly important, so special that the affection of happiness be yanked away from those who you touch. Why could you not share the stage with the rest of this cast? Why is there not enough light to shine on everyone? Like your puppet, you rip and pull on the afflictions of hope from everyone around you so that you may prosper, so that you, Hand, may pat your own back. I’ll say it now, that in this list let number two be: you are not exceptional, you are a sententious Hand.

Finally, I’ll recite the last of my complaints against you. The actions that I have been most reluctant to try and describe are difficult to pen because the words, when written of the nature of your behavior, melt into an indistinguishable pool of varying connotation. In this same way, your indecipherable social practices have riddled everyone whom I’ve introduced you to. As it appears, you’ve wanted to rid me of your relationships for quite some time. Who asks to make friends and then in that same breath shames anyone who shows them good gestures? You do, Hand, and it is also you who should feel for-shamed in this way. The only rationale I can muster from these undulating behaviors, is that the only relationship in which you know how to belong, is the one that you hold so tightly that it, like myself, must flee from your anesthetizing grasp.

This being it, my last words regarding our short time that we have spent together, I’d like to add that I do wish you well in your future endeavors. Maybe you will choke the life back into your friendships, maybe you are such a talent that your desires rightfully supersede those closest to you, and maybe you didn’t abuse me in these ways. But I am not like you, Hand; I am reasonable and cannot close my eyes to what lies before me. Through your desperation for companionship, you have strangled your puppets, you’ve tangled your strings, and now it is clearer than ever that the only way out is to cut free from you, and in doing so the ones affected by your strength may slide free from your fingers tips forever…

Yours truly (no longer),

Sanity

Artfully Meditated Purposfully Stated

Marcus Aurelius states clearly in Meditations that he himself did not partake in any more poetry or rhetoric than was required of him to write, read, and proficiently understand. His writing has the intent of being anything but ostentatious, but rather stoic, concise, and purposeful. Through language—written in this instance—the Emperor forwent with formalities, reputed excessive rhetoric, and presumed intrinsically contentious the poetic language, only to ensure his diction was pure and honest to purpose.

Being a fan of art and all of its mediums, my first attempt to capture the Roman’s meaning was no more than a grasp at a sand rope. Overtime, with more reading, I eventually realized the beautify in his veracity. Aurelius’ attempt; no, his ability to speak and write with absolute command over emotion and directness of thought was in itself poetic. Akin to nature’s auspicious scenic viewpoints or a child’s smile, purity is conveyed and felt without embellishment or illusion.

Art in the absence of art, might be the most beautiful picture never painted. His Meditations were for himself a manuscript, and to the world a masterpiece. Lessons for one man’s life breathed life into another man’s lessons.

Andrew T. Ramirez