Not One Serious or Socially Useful Word

(i never knew that the subway, jess – promoted by pfiore8)

Long ago and far away, when animals could talk (and a pleasure it is to start a diary that way), there were tiger stories and lemur stories and coyote stories; really good stories; and of course we keep telling those stories.  But when we paved and burned and ate the places tiger and lemur and coyote lived, no one saw them anymore, or not as much, and so fewer of their stories were remembered; indeed their story became all about the sentiment of loss.  “It is sad about the tigers” people say; and so they should; but this is a shade before, right at the twilight of wild things. 

Cougar and crow were looking down on the human city, shiny gold light at dusk, and talking about how when the last of them was gone, no one would keep the stories.  They agreed that one of them should take the stories into the city, and the other should take them and go as far as she could into the mountains.  Now you may think the division was obvious; crow would blend in better in the city and cougar more suited for mountains and forests, but they both wanted to go to the city to seek their fortune, and only when they'd drawn lots, and cougar lost, that it was decided. So cougar went high in the mountains.  Though sometimes she thinks about how her life would be different if she had picked the other straw, and sometimes she comes down to the valley and eats bicyclists, from love of their shiny, whirring ferocity, urbane and compact.  And sometimes crow comes up to the mountains for awhile, at least until it gets cold. 

Things went well for crow. The city wasn't as bad as she'd feared it would be; it seemed to suit her.  Before she knew it she had a job – lots of jobs.  Enough for her sisters and brothers!  But after awhile she started to think, that maybe if she kept the stories for herself, with so many of her relatives about, everything would become a crow story.  She was looking down a train grate one day and saw a rat, so she asked him.  If you come down here I will share your stories! He said.   But she was a wise old crow and knew he just wanted to eat her, so she shat through the grate and flew off.

Still, rat got to thinking. Rat had been thinking for a long time that maybe there wasn't so much difference as all that between him and the monkeys who made piles and ate, and he was pretty sure that a bunch of powerful stories wouldn't hurt things.  Not at all.  So he came back to crow, and begged and begged and begged.  Hey crow!  Woncha come down and share!  I really just want the stories!  But even when he climbed to the tops of the trees in prospect park, she just flew away.  She didn't shit on him anymore, and he was fun to talk to, but she wasn't going to get close enough to hand him the stories.  Because he was a rat.  And he'd eat her.

One day they had both been dining on fermented apple cores and pigeons, they were a wee bit tipsy.  Crow still kept her distance though; she knew these rats.  Look, rat said.  Just let the stories go in the subway.  I rule the subway! (he slurred this last part slightly).  Without a moment's thought Crow put her beak against the grating and let fly all the stories she had kept; the tiger and the cougar and the coyote stories released in an instant, a perfect reflective moment of light.  She is still sad about this, and collects shiny things because she is trying to bring back her stories.

Rat woke up the next morning to find all the stories in the muck around the floor of the subway; mud the blood of suicides the droppings of generations of rats discarded food feces urine and yet those stories were in there.  If you put your head just out into the space between the tracks, right next to the dirt – you could hear them all.  And that is why you see so many little fluffy baby rats, late at night, with just their heads poking out from the base of the subway wall; they are hearing all the oldest stories, so they will grow up to be wise city rats, with liberal educations.

But most of all, the stories are disturbed and fly in strange torpid extrusions when trains go through, drifting lazily through the tunnels.  And this is why New Yorkers read so much on the train, you know, and are great talkers.

{because I miss New York and liked Anansi Boys too much)