Running Dog/ Black Fox Night
Jun. 3rd, 2007 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
summer_jackelOk, so we're trying something new here.
This journal started as a way of keeping track of my writing buddies, but things change like they do and I haven't been writing much lately. That may be changing again, who knows.
Anyhow. I've decided to use the 'Running Dog' label for all the strange little oddments and essays and things that don't quite cohere as short stories or as anything else really but that I still like. For this next bit, don't worry about it making any sense. It is what it is.
Let me tell you a story, o best beloved.
When I was much younger than I am now, a classmate asked me to tell her a story. I didn't expect it and didn't quite know what to do or say. What kind of story did she want? Fiction? Nonfiction? Something real, or something, because she thought I might be good at it, that wasn't? I forget what I told her then, although I remember keenly wondering why she asked.
Her request has stayed with me, though.
I don't know if she would still be interested and I doubt she will ever read this, but I will tell one now, though this story is not for her.
Listen, then: some six months or so back, I had a vision. This isn't unusual for me, though it isn't quite commonplace. It is important, though, because this one informed me, and I acted upon it, and those actions changed my life profoundly. It explains a lot about what happened, and why I did what I did and am what I've become now, and I haven't told you.
It is very simple, this vision. It was late, and I was quite awake, comfortable, lying in bed, lightly tranced. And as I dropped down I saw
a black fox running. It is night. It is a warm night with the sky high and velvety, purple-blue. The moon is crescent, maybe, or close to the first quarter, and the stars glitter as they only do far from city light. There are no sounds, just the desert smells of sere earth and small, pungent plants. This is a desert place, a long flat plain, and I sense the distant mountains girding it more than I see them.
Motion...running...quick and yellow-eyed, the silver-black phase of a red fox. Thick, dark fur, almost entirely black save for a few random silver tips along the brush tail and the narrow belly. For a moment disoriented, falling backwards, I wonder if I am this creature, but I know immediately that is not right. A brief moment of vertigo and I find myself on my own red paws. Fine, then, I am here with the red: we are talking about the physical world, a doing path, a decision, perhaps suffering, perhaps joy. Both, as it turns out later.
I come to understand that the fox is you by a certain cast to her eye, even more by the brief flash of your scent curling into my muzzle and stopping me as it always does, as if I could lick it down like cream, as if I could roll in it. You do not see me.
You are running hard, and have been for a long time. The fine-pelted lips are curled back on sharp white teeth and wet with foam, the ears pinned. I can hear you panting. There is anger in the slitted eyes, maybe even a thread of desperation. You are strong, very strong, and there is no holding you, but you are also tired, and I can see your body beginning to fail beneath the exertion. Your breath comes in deep, tearing gasps although your effortless pace does not flag. How long have you been running?
You do not see me; it is as though I trot in the air a few inches above your right shoulder. I am keenly aware of this place, how good the air feels, how quiet, how sweet the dry ground. That this is a killing place as well, that this is not the place you would ever find a fox in the natural world. I ache for you, and there is nothing I can do, and I wonder what is going to happen.
And almost immediately, you go to ground. There is a den here, a low narrow hole in the sandy earth, a coolness and moisture to it hinting at water deep below. A place of safety, though possibly temporary safety. I lick my muzzle and feel my tongue unfurl as you disappear down into that den.
I can still taste the heat of your exhaustion, see you lying on your side in the eye of my mind, motionless but for the rapid rising and falling of hurt lungs. I stand at the mouth of the hole, gazing down into its darkness, and I would slide in after you, lay my coarser muzzle in the ruff at your shoulder and share in your rest.
But I know that it is not my place. Not if I am not welcomed, invited, and perhaps you do sense my presence now?
That is the decision presented: to ask if I may follow you into this safe place, or to let you be.
I lay myself down in the mouth of the tunnel, for I am weary as well; feel the dry sandy earth slide cool and comfortable beneath my flanks and paws and belly. One ear tipped back to hear you if you stir, I lay my head upon my forelegs. Guarding this place, resting at the threshold, I am content. Looking up, I see that soon the sky will begin to fade until morning.
And that is my story, what I have to give to you. I have some idea of what it might mean, but honestly, I am not certain. I can know the fox was running, but not why. Why so tired, why so determined and fearless and worn so close to the limit of your ability? What is the den where you found solace? How do I have the confidence that such a thing could ever give me knowledge about you, about myself?
I didn't tell you this before because I don't know what you'd think of it. I'm fairly certain that you don't believe in visions, and though I wanted to tell you, I didn't know how. That's the frame, see: my old acquaintance asked me once to tell a story, but I didn't have one then. Here and now, I have a story for you, but you've never asked for it and I don't really know how to tell the thing.
I am not welcomed to that subterranean place of safety, though I did glance in long enough to ask and to see the sharp glint of your fang pulled back in anger. I will not question, now, whether to put my faith in visions: it is enough that I acted as I did. My whole world has changed, with all the people and structures that made my life, and I am not the creature I was before at all. The loss of that life, of myself, is almost nauseating. You are not the greatest piece of that, nor even the most painful, though don't think you are the least. You were, though, the last piece of it to give way, and you were the only part of it I really chose, the solid part of my life that I gave away willingly, and there is beauty in that. I am thankful.
I dwelt once in a safe den that I was loathe to leave, but the water dried up, the prey moved away, and you just have to. That I carry wounds is unimportant: all wild creatures are scarred if they live long, and they are much better at carrying them than we are. I appear to have survived for the time being, and from the other side of that loss I am able to consider it.
I am getting better at running. There is grace in pain. It was right that I acted, and I am arrogant enough to believe that it was right for the both of us. It is over now, and I am left, as I was then, with the final image: laying at the mouth of the den. Sprawled on my side at a threshold, with a certain coyote humor keeping watch. Whatever the meaning of the rest of it, I understand that part: it is my story, and I was there.
The earth is soft and warm beneath me, and I can rest here for awhile, feeling the soreness deep inside but accepting it, drinking in the beauty of the lightening sky with wry patience, timeless serenity.
This journal started as a way of keeping track of my writing buddies, but things change like they do and I haven't been writing much lately. That may be changing again, who knows.
Anyhow. I've decided to use the 'Running Dog' label for all the strange little oddments and essays and things that don't quite cohere as short stories or as anything else really but that I still like. For this next bit, don't worry about it making any sense. It is what it is.
Let me tell you a story, o best beloved.
When I was much younger than I am now, a classmate asked me to tell her a story. I didn't expect it and didn't quite know what to do or say. What kind of story did she want? Fiction? Nonfiction? Something real, or something, because she thought I might be good at it, that wasn't? I forget what I told her then, although I remember keenly wondering why she asked.
Her request has stayed with me, though.
I don't know if she would still be interested and I doubt she will ever read this, but I will tell one now, though this story is not for her.
Listen, then: some six months or so back, I had a vision. This isn't unusual for me, though it isn't quite commonplace. It is important, though, because this one informed me, and I acted upon it, and those actions changed my life profoundly. It explains a lot about what happened, and why I did what I did and am what I've become now, and I haven't told you.
It is very simple, this vision. It was late, and I was quite awake, comfortable, lying in bed, lightly tranced. And as I dropped down I saw
a black fox running. It is night. It is a warm night with the sky high and velvety, purple-blue. The moon is crescent, maybe, or close to the first quarter, and the stars glitter as they only do far from city light. There are no sounds, just the desert smells of sere earth and small, pungent plants. This is a desert place, a long flat plain, and I sense the distant mountains girding it more than I see them.
Motion...running...quick and yellow-eyed, the silver-black phase of a red fox. Thick, dark fur, almost entirely black save for a few random silver tips along the brush tail and the narrow belly. For a moment disoriented, falling backwards, I wonder if I am this creature, but I know immediately that is not right. A brief moment of vertigo and I find myself on my own red paws. Fine, then, I am here with the red: we are talking about the physical world, a doing path, a decision, perhaps suffering, perhaps joy. Both, as it turns out later.
I come to understand that the fox is you by a certain cast to her eye, even more by the brief flash of your scent curling into my muzzle and stopping me as it always does, as if I could lick it down like cream, as if I could roll in it. You do not see me.
You are running hard, and have been for a long time. The fine-pelted lips are curled back on sharp white teeth and wet with foam, the ears pinned. I can hear you panting. There is anger in the slitted eyes, maybe even a thread of desperation. You are strong, very strong, and there is no holding you, but you are also tired, and I can see your body beginning to fail beneath the exertion. Your breath comes in deep, tearing gasps although your effortless pace does not flag. How long have you been running?
You do not see me; it is as though I trot in the air a few inches above your right shoulder. I am keenly aware of this place, how good the air feels, how quiet, how sweet the dry ground. That this is a killing place as well, that this is not the place you would ever find a fox in the natural world. I ache for you, and there is nothing I can do, and I wonder what is going to happen.
And almost immediately, you go to ground. There is a den here, a low narrow hole in the sandy earth, a coolness and moisture to it hinting at water deep below. A place of safety, though possibly temporary safety. I lick my muzzle and feel my tongue unfurl as you disappear down into that den.
I can still taste the heat of your exhaustion, see you lying on your side in the eye of my mind, motionless but for the rapid rising and falling of hurt lungs. I stand at the mouth of the hole, gazing down into its darkness, and I would slide in after you, lay my coarser muzzle in the ruff at your shoulder and share in your rest.
But I know that it is not my place. Not if I am not welcomed, invited, and perhaps you do sense my presence now?
That is the decision presented: to ask if I may follow you into this safe place, or to let you be.
I lay myself down in the mouth of the tunnel, for I am weary as well; feel the dry sandy earth slide cool and comfortable beneath my flanks and paws and belly. One ear tipped back to hear you if you stir, I lay my head upon my forelegs. Guarding this place, resting at the threshold, I am content. Looking up, I see that soon the sky will begin to fade until morning.
And that is my story, what I have to give to you. I have some idea of what it might mean, but honestly, I am not certain. I can know the fox was running, but not why. Why so tired, why so determined and fearless and worn so close to the limit of your ability? What is the den where you found solace? How do I have the confidence that such a thing could ever give me knowledge about you, about myself?
I didn't tell you this before because I don't know what you'd think of it. I'm fairly certain that you don't believe in visions, and though I wanted to tell you, I didn't know how. That's the frame, see: my old acquaintance asked me once to tell a story, but I didn't have one then. Here and now, I have a story for you, but you've never asked for it and I don't really know how to tell the thing.
I am not welcomed to that subterranean place of safety, though I did glance in long enough to ask and to see the sharp glint of your fang pulled back in anger. I will not question, now, whether to put my faith in visions: it is enough that I acted as I did. My whole world has changed, with all the people and structures that made my life, and I am not the creature I was before at all. The loss of that life, of myself, is almost nauseating. You are not the greatest piece of that, nor even the most painful, though don't think you are the least. You were, though, the last piece of it to give way, and you were the only part of it I really chose, the solid part of my life that I gave away willingly, and there is beauty in that. I am thankful.
I dwelt once in a safe den that I was loathe to leave, but the water dried up, the prey moved away, and you just have to. That I carry wounds is unimportant: all wild creatures are scarred if they live long, and they are much better at carrying them than we are. I appear to have survived for the time being, and from the other side of that loss I am able to consider it.
I am getting better at running. There is grace in pain. It was right that I acted, and I am arrogant enough to believe that it was right for the both of us. It is over now, and I am left, as I was then, with the final image: laying at the mouth of the den. Sprawled on my side at a threshold, with a certain coyote humor keeping watch. Whatever the meaning of the rest of it, I understand that part: it is my story, and I was there.
The earth is soft and warm beneath me, and I can rest here for awhile, feeling the soreness deep inside but accepting it, drinking in the beauty of the lightening sky with wry patience, timeless serenity.
