Response to the response of the butterfly dream
"I do not know whether I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man." -Chuang Tse
On the Restoration of Fossil Fuels
The cliffs had long been swallowed up in some apocalyptic vision of the Rapture. Fanatics cheered the starvation that led to a multitude of loitering ghosts. The more tangible ones made war with each other for the few blades of grass and crops the earth was able to produce between belts of arid desert landscapes and stifling wastelands of plastic and erosion where trees once stood.
The fanatics cheered on as one species after another was classified as endangered, then hunted, killed and traded on the black market with greedy vehemence. Slowly, The List dwindled as the species fell into existing in the two-dimensional forms of diagrams and photos in Natural History books. Eventually the only other thing to put on The List was homo sapiens. The fanatics cheered this on, too, the Rapture being so close that they could almost taste the wrath of God, like kerosene in a water cup.
The Palestinians disappeared and the Jews were rounded up; the last bit of science homo sapiens had was used up to track down the Jews so they could be deported to Jerusalem. The place-name elicited a tremble of dread. The Promised Land it had been called in fables going as far back as floods and panthetic rumblings. There was a burning bush and a thunderclap. The fantaics cheered this process on and, after every last Jew was in Jerusalem, they laid down on their backs and stared into the sky to watch IT happen. The Rapture. The return. The ending of all things.
They waited for Judgement, not realizing it had come and gone long before, so sure of their places in heaven. In waiting like that, on their backs with the atmosphere so thin, it was a joke to think it could protect anything anymore, boils and lesions formed on their skins, red and black, some bulbous mountain ranges erupting on the skin and other, wet and open, pussing white chunks out of open wounds, dripping cancerous sores, gaping like mouths dissolving.
The sun scorched their retinas and the lack of food and water desiccated their bodies, leather handbags of flesh, laying on the ground like that, looking up into the sky, staring at nothing and waiting.
They died like that. Waiting, belly up to the moon and sun, alternately.
They decayed, their bodies melting into the ground or hardening into fossils.
Thousands of years passed before anything of consequence happened. When it came, it was a miracle. Rain, rain falling on the carcasses that had become like stone, falling on the vacant spaces where carcasses had once laid. The rain rain turned the world to mud and silty oceans. It scoured the earth and buried what it couldn’t clean.
On the Restoration of Fossil Fuels
The cliffs had long been swallowed up in some apocalyptic vision of the Rapture. Fanatics cheered the starvation that led to a multitude of loitering ghosts. The more tangible ones made war with each other for the few blades of grass and crops the earth was able to produce between belts of arid desert landscapes and stifling wastelands of plastic and erosion where trees once stood.
The fanatics cheered on as one species after another was classified as endangered, then hunted, killed and traded on the black market with greedy vehemence. Slowly, The List dwindled as the species fell into existing in the two-dimensional forms of diagrams and photos in Natural History books. Eventually the only other thing to put on The List was homo sapiens. The fanatics cheered this on, too, the Rapture being so close that they could almost taste the wrath of God, like kerosene in a water cup.
The Palestinians disappeared and the Jews were rounded up; the last bit of science homo sapiens had was used up to track down the Jews so they could be deported to Jerusalem. The place-name elicited a tremble of dread. The Promised Land it had been called in fables going as far back as floods and panthetic rumblings. There was a burning bush and a thunderclap. The fantaics cheered this process on and, after every last Jew was in Jerusalem, they laid down on their backs and stared into the sky to watch IT happen. The Rapture. The return. The ending of all things.
They waited for Judgement, not realizing it had come and gone long before, so sure of their places in heaven. In waiting like that, on their backs with the atmosphere so thin, it was a joke to think it could protect anything anymore, boils and lesions formed on their skins, red and black, some bulbous mountain ranges erupting on the skin and other, wet and open, pussing white chunks out of open wounds, dripping cancerous sores, gaping like mouths dissolving.
The sun scorched their retinas and the lack of food and water desiccated their bodies, leather handbags of flesh, laying on the ground like that, looking up into the sky, staring at nothing and waiting.
They died like that. Waiting, belly up to the moon and sun, alternately.
They decayed, their bodies melting into the ground or hardening into fossils.
Thousands of years passed before anything of consequence happened. When it came, it was a miracle. Rain, rain falling on the carcasses that had become like stone, falling on the vacant spaces where carcasses had once laid. The rain rain turned the world to mud and silty oceans. It scoured the earth and buried what it couldn’t clean.
Labels: Prompted
posted by InkSpot | 3:06 AM
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