I sit on this crag overlooking a gentle valley.
I don’t think about the future. I don’t think about the past. One is long gone, the other out there where I don’t live.
I am the only one of our clan that spends early morning time thinking. I think now, in the now. After a hunt I could be left gored by an animal — or dead. When you are dead, time goes away.When I look across the valley, I just begin to think. It happens. It is much like walking, it happens.
During the heat of the day I have no need to think. I just am about what I must do. For some reason it is not enough for me. I could make more arrows or flints, but I save the effort for looking out upon the forest and the small streams that move through the tall grasses.
And when I think, wonderful things come to mind, thoughts really. I tell others about this but they do not see its worth. I think of how long I have lived. I don’t think about how long will I live as that takes away from the now. It is not important to do so. I just am in the now with my thoughts, my inside arrows and flints.
I have observed the sun and the moon, of constant interest to me. I don’t know why they are round. Why can’t they be shaped like an arrowhead or my mate’s breast? It is a puzzle. I know the sun has day and the moon has night, although sometimes, if the light is right and the sky very clear, I can see parts of the moon. At night the sun is forever gone. What makes me think in the now of these two bodies concerns me, for one moves me to hunt, the other to sleep. I make no fires during the day and save all that effort, yet at night I need to cook, eat and have warmth.
I am the only one in the clan who tries to take the measure of his life. It is a riddle whenever I think about it. Maybe I should spend this morning thinking about doing something, like collecting wood for the evening fire.
As I look about the clan I am much beyond being young. I am an old man, I have lived thirty winters. The old women giggle when I take an ember and scratch upon our cave’s walls, making moons, making suns. I am very good at drawing antlers. I favor horses which roam our valley. Like much of my life, I am not sure why I do this.
In the moments of thinking I realize that in a way it is a doing of a kind, much like scouting for game. I find observing, whatever that is, for I am not sure, but I know it to be stronger than looking. When I look, I find, like an animal track. When I observe, here on my crag, something else happens in my mind. So when I think about observing, I realize other parts of it and I reach conclusions. I see patterns. Quite exciting at times. My looking has become sharper because I observe what I have been doing. The good thing is my hunting is more purposeful. I see a structure to it. Other men start the morning hunt with a basic plan. It has always been this way. I am different. I hunt with more than one plan. In this way I find I have choices, what I call twos or threes. If this works, choose it. If not choose another way. Other men do this as part of their skills but I am the only one aware of it. Others do not hunt with me. I confuse them, because for every here they go after, I give another there. The difference is that I observe myself acting. In some way I feel powerful, quite an unusual good feeling.
Only last evening, for the first time, did I try to draw me. The old women told me to stay with the moon and stars. That comforted them. They favor that which is constant. A figure of me was new and not to their liking.
I wonder. I don’t know what that is. It is different from thinking and observing. It has feeling to it. I wake early to observe dawn. I watch as shadows lift from rocks and boulders, like birds set off in flight. And before the blaze of sun has risen in the east, it is the calmest part of day. Birds chatter. Women stir in their beds. Distant grunts are made by animal life and the stomping of hooves. Dawn creeps into bright light like water edging into the river shores, the muddy flats where animals graze and set upon one another. I wonder about time. It is much too confusing for me but I think about it and observe how it rules my life and the clan and all of animal life and the coming of the cold and its leaving and the making of dryness and the wet times when as a clan we shiver in the cavern.
If I were to say what is it with me all day long, what is the noise in my mind, I must say it is confusion about my self and my place in this world. Others do not go that far. They are with the world from moment to moment, trying to get the next kill. I am cursed, I believe, because even while hunting I think, observe and wonder all at once although I complete my hunt. Others seem to have peace of mind, but my mind is split like the veins of an arm chewed on by a wild cat. While I was striking flint to start fire, the sparks that did not fire start disappeared into the stones about them. Each spark vanished and that made the fire less important to my mind. Where did the sparks go? Into the stones and kindling? The simplest things are the most complex to me. Others get on with it. I cannot stop thinking about the shape of things.
I think there is a purpose to the chatter in my mind, but I have not found it as yet. In that is the total of my life. I live, I go on, I exist, and then I face terror and adversity and hard times and then calm, not as frequent, I must say. I suppose it is a struggle. I cannot find the arrow that goes into the heart of an elk, true to its mark. All this mind chatter each day, and then tomorrow, and then the days ahead which I choose not to think about because it creates fear in me, worry. I don’t like to worry for it makes up much of my life — hunting, stalking, being, running, dying, wound healing, children born and all the blood and pain that Mara, mate, has had with that.
I have observed that beasts do not think like we do. It is a new thought for me. I will not forget it. We may be the only kind that knows worry. Worry contains past and future, a lot of future, and we give much time when we can in the now worrying about the then. No other animal I hunt acts like this. If you worry, you must pause, but animals do not sit down and think, none that I know of of. In fact, after all these years, I have felt that we sit down in an unusual way. I like the way we sit. I just realized I may be right because if wild beasts sat and paused to worry we would have ample food for winter. The beasts live in the now and so do I but there is a difference which makes us so different. I wonder if worry helps us to survive. My mind says yes.
TEMPLATE TO BE CONTINUED. ANY COMMENTS, READER?
