All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars…

...A hundred or so kilometers of twisting mountain gravel road led us to the Independence Day birthday of the Goddess of illusion, candles, cake and a view to the waterfalls across the forest of fruit and nut trees. Amazing how people can always find a reason to be dissatisfied, even in paradise. Perfect is never good enough in a society built of fractured families and selfish individuals with no sense of interdependence. Here, however, human stupidity is easier to overlook – you can literally always look up at a clear blue day, a night of innumerable, infinite stars. Lower your gaze and inanity can also be entertaining, for a little while.

Soon the party faded and the partygoers jaded made their prepossessing way back to their cars

And to the sound of singing made by birds at sunset winging, the last musos filled the gaps with their guitars…

            The return trip was slower in the dusk and forest animals began to emerge in (and merge with) the gloom. Almost all the native animals are nocturnal, sharing the world with us in relay, night by day. The sunshine creatures rarely see them, so it’s easy to understand how there can still be so much more ‘out there’ than most people are aware of. Unknown, unclassified species still defy the categorizations of humanity, slipping through the limited net of gross sensory perceptions; most brain function in humans is simple processing of visual signals - and the rest of the senses and supersensitivities are swamped by these visuals and the vagaries of random distracting thought.

            Emerging from the forest onto the tarmac, the Jackaroo Deva accelerated to the 100km speed limit as a car turned onto the road ahead, high beam blinding. Eye dipped lights to encourage the bounder to do the same and raised the beam again as we passed in the night; there, right across the road ahead  in the new moon darkness, were eighty dark brown cows, packed four deep and stretching out of sight either side of the road.

            A quarter of a second later eye saw a cow fly as the four wheel drive’s bull bar lifted it into the air; its eyes locked with mine as it hurtled skyward in the beams of the headlights - which were now pointing up at the sky – and disappeared into a gully at the side of the road. The cow behind it flew only twenty feet before landing, while the two cows skittled by it spun round and round on the road on their backs.

            Fortunately, my vice-like grip didn’t break the steering wheel as my speed reduced to nothing in a fraction of a second.

            Young MacDonald was there immediately.

            “Guess I shouldn’t have been moovin’ them ‘cross the main road a’night,” he laughed and smiled winningly as eye inspected the damage to the car. The cows, of course, were fine. Eye, of course, was fine. The vehicle was written off, according to most garages. 

            “Guess I’ll have to pay half,” Young MacDonald ventured.

            Somehow the beast made it back home, leaking fluids and dropping small components on the way.

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit