Nature Abhors a Vaccum

            Sometime before midnight, as a man sat near the source of the river, he

wondered, yet again, why the mind, like sound, was crisper, clearer, cleaner, why did it

travel better, more smoothly, when it was near water, at night?

            As he wondered why this should be so, he decided to simply let his body be

ballast for his brain, and just felt his way along with the thought hoping it would lead

somewhere when the emerging sense of balance and serenity was capsized by a familiar

sound that identified a familiar scene.

            The shrieking and unworldly howling of a pair of toms having at it until death or

defeat did one of them part shattered the silence of the night.  There must be a female

nearby nuts with the call to chaos and new order emitting a signal stronger than any

transmission yet devised by man’s mere imitations announcing that she would be

receiving the surviving suitor of the battle she had enjoined as soon as possible (“as soon

as possible, tommy boy, hurry man!”) upon her porch swing.

            But the ensuing union would be anything but romantic.  The horrid instinct, with

intensity beyond measure, imperious to the extreme, was the ancient one, too strong, too

powerful to be denied,  considered the basest by many, basic by others, beautiful by

some, but primitive above all, and its purpose was life itself, and not, as we know,

without its compensation for the winner.

            The female, deadlier than the male you say, without faith or fealty?  Young man,

do not judge her too harshly by standards human or romantic, for she is just doing her

insufferable job in the most selective process of survival and really has not much say

about the set-up either.  It is not one for opinion, now, is it?  So it is very much up to you

to recognize your own job, clearly, and without confusion, or hope for some higher way.

Make no mistake, young Tom, about it, if you want her.  For it is not she so much who

makes the choice.  It is made for her, through her, by a tradition of excellence that is the

male’s vicious legacy.   If it’s consolation you need, know that she suffers an ache and

pain you were not constructed to withstand. 

            The mind of the man continued to skip along in the night now silent again.  The

only apparent signs of life now were a man and a woman passing before him, laughing.