Big Goof: A Fable

Visions of self

He felt it as keenly as an east wind in winter scouring the gorge, knocking over trees, rerouting rivers and causing land- and rock-slides. But what he felt was more unseen, unknown than even the wind. It cut through, piercing his feeble mind with a terror greater than a thunderstorm.

A great change was about to overcome him. That’s what the feeling was though Big Goof had no faculties for discerning it. It was like a deep tremor in his gut that couldn’t be sated.

He may well have encountered similar terrors across the eons but his memory catcher didn’t capture those thoughts, feelings, desires. They were subsumed by hunger and cold.

He was sure of what he knew right then, as if he had never been so sure about himself, though, in truth, he had often been just as sure of himself, only to find himself in some new predicament caused by his inattention or arrogance.

But a shudder rippled up from his feet, two electrical charges tickling up the backside of his legs, then joining at his sternum, jolting through his spine, causing spasms that flowed all through him.

A vision came over him. A swirling wind mixed the clouds in the sky, causing a whirlpool. The wind increased and the eye of the storm appeared directly above him. The clouds suddenly reached down in a writhing tube. He stood transfixed as the tornado looked him in the eye. He stared back, defiant, though inwardly terror-stricken.

The wind ceased and the sun shone directly down the tornado tube. A rainbow, no, many rainbows danced within the cone of swirling wind. They danced up the tube and down, sometimes crossing one another, merging, separating, falling and rising as the tornado spun above.

One rainbow circle would suddenly twist in its middle, creating an 8-pattern, and another rainbow would link with it, then also twist into an 8. Four or three or seven rainbows linked, and danced, and unlinked, as they spiraled up and down the tornado.

The brilliant sun momentarily blinded him and the rainbows were gone when he could see again.

His eyes drew to the apex far far above, the sun had slid just beyond the small mouth. And right at the opening, he saw three or four, well … faces, he supposed. Three or four sets of piercing light blue rays flowed from their eyes. The blue beams danced down the wall of the tube and across the area where the dumbfounded Big Goof stood.

The rays glanced around and across and through him as if scanning him.

An eagle shrieked nearby. Stunned, Big Goof swung violently toward the sound, losing his balance as he did.

The blue beams shut off. The tube disappeared and Big Goof fell headlong down the wet slope into a tree which he struck with his considerably hard noggin but was knocked out for some time.

The vision was forgotten.

Big Goof knew only that he was. When he was cold, he shivered. When he was fed, he farted. When he was lonely … well, he was blithely unaware that he was lonely.

He only knew he was. What occurred out there wasn’t what he knew.

Big Goof yearned for something, though. He could be warm, fed and sheltered as ever and another nagging desire was still there like the sound of a brook nearby, every flowing every suggesting new melodies of nature.

The yearning awoke him from a dead sleep. It arose like a vision as he daydreamed. It whispered through his being as he slept.

He saw her face sometimes in this black darkness behind his eyes. Who was she? Why does she torment me so? He we ever met?

He heard himself muttering incoherently some unknown tongue “come to me, T’an va pa.”

That yearning for the unknown being, the woman, haunted him for the long, long breaths of his boring life.

The sad wind moaned in his ears, tickling hairs around the eardrum. He’d never heard such a laconic sound in the many seasons he had lived.

The wind whispered miseries darker than the deepest pool of the deepest lake. It told him of endless journeys in search of love with no answer. The wind buffeted rocks and rivers and skies, only looking for a way through to somewhere, some time where it could finally rest upon the bosom of the earth.

But it never did.

He listened closely as the wind wept its story. And he cried, too, because he was alone with the wind.

He knew then that no matter how he cursed the chill wind, he also loved it. The wind brought rain and ice and death but it also brought warmth and sun and treasure.

The sound died. Not even a whisper of wind coursed across the land. He felt disoriented, unbalanced in the void of wind. He felt colder than he’d ever known. And so very, very alone.

Then wind exhaled its sadness and fled downriver to be alone.

 

Big Goof looked for Old Goof Mountain – a portion of the cliffs that looked like what he imagined his ancestor’s face would look like. When the light hit the cliffs just so, a rough, angry face appeared – but dusk obliterated the features now.

The wind had passed on as he slept and only a warm breeze brushed across his body as he gazed around him. Gnats swam in the air just above him. A fish flopped in the river once or twice. A bat caromed close to his left eye, startling him.

He shrugged. Then sighed. A belly laugh began tickling his innards to his utter consternation. He had no idea what that gurgling feeling was or why it existed at all. He had never laughed in his life – lives – and he was certainly against allowing this frightful, fascinating feeling erupt from deep within.

That he had wept was not even something he really understood. All he knew is he put his craggy noggin in his rough, large paws and wet drops like warm rain fell from his tired eyes.

He really didn’t like that experience so why on earth should laughter add to his misery?

Big Goof had no idea what caused the skin folks to make the most horrid sound he’d ever heard – laughter.

The sound was the most eerie unnatural noise in the universe. It scared birds and moles. It echoed around the flat, pale faces, migrating and returning between them. What on earth was that awful sound? That’s what he thought the first time he heard it.

He had no concept of humor. Nothing he ever did suggested a whimsical sliver somewhere deep in his being.

Survival

Every moment, he searched for food and safety, for warmth and rest. For shelter.

Once he satisfied one need, another demanded attention. He was never both not hungry and not cold at the same time.

Then there was the weather which almost never lifted his spirits. It always challenged his very being. If it wasn’t the bone-shattering chill of an ice storm, it was the skin-searing heat of a drought. Even the early blooms of spring were so fleeting, they gave little comfort.

There was nothing funny about his circumstances.

That’s one reason he was content that he frightened the cold things. He wanted them to feel as bewildered as he felt when he heard their laughter.

 

Eek, a beast

Big Goof couldn’t even be sure he existed. He had overheard stories by the cold creatures, but he thought about it, they almost never knew he was right there. The ice skin things would always light a fire, even in the middle of summer. He would sit a few strides from them every once in a while.

He had heard rumors about some 10-foot tall hairy creature who stank to high heaven and who roamed this stretch of the gorge but he’d never seen one and though he could see he was hairy, he never really thought of himself as huge as the stories claimed.

He felt quite scaled to his environment. After all, it was so big, so loud, so expansive. He could wander for moons pass moons before finding some impassable barrier – an ocean, perhaps, though he had no idea what it was, or perhaps a huge volcano around whose flanks he would have to scramble.

He stared at the moon forever and anon, he thought, though really only moments of a long, long life. He tricked his mind into thinking experiences were eternal and truly they were because they were in his mind.

It helped that many of the memories were built upon preceding full moons sunsets storms so that the memory melded experiences confusing them in a rush of images.

He howled at the moon. His tremulous growl echoed across the river, breaking east and west. As it struck the bluffs upriver, the sound slid along the flank of the gorge, diminishing as it went upriver. A faint echo, though, answered his now, and for brief moments, he thought he wasn’t alone but his howl evaporated as the sound scattered.

The moon never ever answered him no matter how plaintive he would growl. He thought of the moon, though, as one of the only things he could count on. Even the seasons had begun to make him question their constancy.

Another quandary

Big Goof never didn’t exist, he knew. But it always perplexed him that all other creatures were unaware of his existence.

How could a legendary creature be so unknown after centuries stomping through the forests?

He mostly didn’t mind being a benign being. All animals trusted him, even those he sometime had to kill to survive. They offered themselves to him just as he knew his time would sometime be.

But he’d always existed. Perhaps he would never transit over the step between life and death. Perhaps he’d always exist somehow somewhere as something.

Big Goof gazed into the clouds. A shaft seared an opening right where he had gazed. Dumbfounded, he observed the hole widen, its edges tinged in colors. The light peered down from far above the clouds. It fell in shafts, spotting the ground where it burned through.

Curious, the big guy tried to see whether his gaze would cut another hole in the clouds. Alas, not to be. He had no supernatural powers, he decided after the attempt at searing a hole in the clouds with his vision wound down to boredom.

He shrugged his shoulder, gazed around him, and thought it would be a good time for a soaring adventure.

He shifted into a hawk and flew into the clouds for a closer look. The scouting proved unsatisfactory so he pummeled toward earth and landed, standing his usual thick self under the forlorn sky.