It was a cold, pinching, crispy 8 in the morning not the soggy, moist, saggy 8 in the morning I’d rather have when I fell out of the tree I always perch in, half on my side and half on my belly, forcing me to scamper back up the scabby bark to safety.   Most mornings start like this. Violently and with jolting surprise.  The feelings were strong and they made me hate myself.  Then I saw the ocean, and the grass, and breathed in the air and felt happy again.

I don’t normally hate myself, for I am an amazing specimen.  I am what scientists would call “completely unclassifiable”.  I am neither bird, nor a cat, not a sloth, a dog, a turtle, a frog, a rat. I am not a capybara, zebra, elephant, lion, praying mantis, ant, aardvark, cockatoo squid or any of it.  People with romance believe me to be a yet-to-be-discovered species.  Cryptozoologists think the opposite, that I’ve been lost and refound.  I think that is all wrong.  All wrong.  It is much more complicated than that.

I am in love with the earth but I cannot couple with her.  She is too vast and complex for me and I am not sure where her sexual organs are (which is convenient because mine are quite perplexing anyway and seem like they would be a bother to put to use).  I party with the sea, drinking and carousing whenever the mood strikes me.   She has an unfathomable tolerance and as it gets deeper into the night can involve herself in situations with unpredictable drugs and emotional beings I do not care to be near.  Oh and the air, the air, my intellectual outlet.  I suck, and I languish the air on my skin, scales, and feathers.  I do not get enough of the air and her theories and poetry, I wish and hope and pine I could have more daily to satiate my constant desire.

So from my tree I watch my companions, though the air is much more tactile as you must know.  I speak with them and listen, and it’s not just waiting for my turn to talk either.  I truly enjoy it.  But I’m not sure if I’ve clarified my position here.  I am sorry for getting off track. I can get nervous when meeting new people and explaining myself. And sometimes I get anxious for no reason at all.  Just by myself.  Strange right?

Indeed what am I? I am everything and nothing.  Fear and bravery.  I smell fetid and lovely, look ugly and beautiful.  I sow, I destroy.  I am male and female. I am God and Satan.  I sit in my tree overlooking the green ocean and the greener grass and I talk to the wind and contemplate all throughout the day into the night.  Sometimes I tell my love the earth, and my drinking buddy the sea, and my intellectual outlet the air stories about me. Past, present, fiction and non.  Like this one time I remember, an amazing thing happened.  It was 8 in the morning —a cold, pinching, crispy 8 in the morning not a soggy, moist, saggy 8 in the morning— when I fell out of the tree I always perch in, half on my side and half on my belly, forcing me to scamper back up the scabby bark to safety. Most mornings start like this.

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Images via: Cryptomundo, Pete Thomas Outdoors, Creepy Animals, Wiki Commons, FactZoo, Wild Biology