Totem
Well it's 7 am on a Saturday so naturally I'm up and online. Six years ago my sleep cycle got completely out of hand and had to be "chemically" reset. These days I tend to run quite strictly to a seasonal schedule - in bed by midnight and up with the sun, meaning that I get hardly any sleep at all during the summer months, and have a bit of a struggle getting up in the winter. And as we don't change the clocks at weekends, I often find myself up at the ungodlies. But no matter, it's a chance to attempt a post I've been thinking about lately.
I've been working for a magazine company for the past couple of months, an arrangement set to come to an end in a couple of weeks. As a result I've been catching the train at 8:59. On the few occasions that I've missed the train (I don't know why - the length of time it takes me to reach the station seems to vary considerably from day to day) I've had the opportunity to watch a fox that pads through the verge by the side of the railway. There's an old patch of concrete there that once housed a pre-fabricated hut. The shack was removed a while ago, and now, seemingly every morning at a little after nine, the fox will rest there a while, either oblivious to those waiting for a train, or wise enough to know we complacent humans won't bother trying to cross the tracks and scale the barbed-wire fence.
The last time I saw her was on Thursday, and she had two cubs with her, one of which was being groomed, out in the open; the other was more nervous and lurked somewhere out of sight in the bushes. I seemed to be the only one interested in the fox with the one exception of a girl who kept turning from the fox to the other people on the platform, a broad grin of incredulity on her face. I suppose her smile was infectious because I did feel at this point that it was almost supernatural - that it did feel supernatural - and this feeling made me kind of sad, kind of happy. Sad, because it shouldn't feel so strange; wildlife, beautiful or not, should be more commonplace than that, and it is only because it had come into the city, into a man-made reality, that it seemed odd, seemed a transgression.
The happiness came from the way the foxes just seemed to be getting on with life. Here were various people standing about either not noticing or pretending not to notice the foxes, while the foxes got on with their own business. It seemed to me that there was an earnest acceptance of our presence, that the foxes didn't pretend not to mind us being there because they need no pretence. And perhaps it was because this was all happening on my doorstep, more or less, or perhaps because in the foxes continued existence within the mechanised, automated, zombie world of ours, I could feel a sort of hope for the rest of us, a hope made all the stronger for the magic that seeing the foxes fired up in me and the girl with the smile.
I've been working for a magazine company for the past couple of months, an arrangement set to come to an end in a couple of weeks. As a result I've been catching the train at 8:59. On the few occasions that I've missed the train (I don't know why - the length of time it takes me to reach the station seems to vary considerably from day to day) I've had the opportunity to watch a fox that pads through the verge by the side of the railway. There's an old patch of concrete there that once housed a pre-fabricated hut. The shack was removed a while ago, and now, seemingly every morning at a little after nine, the fox will rest there a while, either oblivious to those waiting for a train, or wise enough to know we complacent humans won't bother trying to cross the tracks and scale the barbed-wire fence.
The last time I saw her was on Thursday, and she had two cubs with her, one of which was being groomed, out in the open; the other was more nervous and lurked somewhere out of sight in the bushes. I seemed to be the only one interested in the fox with the one exception of a girl who kept turning from the fox to the other people on the platform, a broad grin of incredulity on her face. I suppose her smile was infectious because I did feel at this point that it was almost supernatural - that it did feel supernatural - and this feeling made me kind of sad, kind of happy. Sad, because it shouldn't feel so strange; wildlife, beautiful or not, should be more commonplace than that, and it is only because it had come into the city, into a man-made reality, that it seemed odd, seemed a transgression.
The happiness came from the way the foxes just seemed to be getting on with life. Here were various people standing about either not noticing or pretending not to notice the foxes, while the foxes got on with their own business. It seemed to me that there was an earnest acceptance of our presence, that the foxes didn't pretend not to mind us being there because they need no pretence. And perhaps it was because this was all happening on my doorstep, more or less, or perhaps because in the foxes continued existence within the mechanised, automated, zombie world of ours, I could feel a sort of hope for the rest of us, a hope made all the stronger for the magic that seeing the foxes fired up in me and the girl with the smile.
posted by Hamilton's Brain | 6:59 am
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