The Occasional Excesses, and Five Thousand Years from Now J. Allyn Rosser (bio) The Occasional Excesses Well naturally the dinosaurs had had to go.He was green then, how could He knowit would be like directing a car-crash moviethat had no plot at all? But some amongthis new crop were also painful to watch.Ostriches and eels still gave Him the willies.He wished sometimes he could reach downand tweak a bit, but once You set them going …The greater challenges turned out to be the onesthat looked simple on the page: snake, rabbit, wren.The peacock had been a trip! He had to admithe'd gone a bit over the top there.But it had taken forever to ensure the quillswouldn't tangle like keys on a manual typewriter,so He couldn't bring Himself to scrap it.And then tortoises, come on, the genius of that armordoubling as serving dish for those strong enoughto pry it apart—but the males having to heave themselves,shell and all, to lock into position for coupling,in danger of falling backward in a transport of passion!He had to regret His own brilliance at times,watching the best of intentions turn travesty.Like the sweet gullibility of turkeys drowningof thirst, when the heavens poured downtoo many answers to their prayers.Like the red-sided garter snake's sexby strangulation—who wants to see that?Like the intelligence of humans.They had been amusing until they carried inventiontoo far, but Whose fault was that?They'd learned hubris from the Best.It was a bloody shame to have to start over.But no hurry. He loved this sensation of havingall the time in the world, now that they thoughtthey could undo what they'd done. It was only fairto let them try. He couldn't deny how much he loved [End Page 94] this extended prep period, like a string of snow days,free time stretching before Him just as it used to,feeling the juice of the ages drip down his backand pearl His brow, bent at the drafting tablewith wide, free strokes to conjure genera and species,alternating bizarre with plain, the coarsely furred and hornedwith the refined silhouette, the dusting of adjustable hair,species after species he was saving for the new seasonwhich wouldn't be long, not now, in coming. [End Page 95] Five Thousand Years from Now What would they make of all this, all my this?I can't imagine why they'd come excavating hereunless I happen to be buried just shallowly enoughbeneath a flash-ice-age wreckage and deposit.Or perhaps I'll be the very last of my kindto survive the Gender Wars of 2092, or what ifthis house by some miracle of atmosphere,location, soil properties, altitude, should remainalone, of all human-made constructions, intact;or if I'm just randomly selected from amongthe throngs of the suddenly dead by meteor,flood, nuclear blast, rapture, toxic wind. But if they do come rummaging with gloved handsor cyber-tweezers, how might I be judged?By these letters I've kept, the proportionof love to literary? By the alarmingorderliness of my medicine cabinet versusthe hodgepodge of papers and pilesof books, some annotated in pigment-based ink,some with mint-condition spines and jackets?Would they judge me by what I did reador what I set aside, and kept on setting aside?By the ferocity or by the neatness of my marginalia?Or by my carelessness, the wine and chocolate stains?Do my invoices outnumber my correspondences? And what of the sealed urn on the shelf,covered with her hand-crocheted tea cozy,positioned to keep dictionaries in seventeen languagesupright? They couldn't help noticing how I laboredto understand Hungarians, Japanese, Germans,French, Czechs, Spaniards, Filipinos, but notso much the mother who taught me my tongue,and to not throw anything away ever, not fruit paringsor coffee grounds or ashes, all richly compostable.Not the one who shadowed...
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Jul 24, 2018
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