THE THIRD BRANCH

When the early monkeys came to that specific evolutionary fork in the big old tree of life and looked forward along the left branch, they saw strange things up ahead, like more intelligence, protoconscience, moralities all vague and misty, and said Whoa, let's not go that way - they had their reasons - so they chose the other branch, took the path more traveled and got to the upper canopy where they are now, which isn't bad, actually-- mostly the tropics.

Then when our own foresimians came to the same fork they looked to the right branch and saw all those monkeys jammed up ahead, said Damn, that is way too crowded, give me some space, so they headed left into all that shifting civiloplasm where they had some room to think and did, and here we all are with a long list of haftashouldy stuff eats up our time.

So it happens that now and then, when I pause in my work at tilling and planting to grow some of my own food on my mortgaged soil, or at patching up my weathering residence, I watch the monkeys ambling houseless past my garden into the food-laden forest or sitting up in the arms of a tree comfy-munching on a natural snack that many humans say God has provided, and I think about the monkeys’ choice way back then, since now they can go anywhere, anytime, no 9 to 5, no visas, mortgages, suits, appliances or infidels... If I was back at that evofork right now on behalf of all humanity up ahead somewhere on the timepike, I think I’d check to see whether maybe there was a third branch we might have overlooked; you never know...

May as well think about it, since we wound up being able to.

THERE WILL BE SACRIFICES...

Yes, nature just isn't gonna take it any more; severe adjustments will have to be made. One unthinkable change is already under way...

Everyone from teens to senior citizens are saying no,
but mongers and meisters are trying to turn back the tides of change,
after a brief commercial...

INTELLIGENT EVOLUTION: LEARNING FROM OUR WILD NEIGHBORS

It is good for us to live amongst the wild creatures, carry on with our lives amidst their close vicinity, the better to learn from those evolved beings the truths we need to know about our own proper place in this world of which we fancy ourselves the overlords.

In fact I had such a lesson this morning, when I almost stepped on a baby monkey. The tiny wrinkled creature, even then in the midst of learning to sneak up onto my deck to get as many as he could carry of the winter potatoes that in my negligence (half the soul of human kindness) I had left in a basket there, afforded me some further insights into our respective places in the universe, and how we civilized, hardworking, largely altruistic creatures and the thieving beasts around us fit together in the big picture.

The unexpected lesson (the best kind) began just as I was putting my lunchbowl into the sink, when out the big window onto the garden I saw a bigass monkey ambling like a lord into my garden through the gate I'd negligently left open (I'd just been out there putting some rice straw on a couple places, left the gate open for after-lunch garden tweaking).

I ran out the door at once yelling and handwaving in regard to my respective place in the universe blablabla vis-a-vis monkey lust for my onions, a complex philosophical question that I gave no consideration as I headed instinctively - like a monkey toward an onion - for the little pile of antibeast rocks I keep handy on the deck railing.

Anyway, to get back to the infant thief beneath my foot, as I pounded onto the deck to chase Bigass out of my garden I came within a monkeynose of stepping on the cute little artful dodger wannabe as he was edging toward what were almost his potatoes. You should have seen the look in his beady already criminal eyes-- he had never seen a monkey as big as me, pale face yelling for justice, a huge beast covered in different kinds of multicolored nonfur, in his entire life. He'd just been born of course, so had but a short time range to choose from, but that only magnified the experience for him; he tumbled backward in disbelief and fell off the deck right in front of I guess his mother, who was grubbing among the lily roots and also freaked at sight of her falling child with me above.

At the same time, I saw that Bigass was out there with his numerous tribe (there must have been a few dozen of them, all ages) all around, so I had to yell louder and gesticulate more threateningly until I had reached a crescendo sufficient to dominate that many monkeys (there’s a formula I use) and they all took off carrying babies and other monkey luggage (though not one potato or onion, I’m proud to say), legging it for the property nearby that has a big dog who is nicer to them, only barks and possible bites. No long-distance definite rocks from a big loud beast suddenly out of nowhere.

I learned much from the experience. From the look on that little big-eyed face, for example, I learned that I am in fact the overlord of this particular fraction of the world, and that little brigand had better believe it, like the rest of his tribe. But most importantly of all, I came to realize that the monkeys in their natural state have an ecological role to play when, in the depths of winter - as they have done since the first tick of monkeytime - they subsist on roots, seeds, bark, whatever the wild provides. Like us, however, the monkeys prefer an easier way if there is one, though they haven't the will or the wherewithal to create it themselves, so they want ours. Thus is their natural role - which historically does not include onion consumption - critically unbalanced when they steal my produce; so in yelling at and pelting them with rocks to drive them from the garden (much like ourselves, in our own mythic times), I am doing my part to restore the natural balance, thereby helping forestall the possibility of global warming, among other growing perils.

Yes, it is good, as I say, for us to learn from and teach our fellow creatures our respective proper places in the world. The little crook and I pretty much have that down now. He'll be back. But I'll be waiting. With more than a size eleven.

Doing my part for a cleaner future.

TRUE EVOLUTION

Hope is good, though not as good as potatoes. Anyway, I think I'm getting better at this. Yesterday morning I was doing something in the kitchen when I happened to look out the big window and saw, beyond the cord of firewood, the head of a monkey. In a familiar landscape, random monkey heads sort of jump out at you.

I instantly deduced that the monkey wasn't hanging out on the other side of the woodpile like a teenager at the mall, but was in the vegetable garden. I knew this because on the monkey head was a monkey face and on that face was a monkey mouth, and in that mouth was not a monkey potato, but a Brady potato. Monkeys are too dumb to grow potatoes.

At that point I ran out and threw a smartstone at the instantly distant monkeys. There were three I could see now, where they stopped to pause and look back upon their thieving past (to ponder and perhaps begin to repent their evil ways, turn upon a righteous path, now there's a laugh, though some of our species have allegedly managed to do it), two females and a troublesome youngster they were welcome to.

I went out to the garden to assess the damage and found that only one beast had gotten a potato; the others had been distracted by the leftover and finally reddened tomatoes I'd left hanging from the fence netting for just that purpose, and it had worked: two of the three brigands had opted for the right-there easy and old tomatoes, rather than the underground dirt-covered maybe potatoes, onions or carrots. That little margin of extra time and monkeybelly fullness, plus my increasingly acute sensitivity regarding simian proximity - I like to think of it as a sort of monkey radar - had enabled my prompt response in chasing them off.

As I watched them watching me from across the road, though, it occurred to me that although I might offhandedly think that monkeys are too stupid to grow potatoes, it may be that, since they can have my potatoes even when I'm home, they may in fact simply be not dumb enough to need to grow potatoes, and they know it. There's always that unsettling quality in their eyes, when they look back from a distance beyond reach of my mere stones, their cheeks stuffed with one of my big new potatoes.

The course of true evolution does not run smooth.

WHY WE LIVE

Motorcycling upmountain through the forest to visit Mr. H., I suddenly came upon a dense excursion of monkey mamas and their babies and kids crossing the road, looked like on the way to my place, the simians totally foregoing such frivolous forms of education as kindergarten and grade school, to say nothing of high school and university, what good are such time wastings when you have mountains of forests at your disposal, and no conscience?

They prefer to just get right on with teaching the facts of living to the kids directly - their version of home education - so they take the wee ones out the minute they're born and begin showing them all that they are heir to, in the present case the reaches of their forests and the sudden weird surprises of this other species, the delicious-food providers, moving noisily along only this narrow flat hard thing that runs through the middle of the world, the mostly hairless creature traveling not on legs and paws but on round things that... that... go around at each end and make this noise like an angry male, it's incomprehensible, really, but there it is--

How in the world do the mother-teachers describe to their ministudents an asphalt road traversed by a motorcycle with a vegetable and fruit provider on it? No wonder the little critters are so wide-eyed as I whiz by, those huge brown eyes-- I mean swinging on a vine is ok, sure, but this rapid noisy creature is bizarrely amazing--

As I blur by the mamas are probably saying something like: That's one of our providers. Soon we'll be getting to his garden, you must be sure remember the place, where you can get all sorts of delicious vegetables and fruits at this time of year. You have to be sure to remember what gardens look like, they're special places, where the most interesting things are planted for us by strange, wheeled creatures, like that one that just went by, its a symbiotic relationship we have. They grow these delicious summer and fall foods for us and we give them a reason to live; its all cosmically determined. Here it is. See those nice tomatoes? I had some delicious carrots and potatoes here, just last week, before you were born! You'll soon learn what those are!

As for me, the human in all this, I can't be everywhere. Which I guess is somehow the big operative idea.

THE WEEDS OF INTELLIGENCE


Early this morning while waiting for the dew to dry (now there's a pleasant task) so I could go out and do some seriously overdue weedwhacking around the deck and out into the garden without coming out of it looking like the jolly green giant, I looked out the front window and saw a solitary monkey sitting atop the electric meter on the pole outside by the road, one arm around the pole, one leg hanging down, casually chewing on a piece of grass and surveying the view of his vast possessions in all the tranquility of Huck Finn with his line in the big river, sitting on the bank and meditating on the meaning of life.

He gazed at the panorama before him, scratched an ear, then settled down and his eyes took on that distant look of deep thought, of whatever is the monkey equivalent of existential matters (is there a monkey Kierkegaard?), which was as infectious as a yawn, because as a fellow simian elsewhere on the same long branch I too began pondering such aspects of being as the distinction between him and I, at least at the surface level, where 99% of the differences lie. As to the depths, we haven't even begun. The monkey and I wandered the big mindspace together.

The hairy thinker was clearly satisfied and doing perfectly well without a house, an automobile, a television (having myself glanced at tv not long ago, I don't see how monkey tv could be any worse than our prime time.) As to a car, I doubt if the thought of wheels had ever entered his head, which must be a pleasant absence, to say nothing of insurance, licensing, carbon footprints and all that baggage; his gas prices aren't going up, either. Moreover, he pays no taxes, has no mortgage, needs no clothing, requires no schools, lives off the land, has no government, never needs to whack weeds (what are weeds?). The sky is his roof, the forest his walls, the whole great outdoors his house. He was also making better use than I of my electric meter, and he enjoys the fruits of my garden. Our much-touted intelligence was withering radically before my mind's eye; it was a welcome moment when the dew was dry.

The monkey just went on loafin' where he was-- waitin' on Tom, I 'spect.

SHUTCHER BEAK

So, late this afternoon I'm out there in the garden getting the last of the day's work done, manning the hose in this case, and Crow settles in one of the cedar trees - he drops by now and then to check me out, see if I'm setting out any selectables for his royal delectation - and seeing me doing what I'm doing he commences to chuckle that big cawy guffaw of his, laugh-shouting to his buddies here and there on the mountainside carrying on their dark arts (I'm in a bit of a hurry at the moment so this is a rough translation, I have to leave out the deep rhetorical flourishes that make Crow the cryptically eloquent language that it is) "Hey guys, check this out, you know the human I told you about, cuts trees into pieces, chops them into smaller pieces and stacks them up here and there outside of his house for up to a YEAR, keeping them covered from the rain, then BURNS THEM? Well, he's got other logs here now that he just made holes in with a machine, then stacked up, leaving them uncovered, and now he's watering them!! Do you believe these people? And those comical wings! What craziness! Haw! Haw! Haw!"

I have no trouble withstanding such feathered mockery - apart from the rude noise - as Crow's fellows crowd in from around to collectively watch one of their human subjects water the shiitake logs I've just inoculated; Crow's opinion isn't worth a black feather anyway, since he never did a lick of work in his life, just stands around in trees looking cool or hassling hawks up in the sky, doesn't have to plant anything, start fires to keep warm,or make shiitake logs for a couple years down the line; all he has is today, and gets everything handed to him on a natural platter, like roadkill. What does he know about the difficulties of higher intelligence confined to two legs and frequently a desk?

I told him and his buddies my opinion straight out, but they didn't hear a word I said in all that beaky laughter.

TREE OF SMILES

I was out walking along the roadside the other morning scavenging for mukago, which I've posted about here and here and elsewhere, when I saw a mother lode of the silver-pearly goodies dangling down on the strings of their dried vines from the tall mountain bamboo that covers the land on the other side of the road from us. The plant itself vines its way up through the thick bamboo and canopies out across the top, using the slender bamboo stalks as an ideal support.

I knew that there were plenty of mukago up there that, if not harvested, would soon fall to the ground and get eaten by inoshishi (wild pigs) scavenging beneath (which, to any mukago fancier, is the true-life version of pearls before swine), so I started walking along the road and pulling on the hanging vines to tip the bamboo down to where I could get at the some of the treasures beaded among the leaves along the edge of the top.

So all the way along the road I was reaching and looking up, and at one point back in there I saw a bunch of big white smiles up there among the leaves of a low tree shielded from the road by the bamboo. It was an akebi vine threading the tree, and being secluded it was full of smiling fruit that humans along the road could not see (unless they tipped down the bamboo), and that the monkeys, for some delightful reason, had not yet found.

Since this wild fruit prefers monkeys as consumers and generally grows too high for humans to reach - as in this case - I went and got the high ladder and my clippers, and with a bag hooked to my belt climbed up to gather the happy fruit. Being up there among all those sweet smiles was very pleasant to the monkey in me. I clipped off the ready ones and some of the near-ready ones to see if they would ripen anyway, and to get another jump on the creatures that are still completely monkeys.

Though monkeys and laddered humans are the only large creatures that can reach the really high fruit, akebi prefer monkeys as their consumers, which explains why the fruit is designed the way it is, so that the eater can't separate the hard seeds (which resemble apple seeds) from the sweet, custardy flesh. That is also why akebi hide high up in the shadows and, when ready-to-eat, open up wide in a monkey smile, the monkeys then grabbing the magnanimous fruit and scarfing it then and there, subsequently spreading the seeds from the treetops throughout the forest as they go, whereas picky humans take the fruit home and spit the seeds into a garbage bag, which is new to the akebi evolutionary experience.

The flavor of akebi is also unique in that there is none, because flavor doesn't matter to those who are still completely monkeys: sweet is enough. It's the only sweet fruit I can think of that has no flavor at all, which is interesting because as a result, the fruit's appeal to humans as well must rely on its sweetness alone. It is very sweet, therefore, but not cloyingly sweet, as the same degree of cane sugar sweetness, for example, would be.

Also part of the larger picture is that the melting creamy texture of the pulp strongly invites the eater to swallow the sweet mass whole, if one is a monkey (the seeds are too hard to chew) or, if one is a finicky human, to go through all the trouble of slowly swirling the mass around in your mouth, carefully keeping all the seeds in check while letting the custardy portion slowly melt away in a flavorless wash of sweetness that yet... does... taste... remotely... like something... you can't... quite identify as you swirl and ponder, the completed process of thoughtful consumption rewarding you at last with a mouthful of seeds that want to be swallowed.

All of the above factors, in addition to an ultra-brief shelf life, combine to explain why akebi is a traditionally appreciated, countryside sort of fruit that is rarely (if ever?) sold in stores. Every Japanese has heard of akebi, but few city folk nowadays have ever eaten one. Eating akebi is nonetheless a worthy experience in many respects. At several points in the process, by evolutionary design on both sides you are powerfully reflexively moved to just swallow the whole sweet thing, seeds and all, as it calls to the monkey in you, while as a creature of higher intelligence you are moved to consciously and with considerable effort not swallow, by maintaining a sort of a gustatory zen state.

Despite best efforts, however, the human akebi eater always swallows some seeds. They're designed that way after all, to slick right down there unnoticed. Then right away you keep finding another of the sly things (evolution is a sneaky enterprise) tucked away in one or another corner of your mouth, awaiting its chance for escape. There-- that's the last one: no, there's another one!

So I guess maybe the only way to fully enjoy akebi is to be a monkey...

MONKEYS OBSERVE BRADY SPLITTING FIREWOOD


While I was splitting oak as the day headed for noon, every now and then I'd hear a loud thrash in the bamboo downhill east of the house; I'd look expecting to see some large animal come blundering out, but saw nothing, figured it must be an oddly careless wild pig forcing its way through the bamboo - unlikely to be a bear - went back to splitting, then again the noise and again. Finally, I saw a monkey silhouette rise up into the higher foliage, then another and another, a whole tribe of them had gone through the bamboo to get to the tall trees at the center of that bamboo grove, apparently to loaf at their ease in the sunny breeze amidst the ample edibles there - sort of a simian grandstand - while observing yours truly doing something that animals never did in all their history until one of our ancestors took an intelligent leap and became the first of us two-leggeds a few eons ago, which led to me in this particular instance.

So there we were, the self-styled homo sapiens with axe and the self-nonstyled toolless monkeys, together on the mountainside for a few moments of special interchange, the latter chattering away at their leisure in their tree-arm easy chairs as I sawed and lugged and chopped and sweated.

After observing my activities in silence for a few moments, the lesser monkeys asked the Alpha male (I'm translating here): "What the hell is he doing?" Alpha responded: "Looks like he's breaking up those big trees into little pieces for another one of those pointless human reasons. Hand me a couple of those berries. Breaking up trees? He doesn't look angry. Say is that the same guy who was doing this yesterday? How come he's blue today? He was brown yesterday! He can change his skin. Why? Who knows with humans. He's the guy used to grow onions, now he's breaking up trees into sticks; who can explain what the hairless do? More berries. Must have some influence though, he got all those trees to lay down like that. Male No. 8, check out his garden. Wife No. 4, get me some nuts."

No. 8 tries to sneak into the garden on the south side of the house; at once I race for my supply of AMBMs (Anti-Monkey Ballistic Missiles, known in times of peace as "rocks"); loud screeching from the trees: "8, he sees you! Get out of there fast!" I've only planted radishes, spinach, lettuce and ginger so far, though, none of which monkeys like, and the tomato plants are still small, so there's nothing for 8 to find anyway. Still, it's good to fire away at the neophytes, teach them that entering my garden is a matter of hefty risk. 8 speeds back to the tribe in the trees and nibbles on a stick as he listens to Alpha pontificate:

"Unknowable creatures those humans - grow stuff we don't want - I'll never figure them out; who else would grow spinach one day then spend days breaking trees into small pieces, only to just stack the pieces up? Wood's not food; all beyond wisdom, if you ask me. More berries. Some of those tasty buds, too. Now this, this is the life. I can't imagine why there's a want to be humans, though; sure can't be fun. Look at that guy sweat!"