Something Learned from Racoons or Not, page 1

Something Learned from Racoons or Not

The boy watched the raccoons in awe. The actions of the two were nature at its best and near most violent. A dynamic representation of what it is to be alive. They danced, parried and swirled around, each driven to seek a position with the other, snarling and panting as they went at their ritual. Unstoppable except for a lightening bolt. A freight train of feeling was urging them into the tussle that wasn’t exactly a fight, but almost was. It was a display, a routine, actually, that was required to make the courtship into something tangible, something solid. Stimulating them both in both separate and joined ways into a state of being that would last far, far beyond the mere existence of the two of them in the here and now.
He was the bigger, but she was the more clever in this regard, wheeling around at the last second to deflect his darting part that missed the mark and did nothing but made him more determined with a certain type of frustrated fury that he had never felt before and would not feel again until another season was upon him and her or another like her. She, too, was filled with the same wild, reckless frenzy despite that neither understood the why of it or even recognized the strange behavior that that come upon them.

The boy was there watching, they knew, but neither cared. They were consumed within themselves. Respective hormones raged and effected very fiber of their bodies. It was Nature at its finest and most mysterious. The dance was nothing more than a romp of love that had no rightful sense of being within them, but yet it was there, a solitary driving force that would not be ignored, it enclosed them as a single unit fearlessly, hopelessly involved in the intangible mystic of something that beyond their capabilities to understand. It could only be felt and attended to with the last bit of energy in their bodies, nothing else mattered, not even death itself from the boy if it came. The mutual act was the Universe, all complete within a circular area of about ten feet. Nothing else existed or mattered. Not that they had a choice for their actions. They didn’t, of course. It was all written out for them, choreographed eons before by nature. Marvelous for its periodic emergence as much for the very act itself. It was a beautiful testament to how things work with a magical but vivid sense that defies logic, practicality and rationality of two rather simple animals.

The larger mystery was that it worked, worked well, all across nature as if by spread by magic from ancient times. Yet those animals involved, even humans, would never know or seriously care about the forces at play. But IT WORKED! And that was all that mattered to one and all. Of course, the boy was immune to much of the deeper meaning of what he witnessed, but yet he knew that something marvelous was happening. Something beyond the physical act of strange behavior that he was witnessing. He knew, but never in his life could utter words to convey what he knew or how he knew it as he watched from his slightly elevated vantage point on the side of a shaded valley as the leaves of spring shrouded the intimate affair. But then, neither could he explain the simple feeling of connection he felt with a almost glowing patch of velvety moss highlighted in the sun.

It would be a few years further on before he fully understood even the physical part of the drama that he had witnessed. While not understanding fully, he intensely knew the feeling of the two raccoons as they, compliant beasts of nature, did what they were programmed to do. How could it be, he would muse for decades until his death many years later. How could it be that a natural urge caused two animals to fall into such an intense wanting of each other that nothing else mattered at the moment, not hunger, death, or observer mattered until their endeavor was completed? He would wonder, was that love in the raw, unthinking love at its most basic element? What was that feeling at those rare instances that drove a creature to have no other thought? Was it even a singular, driving thought? Was there something deeper within all nature that was being accessed and revealed in a graphic if obtuse way or was lt something obvious that was always there but covered over by layers of other, lesser explanations? Was it the most pure, telling moment of existence that the raccoons enjoyed being merely raccoons? Were they caught up in the single most important moment of their lives but yet were unable to appreciate the moment for what it was?

Then he realized that it was the same with his courtships. It was something that just happened, no hand at the tiller, no planning, no preparing, no stopping of it and no deep soul-searching attached. They just happened. He would smile to himself in later years as he grew wiser about it, confident that he learned a lot from the raccoons about love, relationships and happiness from that brief affair they had with each other and that he had shared with them.

In truth, he didn’t understand so much as he simple accepted the vast implications of the mating of the raccoons that went beyond the physical. He had tried to pass that wistful knowledge along to some of his lovers, but it never worked with words either laying beside them in bed or in hand-holding, mutual. contemplative walks in the forest. Nor did it work very well with putting sentences down for others to read in an effort to transmit to them anything near the level of the miracle that he enjoyed in those brief moments in his early life. He eventually died one night as a bad knee failed him dashing across a fast highway to embrace the comely form of a young dear who had purposely attracted his attention at a keg party one wild night. He should have known better. Not that it mattered. It was a part of the mystery that he never fully understood. Nature infects all at just the desired level it must induce, but keeps its secrets nonetheless. How strange that non-ordinary forces appear in the brains of creatures to drive them to actions that alter their usual, standard operating procedures. As if by some plan, the continuation of the species continues, all without forethought on the animal’s part. It simply and magically happens to all animals, large and small, simple and self-assured alike. What magic Nature holds dear.