07-30-2009, 03:52 PM
There’s something to be said for starving: it’s more brutal than most people are willing to dissect. The body doesn’t simply harbor nutrition for later use but rather consumes it as quickly as possible and drives one for an even greater hunger within days. The stomach is a curious organ in that the less attention it’s given, the less it asks for, and indeed over the period of a week the stomach simply ceases to function within the body. Digestive fluids are burped up and sloshed about the mouth and tongue, creating an acidic forth which erodes teeth and causes the eyes to water, and the intestines and kidneys begin to digest the juices around them: namely blood and unused urine. Starving is a painful, horribly slow process in which one is rendered completely helpless and yet completely alive.
I should know; I practice this refined art constantly.
Were it not for the stubbornness of my species that channels one to constantly search for life despite the most desperate of situations, I’d have died years ago. I can hardly hunt, my body is never under my full control, and I ache from skin, to balls, to bones. Surely this life is a walking study in decomposition and I, its eager student.
How then, Professor, do you intend to teach me next? If only I truly had someone so stable and concrete to talk to. Hell, if only I had anyone to talk to. The great swelling breast of earth that is Wilderness is terrible for conversation, despite how pretty her face is. I’d been alone in the laboratory of the Wild for nearly three months by the time I encountered the tribal region of Nova Scotia. Their population was legendary; hundreds upon hundreds of primitive beasts, all collectively raping and feasting upon each other. Conversation, at last. People, at last.
Food, at last.
A strange expression overtook my face as my jaw fell open in Optime form, thin legs straining heavily under the erect weight of my body. I stood, hands clinging sharply to the ribs of a tree as bark peeled between my fingertips and songbirds took swift flight, their calls echoing their full distaste at being chased away by some hungry savage. I could hear my lungs boiling within me, half full of liquid from malnutrition, half full of saliva from the sheer hunger which drowned my ability to focus on anything but slaking that urge. I could no longer smell the pleasantries of the forest - beetle dung and plant matter – but instead classified all of my attention on how painfully famished I’d become. Each breath produced a row of swords which speared from my tan pelt – ribs, the lot of them – and with this came the involuntary whine which fell from my open mouth. Laboriously, one hand fell from the tree and cupped my thin body with forearm and palm. Again I whined, uncaring of how pathetic such sounds would outwardly appear.
For a moment I paused like this, my eyes sightlessly observing the dark stain of healthy earth beneath me. “…Fuck…” How I’d ever let myself become so nervously withered, I was unsure.
Without grace I collapsed in a sitting position, one arm still wrapped fully across my stomach while the other held upright the tall figure whose spine was trembling in an effort to support itself. There is a strangeness to monotonous pain that I’ve never fully understood. It is to me the way insects view the world—backwards from the rest of us; thousands of repetitious images which fold across each other in a wave of colorless breath. They know it blindly the way I know the feelings of hunger and loneliness. They were a moth’s vision to me—mothlight, if you will. If white were black and black were white, a moth would see as I did from birth to death.
I should know; I practice this refined art constantly.
Were it not for the stubbornness of my species that channels one to constantly search for life despite the most desperate of situations, I’d have died years ago. I can hardly hunt, my body is never under my full control, and I ache from skin, to balls, to bones. Surely this life is a walking study in decomposition and I, its eager student.
How then, Professor, do you intend to teach me next? If only I truly had someone so stable and concrete to talk to. Hell, if only I had anyone to talk to. The great swelling breast of earth that is Wilderness is terrible for conversation, despite how pretty her face is. I’d been alone in the laboratory of the Wild for nearly three months by the time I encountered the tribal region of Nova Scotia. Their population was legendary; hundreds upon hundreds of primitive beasts, all collectively raping and feasting upon each other. Conversation, at last. People, at last.
Food, at last.
A strange expression overtook my face as my jaw fell open in Optime form, thin legs straining heavily under the erect weight of my body. I stood, hands clinging sharply to the ribs of a tree as bark peeled between my fingertips and songbirds took swift flight, their calls echoing their full distaste at being chased away by some hungry savage. I could hear my lungs boiling within me, half full of liquid from malnutrition, half full of saliva from the sheer hunger which drowned my ability to focus on anything but slaking that urge. I could no longer smell the pleasantries of the forest - beetle dung and plant matter – but instead classified all of my attention on how painfully famished I’d become. Each breath produced a row of swords which speared from my tan pelt – ribs, the lot of them – and with this came the involuntary whine which fell from my open mouth. Laboriously, one hand fell from the tree and cupped my thin body with forearm and palm. Again I whined, uncaring of how pathetic such sounds would outwardly appear.
For a moment I paused like this, my eyes sightlessly observing the dark stain of healthy earth beneath me. “…Fuck…” How I’d ever let myself become so nervously withered, I was unsure.
Without grace I collapsed in a sitting position, one arm still wrapped fully across my stomach while the other held upright the tall figure whose spine was trembling in an effort to support itself. There is a strangeness to monotonous pain that I’ve never fully understood. It is to me the way insects view the world—backwards from the rest of us; thousands of repetitious images which fold across each other in a wave of colorless breath. They know it blindly the way I know the feelings of hunger and loneliness. They were a moth’s vision to me—mothlight, if you will. If white were black and black were white, a moth would see as I did from birth to death.