Amerika

It showed up one morning. Right there on the deck.
“A rabbit!” Exclaimed my wife. “Where did that come from?”
She promptly did what she always does, when strange fauna turns up unexpectedly:
Digs out a plastic container, fills it with nourishment suited to the newcomer, and labels the top with the name of its species. There have been many of these containers, along the way:
Cat. Fox. Raccoon. Deer. Crow. Mouse. Pigeon. Deer-mouse. Wasp. Mealworm…
‘Rabbit’, proclaimed the vessel. And by this small ritual, the creature became part of the family.

It turned out to be an outstandingly tame rabbit. And one that more closely resembled a Hare, than a Rabbit. Maybe it is a Hare. Whatever it is, it comes right up to my wife, scales her leg and looks adoringly into her eyes, while it either gets fed, gets scratched behind the ears, or both.

We worried, that first day, that one of our numerous raccoons might take a sudden fancy to rabbit-steaks, and decided to bring it inside for the night. That was the end of our sound system. When next I tried to get the thing to emit sound, I discovered the remains of the speaker wires, neatly segmented into a great many two-inch lengths, right up to the speakers, themselves. No big deal, you might think. Simply replace the wiring. But the infra-red remote cable had also been munched apart, blowing something up, inside the control-center, and no amount of soldering would ever fix it again.

So we let the beast outside, to fend for itself, slightly nervously. We had, after all, in addition to the platoon of raccoons, three cats: one of which more closely resembles a Lynx, rather than anything domestic. And almost as large.

Ever since, we have been nonplused, and vastly amused, to see the incredible spectacle of an ultra-tame Hare, chasing both cats and ‘coons around the garden. All accomplished without any sign of aggression. The hare simply approaches another creature, gets in its face, and out-stares it, until the creature bolts and runs. Cue the chase!
There’s something in that for me. I need skills like that. I observe closely, and learn.

But the big thing about this credibly crepuscular creature, is the casual abandon with which it runs its life. Even the casual observer would instantly be aware that the thing is happy. Incredibly happy. Not in the way of incredibly happy humans, of which there must be about eight, but in the way of a hare, in March, delightedly racing around, leaping and spinning, guilelessly terrorizing any nearby carnivore, pausing only to consume every green thing in sight.
There’s something in that for me. I need skills like that. I observe closely, and learn.

All of which causes me to ponder the stellar gulf that separates the human from the non-human.

Every trip to the village, come time to replenish the food-for-humans stock, is fraught with the reality of running into other humans. Not just any humans: Really, incredibly, horrendously depressed humans. Of which there are very many, hereabouts. And apart from being so very depressed, almost all of these humans are Left Wingers. Which makes me do a bit of dot-connecting, pondering, and concluding…

This particular island is known, Canada-wide for its left-winged-ness, and general degree of lunacy.
In fact, there is a joke about it, that one may hear, far, far away from the place itself. It goes like this:
“Colonel Sanders is going to open a special chicken outlet on that island.”
“Oh yeah?” you enquire, innocently. “What’s special about it?”
“It’s only going to serve left-wings and assholes!”
“Har har har”, etc.

Well. It’s not that far from the truth. And the truth is: almost everyone here is depressed. To the point of requiring medication with which to cope with it. A conversation with the local GP is illuminating. He will always enquire, as he does of every one of his patients, how much dope you consume. When you blink in surprise and ask him why he asks this, and that you don’t, he will explain that practically everyone here smokes dope and is depressed. The village pharmacy does a roaring trade in Citalopram, Prozac, Bupropion, Seroxat, etc…

And this is odd. Odd, indeed. One of the most obvious things about this place, and its population, is the utter lack of humor. Yet almost everyone wears this weird, oblique smile, that is not a smile, pasted on to their faces. They all say, as they approach – in a squeaky, grating, ear-splitting voice – “How are you today?” And when you say nothing, they brush past you with: “Fine thanks”, as if you had asked.
And, all in all, there gets to be ever less reason to deal with these sick, sick excuses for humanity. These unreal, insincere, mindless, ostentatiously charitable, hyper judgmental disaster-areas. I kid you not: this is leftist-land. And this is how it is.

Dope. Paranoia. Unreliability. Lethargy. Insecurity. Depression. Anti-depressants. Save the world.
These are the people who vote for the left. To get the maximum free-stuff, and send the maximum amount of other people’s money to distant lost-causes, in order to feel worthwhile. All while contributing nothing to anything except the growers of dope, and labeling anyone who is not like them as ‘Nazis”.

Oddly, I am not depressed, although being immersed in a horrible non-culture such as this might suggest I should be. Why am I not depressed? What is my secret?
Walk in the woods. Clean up a ton of wind-dropped debris. Make a path. Cut some firewood. Grow a garden. Build a shed. Chase raccoons. Meet a Hare. Smile at the bond you share. Exult!

And stay well away from humans, unless you meet one who does the sort of things that you do.

Tags: anomie, atomization, liberalism, schizophrenia