As they made their way up the valley’s precarious hill, John realized that he had spent the majority of his time in the past two days sodden, damp, or simply drenched. He squinted, casting an eye brimming with the irksome ichor of a prolonged discomfort.
“Does it always rain?” The once languid drizzle had swollen into a formal cascade. His poncho was now stuck to himself like a thick skin of carpeting. He questioned the utility of wearing an outer garment so absorbent in inclement weather; but he conceded to himself, internally as he imagined the debate, he did feel warmer for it. To that end, he had to presume that it was working as intended, as quickly discovered in the heat of his imaginative debate, he knew astonishingly little about nature of pre-modern clothing, particularly as it pertained to appropriateness of specific garments to a variety of weather conditions.
The idea of ‘pre-modern’ in his internal dialogue vaulted right over his awareness only to catch him from behind with the profoundity that only an accidental epiphany can even approach. He stopped walking, mid-stride as his mind disconnected itself from his feet in an attempt to further analyze this new morsel of insight and attempted to recalculate the math.
After a brief, but bittersweet, respite from what had become the constant drone of cognitive dissonance since his journey began, the word ‘Modern’ echoed behind his eyes again like a gong.
Modern.
What is ‘modern. He found himself wondering.
“What’s with you?” Tahuti asked, having ambled past him and noticing less the hesitation playing across John’s face than the abrupt end of his marching.
John held up a lone finger, tentatively; “Shhh…” he mustered. “I’m…I think…I think I’m thinking” was all he could manage, awkwardly engaging only enough motor control to stumble around a communique. He closed his mouth and considered re-articulating his intent, but decided better of it and instead opted to refuel the boiler on his train of thought.
Modern. This poncho is not modern.
Cowboys aren't modern.
The word itself, modern, had blossomed, having planted itself so stubbornly in his mind that It had ceased being a word and had instead become a mantra; almost a spell he could conjure from within himself in order to dispel these contradictory notions of existential conflict that had been troubling him all this time.
That house wasn't modern. He continued, a smile exploding across his face fueling the dim ember of awareness behind his eyes. He was starting to feel like a wizard, and the sensation of power he had claimed from the murky depths of confusion hit him with the intoxication of knowledge.
From outside of his own head, John was only liminally aware that the others were beginning to witness the miracle of his thought process.
“Is he okay?” only the sound of Ben’s inquiry pierced the depths of John’s reverie as he elected to follow this rabbit hole to where ever it lead.
“I don’t know that anyone could ever accuse our compatriot of ever being ‘okay.” Tahuti replied as he settled himself on a rocky perch shrouded from the downpour by a thick swath of foliage above it. “But I suggest you try to find somewhere dry, this could take awhile.”
“But…what is he doing?”
“I have no idea, but I’m quite certain he hasn’t the faintest idea either.” Tahuti retorted with his face buried in his satchel, as he dug for his pipe.
John’s mantra continued in intensity. Modern Modern Modern.
Talking baboons aren’t modern. Night time sky monsters aren’t modern.
What is modern?
The unassuming innocence of that question quickly turned sinister and disarming when no immediate answer presented itself to him.
John gaped, his mouth opened and closed in a mute reflection of his inner turmoil.
In the Stygian mess of coiled thoughts, knotted up side of John’s head, he could sense a single glowing thread, buried there deep in the brambles of forbidden thoughts. John gathered his wits and courage about him like armor and reached deep into his own head to try and grasp that one sliver of incandescent hope. He coiled his fingers around it and pulled it, feeling within himself a physiological twinge as he did, in the pit of his stomach, as if that tiny, symbolic, thread was in fact knitted into himself, up and down him, stitched to his guts.
Weather.
What was it about weather? He asked himself.
Pull.
The cord in his stomach pulled against the knot again. He was loosing his orientation. He opened his eyes again, in attempt to right himself, his lids slammed open and he drank in the light, the rain, and the clouds in the sky, exasperatedly. He drank them in, searching for a spring of splendor in this desert of drizzle. Frantic, afraid that his query was about to elude him yet again -What is it I am searching for - he hammered his eyes closed and bolted them to eye sockets with a determined consternation. This turned his mind to the tactile; the oppressive sodden weight of the wet poncho, the cooling drizzle against the skin of his hands. The feeling of his hands reverberated through him, echoing- taking him back through his journey thus far. Dry and mild, inside the Oracle’s hut…dirty and sore as they wandered through the forest…hot and gritty in the desert.
Hot.
Cold.
His thoughts kept turning, translating the secret memories of his skin into words and concepts he could understand.
Hot and cold. Wet and desiccated. Extremes. The band of comfort his skin registered, and recalled, and longed for an idyllic standard of normal.
The answer did not hit him so much as it very abruptly stopped eluding him, so abruptly, he, metaphorically, ran right into it.
“Air conditioning?” John said tentatively, an uncertain air in his voice betrayed his fear that speaking the word would spoil the magic he had so fervently hoped that it contained.
“What?” Ben asked, his confusion genuine as he was quite certain he had been paying rapt attention and yet he had so utterly and abjectly misunderstood the secret John had seemed so set upon retriving from what ever dark places in his mind he had dared to go.
Tahuti’s mouth opened, still carefully balancing his lit pipe. His own astonishment was obviously rooted in incredulity. “Air. Conditioning.” He repeated with a decisive gravity, his mouth contorting around the words as they spat from his mouth along the stem of his pipe.
“Air conditioning.” John stated flatly.
“What about it?” Tahuti’s eyes narrowed as he scowled at John.
“It…exists?” As he spoke, John realized that his delivery was less than convincing.
“Does it now?” Tahuti’s response had an audible sense of a baited barb inside of it.
“Yes.” John was determined to stand his ground, convinced he had settled upon something.
Tahuti puckered his lips in a simian way and drew a long languid drag from his pipe.
“What are the two of you talking about?” Ben piped up again, discomforted by his inability to understand the conversation.
“And why, precisely, is that important?” Tahuti failed to acknowledge Ben or his question.
“It’s…modern, or at least, more modern”, John accentuated his emphasis with his hands, “than anything else around here. It’s not just that either…electricity, television, computers…the internet!” he recited each object as if rediscovering them for the first time.
“I don’t see any of those things here John.” The monkey sounded dour, almost sad, as he took the pipe out of his mouth and rested it against his knee.
“But…why?” panic began to creep into John’s voice, clawing it’s way up his gullet from behind his teeth.
“The simple answer is…they don’t belong here.”
“Kansas?” Thinking back to his thoughts at the Oracle’s hut, John added another entry to the list.
Tahuti only shook his head.
John shifted his weight from one foot to the other, he felt drenched through, as if even his bones were being washed away.
“Then…why do I belong here? Or do I,” he asked, “Belong here?”
Tahuti nodded as he banged the bowl of his pipe against the rock to clean it out. “That is, I think, a better question, and one more suited to the tasks at hand.”
John crossed his arms and waited for an answer expectantly. When none was forth coming, he added, “Well?”
“In due time, like I told you before. You’d do well to remember to take things as they are, and as they come. Truth is a spectrum, and one dependent on context. You are trying to evade the here and the now by filling up these holes with where’s and when’s.”
Wep, who had been conspicuously absent during their interlude, poked his head out from the underbrush and licked John’s boots. His deep canine eyes reflected a sincere expression of compassion, but John was at a loss as to whether it originated from Wep himself, or if it was only his own and he had unwittingly cast the dog in a role in John’s own personal drama, betraying even the dog’s sense of self-determination.
