the cheetah cub and red fox

once upon a time, in the barren deserts of thar, lived a cheetah cub. nobody knew how she arrived there, for her kind is not indigenous to thar, and nobody gave much care for the whys and hows and wherefores of a simple cheetah cub. in fact, the neglect of the cub made it such that she would not care less of the world and its inhabitants, but instead divert her attentions inwards - to herself and the many questions that plagued her mind; mostly that of her own existence and purpose in life.

she scoured the desert each day, living off menial scraps and leftover carcasses, ones which nobody would care to finish but vultures, but they do not count for much as vultures are barely animals to begin with (not any more than they are shades of death). and in many years, she learned to make a living for herself, comfortable and safe, though never lavish or elaborate, and she would come into being as a cheetah that prided amongst little things, her own independence and self-sufficiency. this lead to the cheetah's growing an elaborate and beautiful coat of fur, one of golden mesmerising sleekness, dotted with obsidian rings of the finest and most perfect circles you have ever seen. and so, every animal in the land of thar begun to praise the cheetah for her infinitesimal beauty - but the cheetah would begin to realise that this praise stemmed from all the wrong reasons, and would not bow her head to any such compliments, but simply smile and run away.

one day, as the cheetah was drinking from a waterhole, lonesome and forlorn after a week's worth of failed huntings, she was startled by the appearance of an animal she had never met before. gazing up from its reflection across the stagnant waters, she stared bewildered and grieved, at a single red fox. tilting her head perplexedly, she inquired, 'who might you be, you across this drinking hole? i have never seen such a ragged and ugly beast. i do not think one such as you merits much in this world, and to share the same water that i would drink?... what makes you think you deserve so much?'

the red foxed continued lapping his drink, slowly, and without looking up, broke his sipping to simply say, 'i am a red fox'.

'indeed, i see that now. in fact, i knew this all along,' the cheetah responded haughtily.
'you probably did, and it did not occur to you. i should have introduced myself, and for that i apologise'.
'then you know your place well. maybe i shall allow you to drink with me a while'.
'you are too gracious. it is not common to find someone so exquisite, knowledgeable and kind-hearted altogether. indeed, today has been a most enlightening day, and i must admit it has fared me better than i normally do'.

the cheetah smiled and continued her drink. soon enough, the red fox had had his fill, and left the cheetah, who made night nearby the waterhole in hopes that she might see the fox again tomorrow. but that never came to be.

cheetah, burdened and troubled with many more days of hunger from inability to catch any prey, would soon find that her spirits were lower than they had ever been, and to this, she paid no tribute, for she was a strong and autonomous animal. there would need be none of self-sympathy, much less begging and pleading for food from whatever source.

on the fifth day of starvation, she would come across the very same red fox again, this time, him with a gigantic oxen killed - which is unusual for foxes who do not hunt in any manner similar to cheetah (or any other predator, for that matter). moth salivating but senses at attention, cheetah approached the feasting fox cautiously, with half a mind to chase him off and claim for herself the kill.

'oh, you startled me there! for a moment i had thought a lion was upon me and i would be dead in seconds, an additional meal to my new master along with my oxen friend here. but it is you, oh, beautiful cheetah. and now i am relief. pray join me in my paltry meal, for i cannot finish it myself, and it would be waste for the vultures to have after i am done, those pesky and plagued birds of nuisance.'

and all the while red fox was saying this, cheetah was stopped dead in her tracks, mere feet away from the carcass but seemingly a thousand miles away. with her sense of pride unnecessarily cut, she responded, 'do not think i would share such a wretched meal with you, one so similarly shabby and haggard - i only meant to surprise you with my cunning and stealth'.

'then you have done very well. i applaud you, and instead of offering you in alms, i would instead offer you in prize!'

and the mere play on words would soothe the enraged cheetah, who would then join red fox in a meal. and for twists of fate, cheetah then has a lengthy and attached conversation with red fox to find that though his food had been much to her satiety, red fox had more to offer in terms of his sagely opinions and advice. they feasted for three days on the same oxen - the presence of cheetah warding of vultures and lions and hyenas and jackals. but the third day would come to an end, where both would leave to find their way in life. his passing words to cheetah, red fox said, 'you are different from the animals here in thar. it seems you do not belong here, but you belong everywhere you may roam. and you are deceiving as well as surprising - your beauty surpasses your coat and extends to thought further than any animal i have met. and for that i thank you. i would bid you farewell, but this would imply an unnecessary parting. instead i say nothing and hope this is a brief hiatus, from which i hope to see you soon'.

'you use words kindly and excessively, but i feel nothing of the sort', said cheetah - though only she could tell how true the extent of her words were. 'i bid you nothing either,' and with that she ran off into the west, never to be heard or seen of again - at least from red fox.

but for red fox, that would be neither the end of his failing charm or imprudent efforts, to maybe see cheetah again, for he was smitten - not with a love for another being but that of an ideal and a hope. which is something hard enough to convey, much more put into words.

many years from then, red fox would meet cheetah again; seeing her in the distant sunset, a silhouette against a sinking sun, black and red and gold and yellow, like a fiery shadow in all majestic and fearsome beauty. and he ran. he ran and ran and dashed and scurried in her direction, if only to yell a 'hello!'.

but cheetah would have none of it, for she is a creature of fleeting emotions and ephemeral being. she is a being of speed and celerity and haste - something prided by cheetahs all over more than their beauty and strength and intelligence and wit. so, before red fox was in earshout distance, she sprinted, fast as she could, muting him and herself as the winds roared in her ears.

to this day, the deserts of thar are devoid of cheetahs, but if one listens closely, in the deepest, darkest nights, one can hear the set of four and fours, sprinting into the winds. and once in a while, one set would stop - cheetah pausing to give leeway for red fox to catch up, but before he ever could, she would start again in a new direction. so red fox, perpetually in chase, tired but never hopeless, pursues, till the end of time, and the indigenes say that this blur of red after a yellow bedim gives rise to the tint and hue of every sunrise and every sunset. and the day where he finally catches up, will be a day of ends, of despair, of heartbreak, so for the better of the world and safety of all animals, cheetah never will allow fox to see her again - out of vanity, out of pride, out of responsibility, and most importantly, out of whim.

holiday

someone asked me to explain to them what a holiday junction is. during cell division to produce gametes (meiosis), the DNA strands cross over one another and re-combine with the parallel, sister strand. this leads to formation of two new double helices (of chromatin) that are hybrids of paternal and maternal sources. this is why we get genetic variation in progeny, leading to them usually having 'halfway' phenotypes between mom and dad.

this youtube video shows what happens very well on a molecular basis:

soul researching

half my life i thought that growing up to be an academic, an intellectual, and a philosopher would give me a satisfaction i had always wanted. some kind of self-actualisation that i had not come into realising just yet, and could not at the time fully understand.

and now? now i realise that none of that is true. it is near impossible to be any of those things, and i certainly am none. and happiness? happiness is a fleeting emotion. one that only exists to counteract the presence of sadness. in fact, we could reduce the definition of such a thing to the absence of negative emotions, sadness included. i do not propose to promote the emo movements, and much less to start an existential war here, but some long-standing events have made me realise that happiness is not something you plan for. in an ideal world, i imagine one could live on the borderline of neutrality for all his or her life - and be none the wiser. but pragmatism dictates that we fluctuate between happy and sad states, and a subjective analysis of magnitudes might reveal that they cancel each other out, on an individual degree, to leave us such that any heightened emotion (of happiness or the opposite) is counteracted by it's polar emotion. and again, this is hopefully true for even the most dire or extravagant persons, from the queen of england, to the orphaned aids children in a third world country.

but how do we harness happiness, then? do we pursue a persistent (and often arbitrary) dream, such as my personal one of academia? do we escape into fantasy and worlds of fiction - in books and movies and video games and make belief? do we find solace in religion or inner peace or charity or abstinence? do we find it in others, in relationships, in love, in lust or in adoration?

who is to know - clearly not i, for 'i am nothing, not even an academic'*

p/s: the asterisked quote is from the book i have been a long time-coming reading and finally finished, dostoyevsky's 'the brother's karamazov'. such a heavy book, i cannot remember the beginning now that the end has finally passed into rear-view.

p/p/s: this post includes and is will spill into (at least emotionally) another - one of you, mon soliel.

blegh

recently i attended a barbie, which to the non-australians, means a barbecue, and all was well until i got home. felt slightly under the weather, and went to bed. woke up and the wrath of gastronomic gods was upon me. now, before i go on, let it be said that i do not blame anyone or anything at the event for my situation.

in any case, nausea, discomfort, leading to vomiting, diarrhoea and eventually loss of motor function. much like any situation i get when i meet my crush. the loss of water was ridiculous, the lack of nutrition was... inspiringly not too bad except for the fact that i could not move farther than 20 metres. and basically the whole week has passed and i'm only getting better.

we've all been there, some undercooked food or drink laced with pesticide or small mishap while playing with radioactivity. scht happens. but it's always nice to know that no matter what you do, you can always count on our little unicellular friends to tear you a new one in hours, reminding you that you are a mere vessel and their every whim is your command. or expunging bodily fluids. either / or.

a brief history on gentlemen and douchebaggery

in the beginning there was nothing. let there be light. and the whole 'big bang theory' theme song comes here.

fast forward a few billion years and we have the evolution of man. and woman. at first, i think we can agree that cavemen were pretty much total douches: hey see that hot woman? i want to bang her into the previous century. get my blunt club and hope this little tap on the head doesn't kill her. drag her home to the cave and then procreate like a total baws. get her pregnant? mission accomplished.

and then everything was pretty much uphill from there. for the women, at least. tired of being pushed around and taken for granted, the women eventually started gravitating towards men who would treat them right. this, of course, would not emerge until the earlier parts of the victorian era, but to most, it was worth the slow but steady wait. for the men, however, where once there was a fertile ground of treating them bsctches however they wanted, now was a competition from a new breed - the gentleman.

vying for women's hearts had never been more aggravating. with the unnecessary and elaborate politeness now encompassing courtship. and men now had to develop a sense of courteousness and proper etiquette. though this would become trivial at first, it escalated quickly to a self-competing arms race - one that would consume every man for in the absence of the gentleman trait, one would be relegated to the lower echelons of society and doomed to be paired with what women would accept such defect: the ugly, the poor, the without status and the mentally insane. amongst other things. which, is not a derogatory mention of women in general, but an exemplification of how bad things were to become.

but, not all hope was lost, for with the coming of the digital age, all this was lost (and more). here, my theory falls short without explanation, but the gentleman becomes a dying breed. the prim and proper, probably now being lacklustre and lacking excitement, were left to the ghosts of loneliness and boring conversations, and women would come to chase the thrill of... self-abuse. now, that is obviously an extrapolation, as there are many perfectly-normal men out there even to this day who cannot be called gentlemen but are neither abusive nor neglecting. however, for illustrative purposes, let us assume so, and continue.

so now the prey has become the hunter again, and the extinct (or closely so) counterparts? well, they subside into shadows, awaiting the day they are once again craved for and cherished. but the world is a mixed bag, who knows what will be the new flavour of the century. for all the douchebags getting all the girls they want - your time may be nigh. for all the gentlemen who think they are undervalued and justly so, patience may be your saving grace. and for the ones who are getting what you 'deserve'? maybe it's time for change?

on knowledge

what is the purpose of knowledge? why are people inspired and why do people seek answers? is knowledge finite, and if so will we ever grasp it all? is that possible? why can't we just be ignorant and be happy with that? are we already fully ignorant and happy about it?

it doesn't take a philosopher to ask these questions but if you haven't asked this to yourself, then maybe now would be a good time to think - why is it that we know anything at all? and with the more knowledge, realise that maybe we don't really know anything and we make things up as we go along, grasping to dilapidated constructs and building upon them to serve a primordial instinct - one that fools us into believing we actually know, and that is comforting enough.

i don't ask these things in hopes of answers, but that one day, when i am on my death bed, god will tell me the answers. or possibly in an afterlife. because, really, if i don't believe in such things as a higher being... i would have no comfort of and about knowledge, not in this life, or in a non-existant otherworld.

good mistakes and bad decisions

sometimes, i like to look back on the things i've said and done, and pick out the terrible mishaps that have taken shape. more often than not, they're result of my own doings, but once in a while i think i can pin it on karma or just the universe pms'ing for no particular reason. in any case, sometimes i see these mistakes far ahead of time, even before they've taken place. like a raccoon or some wild animal blinking into the headlights of an oncoming truck, knowing that becoming roadkill is just a long honk away. these are the times when you get to prepare well and brace yourselves for the impact of said decision (or similar whim). kind of like how palliative care for cancer patients doesn't cure the disease (or even alleviate the pain, sometimes), but you run through the motions anyway, in hopes of divine intervention.

sometimes you never see it coming, and even in retrospect, you think to yourself (at least i do), 'wow, did that actually happen? did something go wrong somewhere? because i still have an image in my mind's eye that everything's just fine'. it's these times, which, unfortunately aren't all that rare, that i realise that you can't really expect it to have been any different. how could you expect life not to throw you the odd curveball (against your favour, of course), if you expect things such as serendipity and (un)holy guidance? no, it is very unfortunate that with the sugar, must come the salt; with the optimus primes, the megatrons; with the mercuries, the biebers; with the gandalfs, the edwards. and so, though i may not learn to accept these decisions, i will have to live and let slide all the silly mistakes.

maybe, one day, when all is set, i will be able to look back and think that all of it was just a dream, and nightmares cannot hurt you anyway.