Jungle Fever

DISCLAIMER: The Crack Team over at the Sternberg Think Tank have been hard at it with the graphs, projections and international forecasts, and have come up with yet another writing assignment for Bloggers everywhere. The drill this time is as follows;

RENEWAL..just make an emotional statement. Have something to say. Reach into the creative pool and bring forth something inspired or something to inspire. And do it all with a limit of one thousand words.

So I’ve had a stab, let’s see how we go…


Renewal

I look in the mirror, and I do not see the man I once was; the man who walked the dusty streets or muddy bush tracks, who waved to his people, and stopped to discuss the heat, the rain or the sinister, nocturnal movements of foreign soldiers as they moved through the jungle each evening, sure in themselves that they went undetected, and completely oblivious that the women’s’ gossip sped hours ahead of them.

In those days, not all that long ago, I was a huge man. My chest was like a gigantic wine barrel, my arms like the knotty bows of the great pulu trees which shaded us from the intense midday heat, and like that bright, white spirit who was worshipped by the jungle folk, back in those days, my smile was intensely radiant. It was not a smile that was only lips and teeth, back in those days, my smile was also bright, sparkling eyes; it was a great, glistening meadow of forehead; a raucous, convivial laugh; a spine shattering slap on the back. Back then, my smile was bigger than the ocean … bigger than love itself. Back then, I was a great man.

What has happened to that great man? When did he die … and why? Who … what killed him? For he is surely dead. In this filthy mirror, inside this cold, impersonal concrete prison, the man before me is not big. He is tiny, stooped … he is disgusting. The skin hangs from his puny limbs like soaking laundry, and his flabby breasts droop from protruding ribs. His eyes are sunken, and his lips have retracted into thin, humourless membranes, stretched tight across a prominent jaw. It couldn’t be the same man, could it? This could not possibly be the same, great man of the jungle. Such a change could not occur in only one short year. It must be another man.

But with the final, angry flicker of flame left in my horrible, hunger-distended belly, I know that it is me. A year of imprisonment has done this … a year of torture, equally successful in its ability to kill, as to keep me alive in order to prolong my suffering. This is what has made me this way … this is what has turned me from the massive, powerful being of a year ago, into this hideous, pitiful creature. I know what has made me like this … and as that internal flame begins to kindle slightly, I have to admit that I know who has done this … it was me.

Yes, I have done this to myself. It was I, with a drive fuelled by naïve idealism, and stoked with raw arrogance, who left the jungle for this harsh, inhuman existence. It was I who told my people that I was leaving to contribute to a greater good, and it was I who allowed myself to be captured and imprisoned, not in a cell of stone and steel – these can be breeched. From those cells, a man can escape; can steal back his freedom with brute force and cunning. No, my prison is far more impenetrable, because my prison remains with me, wherever I go. It cannot be left behind or outrun. My prison is a prison constructed of my own lies.

And it has been in this hall of horrors that I have dwelt for this year past; this eternity. With brutal irony, I realise that my captor and torturer is paid and fed by my own self-loathing and disgust, and not surprisingly, the weaker I become, the stronger and keener his lash.

I am what I have become, because I have denied what I once was. I am a scourge; an apostate. I have succeeded in convincing those around me that I am both content with, and proud of my decisions, but I have not been able to hide the truth from myself. With the passing of each day, my lie has eaten me away … my muscles, my smile, my energy, my love. I began to mirror my surroundings; I became a horrid, angry, disgusting thing. I turned against those for whom I was once a champion, and as surely as the deadly poison flowing through me, I began to waste away.

“But it is for the best”, I told myself. “It is temporary, and once my task is complete, I will return to the wonderful place - the wonderful person - I once was.

But as I look in this mirror now, I am starting to forget. Was that great man real? Was he really me? Or am I simply dreaming about someone I once read about? That fire; that agony in my cold heart is scorching me now … it is telling me what I know to be true. I must break free from this prison if I am going to escape this excruciating death.

The lies must stop! I must be true to myself. I must return to myself.

I did it today; a lie was swatted from the sky in full flight like a hapless parasite. Many more will follow. Already I notice some colour in those thin, tight lips, and my chest is filling with deep, oxygen-filled breaths, not the rapid, shallow undulations of yesterday. My skin is ripening and my stoop is reducing.

My captor has not left me. He is a wily old wolf, who, with the scent of blood having been so recently before him, will dog my trail back towards the jungle. He will do all he can to block my way, but as I get closer to that lush homeland, I will grow larger and more robust. Soon I will outrun him, and as I approach that living canopy, my friends will hear my laughter … they will remember and they will come to the rescue.

They will shout, “Big fala man, hem arrive finis!” - The Big Man has returned.