A PROFOUND SADNESS

POST # 182

One of her* favourite times of day was just before the sunrise.  It was peaceful then, and the lack of light made it easy to forget her location.

The concrete slab that she had slept on overnight, soon reminded her of where she was, and it made her extremely sad. She had a vague memory** of her life before this place, but it had been such a long time ago, that the memory of what life used to be like was now almost non-existent. The memories that had survived were of wide open spaces, with plenty of food to eat, an abundance of clean water to drink,  along with a variety of comfortable places to sleep, much more comfortable than last night's concrete slab.

After the sun was up, she could see exactly where she was.  It was the same place she had been for almost as long as she could remember.  While she was surveying her surroundings, she heard a familiar sound coming from the corner of her enclosure.  A few moments later, the animal*** which she had come to know as the food provider entered, and within moments, this animal had dropped on the ground a variety of different types of food.  Her favourite food looked like this:




The animal had left behind a generous amount of this food for her and her three companions, and so for a while, they could focus on the enjoyment of eating.

Later, she took a nap, and when she awoke,  everything had changed.  The peacefulness of the early morning was now gone, and as she looked around, she could see huge numbers of the same type of animal that had provided her with food that morning, surrounding her enclosure.  For some reason, which she didn't have the mental capacity to understand, none of these animals were able to enter the space that she was in.  She could look them all straight in the eyes, and they were close enough to touch, yet some invisible barrier prevented physical contact.  The vast majority of these animals, both large and small appeared to be quite excited to be there, and made all sorts of different sounds, especially the small animals.  She then noticed the facial expression on one of the large animals who was standing directly in front of her.  It looked deep into her eyes, and the expression on its face seemed to reflect her mood.  It was a mood of profound sadness.
Eventually, the animal walked away in silence and was replaced by some of the smaller noisy ones.  She had seen enough for the day, and retreated to a part of the enclosure which had at least a modicum of privacy.  Here, she would remain, until the darkness of the night enveloped her.

It was quiet now.  She gazed up into the sky and could see the sparkles of light scattered throughout it.  For a brief moment, she remembered that it was like this in the place that she had come from so very long ago.  It helped her to forget about where she was.

*
http://www.oregonzoo.org/discover/animals/orangutans


**
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(13)00708-2?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982213007082%3Fshowall%3Dtrue&cc=y=

***
Animal/s in this piece refers to the human animal.

Happy trails,
Paul
The Thoughtful Wanderer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwqhdRs4jyA