The Hare, the Orangutan

The Hare is quick-witted. He's clever—too clever—and painfully self-aware. All remarks and affectations coated thick with irony. Seriousness veils self-reference. The Hare is a perpetual actor in his own drama, switching masks without rhyme or reason, always in response to the Other. Occasionally he lays down the facade, and here the ground is revealed: superiority; and all around it a thin veneer of mocking cynicism.

The Hare is not a joyful spirit—he appears so only in character. His moods shift with each act. He prances on stage, picking and discarding personae like a child collecting shells on the beach. But beneath each he grounds his "true" self; the actor behind the mask, watching over them . They are predictable, simplistic, riddled with shortcomings. He, knows all this; he mocks it; it's all beneath him. Here we see the mud that fills the gaps between shows: the cynical old man. Disillusioned. Contradictory, for at once he shows disinterest and contempt for petty games, while again fully engaging in them. The very fact of this tension reveals his falsity. In truth, the old man does not exist; at least not as he thinks he does. He is yet another performance.

In the face of the unknown he smiles, knowingly. A slow, wistful smile. The smile hides a deep-seated anxiety; the smile compensates. He must either understand the unknown or understand that he does not. In a performance there is little room for any real uncertainty. Though he presents himself in all whimsy—a chaotic element–this unpredictability is predictable, or at least predictably unpredictable. No room for surprise, no contingency. With real contingency comes loss of control. This is something the Hare must avoid at all costs. In fact he takes extreme care to keep things just so. He acknowledges "the unknown" as a thing, reifying it to catalogue and store, out of sight. But deep down, at his core, the truth devours him: he will gaze at his reflection in the eyes of the unknown, and see absolutely nothing.

For this reason, he averts his gaze at all costs. He looks anywhere; upwards, down. Goes any place he can to stay away. Anything, anywhere but that. That thing. Thus, the characters, the masks, and layers upon layers. Get that hideous shadow away from me, can't you see I'm in the middle of a show?

Yet, in all things, all certainty is uncertain. A misplaced cough, shuffling feet, mumbles; contingency rears her head. The Hare trips, stumbles, and is cast into the void. Icarus crashing through abstraction, hurtling towards the thing itself. He zips past the clouds, ripping through the jungle canopy. Vines whipping; branches crack. His limbs splinter, break, grind to dust. All vapour and mist hardens, then shatters like china. Inch by inch we crack open what once muted the red, raw, thumping at his core. The drumming comes louder, incessant, now vibrating through his spine, his teeth; both crack, shatter under enormous pressure; then dissolve, and vaporise.

The Hare is Formless. A shapeless no-thing, streaking downwards into the void with cosmic impetus. What choice is there but to re-form?

The primary mode of the Orangutan is solitude. The Orangutan moves, eats, sleeps, alone. He swings from branch to branch, borne by gargantuan trunks. Age-old pillars. To them, his movements are as a mote to the Parthenon; a flea at the gates Persepolis. Nothing felt, nothing left.

Still, the Orangutan moves about. A ghost in arboreal gloom. Deeply inhaling the sweet, humid air of the jungle. The soft, damp branches bend gently with his weight, each almost dissolving in his hands; he grips tighter to make them more real.

The Orangutan keeps a stolid expression on his face. But make no mistake: the Orangutan is not at peace, he is resilient. His calm is far from impassivity. This often made clear in spontaneous bursts of passion. He experiences a wide wheel of visceral emotion: anguish, terror, anticipation, rapturous joy. In all, he is there.

Each swing brings the chance of doom, of failure; a collapse into the indifferent abyss. Yet swing he does. For to cease would be to come undone. To be undifferentiated, formless. To cease would be the plight of the Hare. The swings risk doom and still he swings: the Orangutan is resilient.

More than danger, the chasms offer insight. True revelation, such that can only burst forth from primordial chaos. Pinpricks of light shine out of the dark. Blinding, but granting him vision in faith; the next leap; one more jump; transcendence and death.

The Orangutan pauses between movements, his gaze drifting upwards. The sky is empty. The sun has set, yet the moon burns a hole in the void. He takes a few careful steps forwards, then halts. Each strand of burnt sienna ripples on his skin. His dark, powerful hands, his feet, flex open and closed. A long rest is due. Tomorrow brings more life, more death.

So the Orangutan lays down in the soft, damp, cool, black earth. The dirt and mulch slides through his fingers. He digs into the soil, sinking deeper. Once again he gazes up. He sees through the canopy, dim green glowing, out to the distant stars, the moon. In the dead of night, the Orangutan contemplates the darkness of the cosmos.