Pride and Prejudice
The Thoughts and Words of Brian Pride

Fox Trot by Brian Pride
Copyright 2001 - Pride

    While most of my life stories are true some are more true than others. What makes this so? Simply that some are more unbelievable than others. At least that is what makes them more true... at least to me. That they are more unique. Somewhat different. Unique in their inception not only to me but to those that I share them with. There are stories I could share with you that would scare you. Even frighten you so to speak. Not because they are so terrifying or that they are full of creepy monsters or scary persons. But because they are true they challenge much of what one has become to believe in as real or reality. My reality it seems may not be the same as yours. This story here both honors and respects those boundaries that separate you and me from each other. To me it is one of my most scariest memories. Only because I can not explain it. I can not understand it. I can not define it and make any sense out of it. I merely write it down to share it with you for you to make of it what you might.
    One fine day while my family was living in a small farming village in North West Germany, I and my brother were out for a fishing trip with a local gypsy boy we had met in the woods. As children we loved walking through the country side enjoying nature and exploring the abundance of life in the deep forests. My older brothers and our neighbors often would scout out World War II fox holes digging for ammunition which could be taken apart to make bottle rockets. During one excursion we had met a German gypsy family living in a trailer along side a small stream where we would hunt for salamander. One of the gypsy boys was about my brother’s age and the two took to each other in spite of each other’s broken languages. The lad had suggested that if we wanted to venture further up stream we could actually catch things bigger than salamanders. Even catch fish with our bare hands.
    I remember the day was quite pleasant. The air was clear and high and one could see far over the hills to the green horizons. We started off early that morning on one of those Huckle Berry Finn adventures as boys might do in the country. My brother and I met up with his friend near his trailer and headed off up the stream on our quest for fresh fish. We exchanged stories of our quest as if we were knights or explorers in search of the source of the Nile. The day went on as we climbed over rocks and waded barefoot through the shallow stream. Now and then we might come across a deeper pool of water shaded by the over hanging branches of the forest thicket. The older boys would dive in and splash around in hopes of scaring up fish. But there were never any to be found. Afternoon rolled around and deciding we were hungry it seemed more appetizing to give up on the pursuit of a fresh fish dinner for something more simple as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches readily available at home.
We started winding our way down stream stopping now and then to over turn rocks and chase away crayfish. At one point my brother realized we were closer to home than we thought if we only took a short cut through a near by cow pasture. We said good bye to our gypsy friend as he had to make his way down stream to his family from where we parted company. We waved goodbye crossing a dirt road and climbed onto the soft warm grass of the cow pasture. There were only a few cows out in the afternoon sun. They looked over to us passively with big brown eyes as they chewed and chewed eternally on the tall green grasses. Noticing the lush patches of clover I challenged my brother to find a four leaf clover.
    "What might happen if we find one? Do you think we might be able to make a wish?" I teased my older brother as we bent down over a patch of clover sifting through it with our hands. "Do you suppose we will then see a Leprechaun and maybe even chase him and capture his pot of gold? How much gold does a Leprechaun have in his pot? What would we do with all that gold?" My brother didn’t seem too perturbed by my constant questions. He was more engrossed in the prospect of finding a four leaf clover. I remember him boasting of how he was the champion of four leaf clover finders.
    "If there is a four leaf clover in here..." he exclaimed with a proud scowl, "I will find it!" He went on to describe how on family picnics he almost always found four leaf clovers. It seemed to be a point of pride with him and my mom. On family outings he would always be the one to find a four leaf clover and present it to her with great excitement. Our family bible was full of such trophies that mom would always place on a special page each time my brother presented her with one.
    "Do you suppose the cows eat the clover?" I offered as an excuse as to why there were none to be found this day... "What do you suppose happens to the cows if they eat a four leaf clover?"
    "Same as if they eat any clover" he sighed glaring over at the nearest cow suspiciously, "They just chew it and chew it and then keep chewing some more. They swallow it and then store it in one of their four stomachs to spit up later and chew again."
    "No they don’t!" I was sure he was lying to me. Making cows sound like alien creatures yet when I looked at them I couldn’t see four stomachs. It certainly didn’t make much sense to me. Why have four stomachs and why spit up your food after eating it?
    It was something I would have learn about later in biology he explained. "I think we best get going its getting late. This isn’t the right kind of clover patch. There aren’t any four leaf clovers here."
    I was disappointed. Perhaps my brother wasn’t the four leaf clover champion after all. I started to doubt there was really such a thing as four leaf clovers. Maybe it was something my brother had made up to trick me. Perhaps he took regular three leaf clovers and somehow glued on a fourth leaf. I would have to go and inspect those my mom had dried out and collected. Perhaps I could figure out how he did it and then do it myself one day. Still it was too pleasant a day to be that disappointed for long. The sky was blue, the clouds high and fluffy, and my brother was being like a pal to me which was comforting. Even if he was lying to me about cows and clover.
    "We still have a ways to go and we have to be careful not to step in any cow pies" my brother warned.
    The grass was getting tall in patches and the mounds of dung just as deep. I wasn’t quite sure what cow pies were but after seeing how they were made I was pretty sure they weren’t for eating. I just thought the expression was kind of silly and fun. I laughed and stepped high over the grass.
    Just then in an instant I found myself across the cow pasture and across the nearby quarry. I was on a small hillside in the forest. The sun was shining through the trees. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t sure what had happened or what was happening. It just happened. I was no longer in the cow pasture. My brother wasn’t with me. I, as it seemed wasn’t with me either. I remember looking calmly at my new surroundings. I could hear a bird over head like a hawk or a crow soaring past the quarry followed by the scattered twittering of smaller birds flitting through the emerald green above. I followed the stream of sunlight wafting down to a stand of white birches. I saw some slight movement in the brush underneath. I realized at that moment that I wasn’t myself. Well, at least I wasn’t the boy I had presently been. Instead I was a fox. It was odd because I could both see myself as the fox scurrying through the thicket as if floating just above the fox somehow. Yet in the same instant I could see through the fox’s eyes. I could see the world around me as if I were a fox and I realized how hungry I was. Oddly enough this was all normal to me. Even strange enough for most but stranger for me as I had never seen a fox before. For one to not have seen a fox and then to see one in the wild might be somewhat of a start. But to actually be a fox now how might I describe this to you.
Simply enough it was nature and it all seemed quite natural. A moment before I was a young boy about seven years old making my way home with my elder brother through a cow pasture in the German country side and the next moment I was a fox. What surprises me most about this most vivid of memories is the calmness with which it all took place. There was no warning. No climactic event horizon that lead to this revelation. There was no whirling of winds or flashing of lights. It just happened. There I was in the thick of the forest no longer a boy but in the body of a fox. The only thing that seemed to bother me then was the nagging hunger I felt in my belly. It was as if I had never eaten and would never eat again. Only for an instant did I wonder what had happened. I thought as I might since it seemed as a fox I had no thoughts, only sensations. I wondered only for a brief instant about my family and my former life as a boy and how I might ever get back. But none of that seemed to matter. This was life and life was all around me. I could sense it in new ways unimaginable. I had been a boy but now my life was that of a fox and this seemed as natural to me at the moment as dying. Oddly enough to say. My senses had changed as had my sense of self.
    It is hard to put into words but senses seemed to be of importance only to themselves. I lifted my nose to the wind and followed every scent clearly. Yet I smelled nothing. That is to say that no sense of smell was registered. Yet my nostrils flared and my mind quickened to every nuance and subtle change. As if the art of sensory perception were on automatic pilot. Sense then react. Smell then turn. Hear then look. Sense and react, sense and react. The only true sensation my motivating drive of hunger. I sensed the birds over head but knew they were too far away and fast to matter. The leaves, the earth, and the brush all familiar grounds. Then I turned my attention to the slight movement near the stand of birches. There down the hill in the brush.
    In an instant I was there. No longer a fox but a rabbit. Again I could see myself as the rabbit from above and from within the body of the rabbit at the same time. Sensing the world as a rabbit does. The only difference this time was that I was not just the rabbit but I was still the fox. Now how can I explain this to you in any words that you might understand. I wasn’t just one individual being but two simultaneously. I was both the fox and the rabbit at the same instant in life. And life it was to me. Whatever had been of my life before, though not gone from memory as if memory matters, this was now my life. More natural an experience than any experience of merely observing nature. As the rabbit I had just hopped out from under the brush at the base of the birches. At that very moment I stopped. I could sense something. Now I hopped out from the brush and now I wished I hadn’t. I wasn’t too concerned it seemed as much as it were more apprehensive. I lay still and paused.
    I could see the leaves of the bush clearing my head. I could sense the sun falling down through the trees. But most important was my sense of smell. Again it wasn’t a sense that registered. I didn’t smell anything pungent or sweet. It was something I picked up and sensed without registering. Something that made me stop. How might I explain this new sense of smell possessed by both fox and rabbit but to say that to smell was like to see. A scent was more of an electrical charge than a flavor or a touch. For the moment that I paused my world stood still then I heard the pounding that gave me away. My heart thumping louder than a tribal drum. Followed by the roar of blood coursing through my veins. I dared glance up the hill to where I new I was as the fox. In that precious moment the balance of life stood completely still. I could sense myself as the fox and the rabbit at the self same time. I knew that as the rabbit I should probably run from the fox but for a moment I thought of the fox’s hunger. As the rabbit I wasn’t hungry so couldn’t I sit still and let the fox eat me. After all I was both the hunter and the hunted so why would it matter that much to me who got the better of the day. As the fox I considered the life of the rabbit. I could barely make out its ears and clearly see the hairs prickling up off its pink skin. I knew I was hungry and that the rabbit would most likely satisfy the hunger. But then the rabbit seemed to be at peace with its nature and I would always have my hunger regardless. I contemplated for a moment about ignoring the rabbit and thus pretending to ignore my hunger.
    Just as the roar of blood filled the rabbit’s ears my fox blood boiled to life setting my fox heart to quicken. I the rabbit darted off past the birch stand as I the fox gave chase down the hill. There was no rhyme or reason to it. This was nature. This was life. If I the fox caught I the rabbit then I would eat and end the pain of hunger even at suffering the instant pain of my rabbit death. Even as I the rabbit had once thought of sacrificing myself to satisfy I the fox I ran for my life and darted zig-zag through the brush hoping to throw the fox off my trail. Since I had already resigned myself to feeding my other self it didn’t matter much to me if I lost this race but still I was damn sure going to try my best to survive. Even as I the fox had already agreed to spare the rabbit I could not help but give hot pursuit and try my best to catch it and feed my nagging hunger.
    While the rabbit darted frantic through the brush the fox made a line as straight as possible to head the rabbit off and capture it. I was no longer pleasantly hanging around loftily floating above my selves. I was deeply embedded in their bodies. In both bodies I was charged with an electric current of energy as if the very red blood that boiled through my veins were imbued with a magnetism of its mineral content. It was the blood of the fox that longed for the blood of the rabbit. The blood of the rabbit that raced away from the fox. As the fox I could taste the blood, smell the blood, my own, my memory's, the rabbit's, my hunger's and it had a taste of metal struck with the fusion of electric lightening. That charged sense of lightening charred metallic blood pulsed hard to my rabbit brain. Coursed through my rabbit veins to my rabbit thighs. Surging me into a daring leap high above the brush. Spinning me in mid air as the blood filled my rabbit eyes to glance a familiar black hole in the electrically charged landscape. Were it the black hole of death or of life's sanctuary I had no sense to know. I could only see and sense the world through their eyes and beings. I was caught up in a daring drama of both life and death as both the hunter and the hunter in this instant chase of primal instinct and super nature's wonder. My hearts pounded my breaths both panted and wheezed. My limbs sprinted as always with split second timing of sensory reactions... sense and react without ever stopping to register or consider any sensations at all. Oddly enough being both the hunter and the hunted gave neither the advantage. There was no wit to maneuver no moment or motion to outsmart or par. It was a desperate run for life... though not at all scary... not at all frightening... fear was not a motivation... this was blood simple.
    Just at a moment when I was not sure who would succeed the day, I the fox or I the rabbit, I looked over to see the astonished expression on my brother’s face. Both shocked and amused. I looked down at my body just as I raised my bare foot and intentionally placed it smack down in the middle of a huge meadow muffin. The crusty surface giving way as moist brown-green cow dung curled up over my toes. My brother and I broke out laughing at the sight. Neither of us could believe I had done it. He obviously had no idea of what I had just experienced and I wasn’t about to tell him. At least not until many years later while sitting around as adults reminiscing about our childhood one holiday. From his perspective I never left his side. We had just been walking through the cow pasture one day when he turned to see me grinning from ear to ear as I lifted my bare foot high above a pile of cow dung and slammed it smack dab in the middle of it. It was good to be reconnected to my senses but it surely didn’t smell too pleasant. We laughed all the way home.
    Again let me interject that this is a true story. One of my real life adventures. Understand if you will that my reality may not be the same as yours. Trusting that I don’t believe in or believe my stories any more than I might expect you to. As in most my stories there are others who may validate my story they may not hold my same perceptions. Here in this story in an instant I found myself nearly half a mile away from my brother in the body of both a fox and a rabbit simultaneously while my brother watched me turn to him and smile a wicked smile. To me it was not illusion or fantasy but a thinly veiled reality. It would be years still before I would every read the tales of King Arthur and Merlin’s magical training of the young prince. It was not some significant religious experience for me. It did not seemingly profoundly change my life. It just happened as it did. Just as I have described it here. No judgments made. No call to reason. As long as life its self remains a mystery so shall it be full of mystery. Enjoy it while you can and make of it what you will. Throughout my life there have been several instances where I am in more than one place at once... suddenly appear or disappear before one or more witnesses. My life is full of events or experiences where strange things happen. All that I can say is they don’t always seem so strange as you might wish they were. Throughout my life I have always been somewhat reluctant to share my experiences with others though several of you have begged me to do so. We each have our own lives our own dramas and stories to tell. Some are truths whereas some are fictions. Whereas several lie in that thin gray line somewhere in between reality and illusion. What is reality and just what is illusion?
The truth is not out there...
Its in here...
Or not...