Evolution

Temple monkeys sprawl in the sun, unaware of anything but the growling of bellies and the chirping of their broods. A quick jolt of fear by something stirring nearby dissipates as the search for carnal needs takes hold. They do not know that right now, abused kids around the world cry in corners and bleed, models starve in Paris fashion houses to fit into the latest throwaway trends, while in America, teenage girls are either lusting or loathing Edward Cullen while popping pimples and dreaming. Instead, they eat fallen fruit on forest floors in the warmth of ancient temple climbs.

From forest floors to boardrooms and windswept prairie plains, we have not grasped this elemental truth; we are not plastic. We may occasionally be slightly psychotically metallic; unfeeling things, without the ability to realize that there is something better, than what we so easily accept.

Lorena does not smile as crowds of ideas fight for supremacy in her consciousness. In a corner of the street she walks down every day, an old man hums drunkenly. She thinks of joining him, but doesn’t recognize his tune. It is not something she recognizes from the radio. She would ask him, but there is no point. She knows she will not take the time to learn. Instead, she will come up with excuses to forget him and his music. Instead, she will lose herself in the shop windows she passes, without realizing that the painted smiles of mannequins are the only smiles she’s received today.

We are sometimes reptilian, crawling on our bellies without pride or knowledge of legs, following the crowd that follows the crowd before it. Our feet might have lead us to thoughts, but we walked away too soon for them to take hold.

Temple monkeys do not care, as they stand guard over eternity. They live, breathe, birth and die on the same spot, beside the same temple that generations of their kind have occupied since its construction. That is the only crowd they follow. While we rush to go nowhere, blindly accepting half lived lives as reality or fate.

Lorena tries not to care that she hasn’t been invited to the office party. She tells herself that it was an oversight as she listens to the laughter of her coworkers echoing down the corridor. It is fine. It is good, she tells herself. She will show them all someday. She will be something more than she is now, though she has no idea what that could be. She thinks all this, while leafing through a copy of a photography magazine detailing the lives of primitives and primates, to make herself feel superior.