Episode 90. Delilah's Diaries - The Pterodactyl Has Landed

Do people really see diaries as being alive? As being like the living voice of something at the same time as a loving partner that always listens no matter what you have to say? That must be the reason so many start out with "Dear Diary...". I have been thinking I would like to try that. Because I've been feeling so painfully lonely. Oh, I can talk with Daddy Mac or Cousin Minnie or even my little son Noah. They all listen and are very loving. But it isn't the same. The partner I want is my lover. Not just loving but my lover. Than whom there is no one more intimate. And of course my inconstant husband has gone up in smoke. With a smile on his lips that I put there as his mortuary cosmetician!

So.

Dear Diary, I was a vulture.

I was in a tree. On the ground by a creek was a deer. A young fawn. At least most of one. Whatever had killed it had taken a very large hunk that included a leg. I was there to get my bit. I was hungry too, very hungry, and also impatient, extremely impatient, because there was a human there beside the little spotted carcass. The human was kneeling and crying and singing as it stroked the fawn's dull-eyed and open-mouthed head. And the song had no words. It was almost an echo of the singing of the creek.

And it was me. The human there, it was me. I couldn't have my meal because the human there was me.

So, my dear, I told the dream to Cousin Minnie. And Cousin Minnie was somewhat alarmed. She is a very tender creature, really, despite the air of sophistication she picked up from her Hollywood husband. She put a hand on her breast and said, "Oh!" And went on to say I should find out what it meant. And that, oh, that reminded her. There was a talk in the city she wanted to go to and would I go with?

The man was little like Daddy Mac but brown and chubby and with slanted eyes and a bald head. I had a very strong feeling - heaven knows where it came from - that he ought to be dressed up in something outlandish like robes and a crown and ornate boots to his knees made of moon phantom leather. Instead he was dressed like a banker. When his assistant relieved him of his suit coat (for the room was rather overheated and packed with people and devoid of any ventilation), I noticed a watch chain dangling from the pocket of his vest.

He gave a talk about meditation. I'm afraid I missed most of it. I was either thinking about my dream or nodding off because I hadn't been able to get back to sleep once I woke from the dream. But then he addressed me personally. Oh, I'm sure I was only imagining things. Perhaps I was merely a convenient spot for him to rest his eyes. But the way the words came to me, we might have been in bed together, with him whispering in my ear. He said, "Big thoughts or small, good ones or bad, they're all the same. Even if a pterodactyl were to land in your lap, you would still just say 'thinking' and go back to your breath."

After the talk, I had a chance to approach him. I was part of a long line. He didn't speak to anyone for long. I became very nervous. I don't know why. I have never been shy. And I felt that if only I could ask it, he would answer my most secret question. But there was no time to prepare, and suddenly there I was in front of him, and in seconds they would move me along. I looked into his eyes as if into a deep well and said, "I...I...I..." and then lapsed into speechlessness. I felt my eyes brim with tears.

"Well, well, my dear," he said and took my hands in his. "It seems the pterodactyl has landed."

"Yes, yes, it has!" I burst out. "My mother died! My husband too! I put a clown's face on him!"

He had been smiling and now his smile widened. A warmth rushed into me through our joined hands. I felt a physical arousal as if someone were making love to me.

"I'm sure you did," he said. "It was your job. And you are a genius."

I said well that was fine but what should I do now. I'm afraid I was rather emotional.

"You should come see me again," he said.

I wanted to know when that would be and where.

His voice was high-pitched like a child's and he had the gleeful demeanour of a mischievous child. "I don't know," he replied, "You'll have to ask around."

And then he laughed and I laughed as if it really were funny and I had not just been roller-coastered through the farther reaches of outer space where the phoenixes graze on dwarf stars, and in leaving him I tripped over his microphone cord and almost fell flat on my face.

Cousin Minnie, who had already been through the line, put an arm around me to steady me and we started away toward the exit. At the door we stopped and both looked back as if on cue. And as if also on cue, the speaker looked up from his subsequent audience and called out toward us, "Don't worry. Pterodactyls make the best pets."

And so my dear diary, the rest of my life has begun. As a dinosaur trainer?

I guess.


13 October 2018
Texas Jim
Halifax, Nova Scotia
www.granitecoast.ca