Five Steps in Your Evolution
1. During life as a Homo sapiens (human being), aphorisms you proclaim are lofty as the highest mountains. You have short and stubby legs, yet you walk proudly between those peaks. You meditate some, you don't eat beef, and you teach adult literacy at the public library. You even have an official Indian guru. Upon graduation from college, you do a two-year stint in the Peace Corps. After the Peace Corps you obtain an entry level corporate job in L.A. When that drunken high school teacher slams into you with her Jeep, your real journey begins. You are surprised to find your spirit being reborn into another body.
2. Life as a Phocoena sinus (Vaquita porpoise) is good. Cold, slimy fish are wonderfully tasty. You have many friends and family members that love you. The sex is amazing. You couldn't have imagined better sex. It certainly wasn't this good as a human. Now you realize you can remember most of your life as a human. That's odd…was it supposed to work this way? What did you do to be reborn as a porpoise? But the Sea of Cortez is warm near the top and cold at the bottom, and the sharks here go for smaller fish. You are happy until people catch you and haul you to a zoo in Mexico. There the tourists feed you cigarettes, candy, and bits of paper and trash. You get fat and die of cardiac arrest.
3. Transmigration of the soul happens once again. You are now in the body of a baby Myodes glareolus (bank vole) in northeastern China, somewhere in Shandong you think…but you can't be sure. You are forgetting knowledge attained in your past lives. By the time you grow to maturity, with red-brown fur and some grey patches, you have forgotten you were even once a dolphin or a human. All you know is that there is good food spilt on the kitchen floorboards of the house next to the field you live in. You and your three brothers like to make nighttime raids on that house, where you sometimes scavenge great huge pieces of tasty egg noodles. The dog that lives in the house is always asleep and never catches you. You mate several times with very beautiful female voles, and you father a generation of baby voles. You die of old age, deep in your burrow, surrounded by those who love you.
4. Now you are a Pseudotsuga menziesii (a Douglas-Fir) seedling. You are sprouting in rich soil. The clay content grows heavier the deeper you root, and there is andesite and basalt near the north of your roots, but you are strong and find crevices and cracks to push through. Your trunk develops straight and strong, and after twenty years you can see above your family of trees and across the land where you live. You spend many decades breathing in the air and sun, watching the change of the seasons, and having endless philosophical conversations with the other trees. A violent tornado comes one night and uproots you and your friends. After the tornado leaves it takes you some time to die, but you go peacefully, laying there and watching a family of skunks build a den under your trunk.
5. You now exist as a Phylum rhizopoda (amoeba). You live with others of your kind in a droplet of water, using your pseudopods to leap and dance and play. One day the droplet of water rolls down a tree and merges with a river. The next two days you spend exploring the river. It is cold, but there are many tasty bacteria that you become adept at catching. The world around you is a dark mystery, but you are content. Your needs are few and your trials are few. Soon it is time for your fission. You split into your two daughters. You finally unite with the Brahman.
Joseph Cameron loves dogs and you can find his prose at 3:AM Magazine, Thieves Jargon, Heavyglow Flash Fiction, and In Pursuit of the Perfect Gourmet Garam Masala (a print anthology).