After a strange dream, I woke up. The sun was shining. I remembered my dream, a really stupid one in which I had chased a rabbit. My arms and legs felt like I had been running all night. I stayed in bed for another five minutes, thinking about my dream. Finally I scratched my ear - with my foot. I decided to get up and wash my face. My bed was too high, and I had to jump. The door to the bathroom was open, and I went in. Instinctively I closed the door with my nose. On the door was a big mirror. When I looked in it, I saw I was a dog! I tried to call my parents but I could only bark. Barking was enough, however, to draw my parents' attention. Even before they realized that it was me, they adored this little creature. Since then I've never thought of changing into a human being again. Why should I? Life as a dog is wonderful: no work, enough food, and unconditional love from everyone!
"And what would Darwin say?"
As I slew another fly
I hardly heard it cry.
But in that moment I was cursed,
for now on spiders are the worst.
I bowed and shrank with horrifying speed
Then slowly, aching painfully inch by inch;
I felt my eyes grow larger and larger,
As did all the world around me.
Smells of a thousand kinds overwhelmed me;
the garlic and ginger were far too much.
I struggled then to escape the waft
But wings and flying high were so new yet;
I plunged down hard, but landed soft
In a very comfy spider's net!
"The Sorrows of an Acupuncture Needle"
What ugly thick skin right in front of me!
It smells like fish and is covered with scales.
What puffy, watery upholstery underneath
(indicating a disturbed function of the thyroid gland)!
Why on earth is the skin so tough?
Has my sharp point become the blunt end of a broomstick?
But I forget myself: Who am I to complain?
I'm nothing but a servant in someone else's hands.
"The Pine Marten's Revenge"
I nibbled at the sickly sweet rubber,
I sipped the warm brown liquid
that oozed out of the cracks in the hose.
I wallowed in the warmth of the oily engine block
and for a while gave in to drowsiness...
In my slumber I see the car's owner,
who gradually takes on the appearance
of the BMW driver who, for as long as I can remember,
has regularly tried to shunt me off the M6
with his furious flashing headlights.
Safe on the sidewalk,
I blissfully see the steam clouding out of his bonnet
As the hot coolant spurts over his 3-litre engine.
"Adolescent Hedgehog Horror"
My mother's crowlike voice grates on my nerves.
If Dad tells me once more to clean up the kitchen, I'll scream!
Jeanne wants me to see the new Brad Pitt movie with her,
but I said 'No' and don't know why.
Ouch! I just pricked my finger - on my cactus?
No, on something sharp growing out of my shoulder.
Oh no! My arm is covered with sharp needles, smooth and lethal
Chill
Quill
Kill
I'll just gel my hair like a porcupine and cross the street at midnight,
in front of some fast headlights -
or will things be better when I'm sixteen?
"Daughters of Eve"
Yes, thought the little boy. I mean no. The woman glared at him. How could he tell what he had been looking for at the bottom of the stairs. Of course, it was simple - nothing really at all. But she glanced at him in serious distrust.
Yes, he had wanted to scare the girl coming down, had hoped to flush the light steps into a scream maybe, meaning no harm, not even a joke. Just a little mischievous spontaneity. How could he have known it was his teacher, stout, loud and proud, not just any one of his classmates?
He had not been able to get up and leave without being noticed in the barren hall. So he had kept crouching next to the last three steps hoping she would just make her way straight to the classroom, not looking left or right. But he had given himself away.
Her eyes, magnified by her old maiden glasses, kept interrogating the morals of the 9-year-old. He pressed his lips together, because his intentions had not been to peek under anybody's garments. He had had no interest in erotic visions yet. No. How could he now talk about little boys' meaningless ideas without stirring up false suspicion under the mounting weight of 50 years of female righteousness? This iron lady who used to beat his fingers at the slightest misbehaviour towered over him, well-fed and invincible. He didn't dare look into the threatening pupils, nor look away. Only flies have bigger eyes, he felt.
But the Sphinx didn't speak. Her severe look accused him of everything he didn't even dare to think. Words, feeble moths of innocence against inquisitory masses of educational curiosity, could not suffice to tell the seemingly idiotic truth in the face of the adult version of intolerable conduct that sprang from her looks. Judgement day at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the ladies' with the dark angel of grown-up distrust in small guys' silly ways of trying to approach the other sex.
Her eyes seemed as big as her spectacles, and the boy's frightened stare got lost between the white rings around the eyeballs and shiny but impenetrable darkness of the growing centres. The snake inside the woman spoke from those pits in flashes to the frozen little lad as if she wanted to say that the eternal injustice of male exploitation of womanhood was entirely his fault.
Exercise 1: communicating emotion
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