I often identify with cave people. I imagine, contrary to belief, that they did not chew a lot of meat but rather swallowed the undercooked, semi-pulsating, red pterodactyl wing whole. Cave people (I use the gender neutral term), you see, had mouths full of gums and no teeth. The true infants of our species. I am speaking of the earliest human-like cave dwellers, not of the edgier, more avant-garde 10,000 year old skeletons we find today with almost all their teeth in tact. These cave people’s heads are deemed useless because the teeth would have told us the majority of their lives’ stories. Or at least they used to be deemed useless, before high tech science came about. By that time, we already had disposed of the “gummy” heads in the Great Gummy Head Raid of 1952, leaving only specimens with chompers worth talking about. Hence why my toothless breed is not often discussed.
Not to say my breed of cavepeople never developed teeth during their lifetime. They did. Their main issue was developing a way in which to communicate with one another. This dilemma caused even their brightest minds to take up the dope of the day: rock chewing. For a society without a language and any real verbal or written way to properly market the appeal of “toothin’ stones”, the habit quickly turned into an epidemic across the stalactite and stalagmite societies. Some anthropologists (we shall call them the “nature” crew) theorized the behavior was genetic, and the human population grew out of this phase as soon as our appendices went defunct. Others, (the “nurture” gang), believed it spread as part of the “monkey see, monkey do” mentality. Which the “nature” crew somewhat agreed with because after all, the cave people did LOOK like monkeys (at least in fluorescent lighting).
Yet, I am 89% sure the rock epidemic entirely resulted from a mass failure to communicate. We chewed because we “felt”. We “felt” in ways which we could not vocalize to others, leaving us with gums and the inability to verbally communicate for the next millennia or three.
Then, one rainy day, Shlomo picked up a dead bleeding pterodactyl. His throat was severely swollen from being stung by a bee (he was incidentally the first person recorded to go into anaphylactic shock), making him unable to swallow his dactyl breast. He threw the carcass against the wall in frustration and anguish when he realized he could use its blood to express his feelings (and symptoms) via artwork. Thus cave paintings (and the myth of the “killer bees”) were born.
Currently, I am a cave dweller dating B.S. (Before Shlomo). I have no teeth. Nothing I say is particularly gripping or really physically capable of ripping through my particularly scaly emotional epidermis. I could buy dentures but I am not old or Florence Henderson. I fear that with fake teeth comes a fake personality. I am afraid my voice would sound mechanical, rehearsed like a beauty queen pageant winner with perfect bicuspids. So, I am left with Gerber’s.
And today, I took up doodling.
First came the Indian man. To be honest, he was supposed to be a collection of geometric shapes but his face appeared to me as if drawn from a spirit quest of triangles and hexagons. My First Nation chief (for he was a chieftain with a headdress made of diagonals and zig-a-zags) appeared to be peering outwards, stage right, with intense eyes highlighted by heavy eyeliner. A Vegas headliner.
The man was in need of something to glare upon, so the magnificent geofire arose. I felt if this man was piercing the fire with his burning eyes he should be searching for images of his ancestors. The second, however, I started drawing stick figure people of various shapes and sizes aflame in my spiritual fire, the whole work took a turn for the apocalyptic. Damage control quickly salvaged the debris in form of a collage of circles and diamonds weaved tightly together in billowing flaps of heat.
Where there’s fire, there’s smoke. My determination to get spiritual was not damned by my briefly hellish creation. Therefore, I allowed whips of transparent smoke to conceive my man’s spirit animal: what originally, to my dismay, resembled a pestilent pig, which I tried to transform into a wise wolverine, which resulted into something like a bewildered warthog (which I do not believe is Native to North America, hence its bewilderment).
Like Shlomo the cavedweller, I felt my ability to express and nourish my body and soul more and more constricted by the moment. Perhaps, I reasoned, I simply took too big of a chunk of pterodactyl thigh and needed to tear off smaller chunks. Going right for the spiritual, the heart of the matter, was skipping at least five important rungs on THE LADDER to our ultimate truth (at least mine and Shlomo’s). So, like the evolution of our species, I took it in baby steps. I began to draw a tree. A geotree.
My problem in life: a tree is never just a tree. Everything has to have a subliminal message (sometimes glaringly subliminally obvious). One thing I can say for myself—my tree was never male genitalia or a cigar (at least not intentionally). But somewhere along the way, its trunk carved out a totem pole. The pole was more the story of a life cycle rather than a family unit. It was a bird catching a frog that ate a fish that drowned. I think there were two fishes. (One fish, two fish, dead fish, blue fish). Because it resembled the sign Pisces. My astrological sign. Which would explain my sudden turn to the Heavens.
My moon was eaten out. Like a block of Swiss cheese that was originally cheddar. I believe it was the daintiest element added to my creation because of its sheer simplicity and its ability to emote longing (for it did resemble a block of cheese, and as a lactose intolerant individual most everything pales in comparison to a milky hunk of a dairy).
Three stars on Saturday night. The end of the week, the birth of hope, the final touch to doodlepalooza. My stars: deformed, but I do not think I mind. My chieftain does not either. As he stares down his smoldering past, he envelops silence. There is no need to speak. To hope. To pray.
The future: milky, obscured with smoke and warthogs. Shlomo did not know he made history and legend until he was already dead from his personal killer, the bee. My drawings, words, will not choose to bare their fangs (or perhaps shine their pearly whites) until after their true meaning is lost to me. Under triangles and diamonds. Circles and hexagons.
So I leave the anthropologists with my hieroglyphics. And only pray that even with our new found scientific techno-gizmos, my gums are not deemed as useless as cavepeople B.S.