skit #49: an approximate blackness

I was not always a jaguar. Once I was the terror of the New World, an apparition of no name nor rival. Then my invisibility, the incredible black cloak I had been blessed with, was stripped from me.

My jungle is vast and, yes, can be measured in acres; but it's true immensity is in its obscurity. Canopies cast shadows so great and persistent that a stray sunbeam, on the rare occasion it should reach the undergrowth, stagnates cluelessly unsure of what to do with itself. Tortuous ivies indiscriminately induct everything into its pervasive folds. Blossoms gush nectars, perhaps toxic or perhaps panacean. There are extant yet hidden rarities, and there are latent mysteries yet to be discovered. There are confusing moods orphaned from any civilities. There are things I could only show you, never tell you, for they do not abide by your taxonomies.

Then, slowly, I met them. So pathetic were they! The trappers imitated my stealth so as to outfoot the clumsiest of my prey, peccaries and capybaras. On occasion, I would modestly recompense myself with a human babe or two for my lesson.

And so naive were they! The intrepid shamen partook of my rituals to perceive the world past simple predation and prey, past simple survival and death. When they licked their lips brimmed with ayahuasca and vomit, I admit I began to think of myself as a wise mother teaching her children of the vivid flavors concealed in life.

I taught the natives as though they were my cubs.

Their idolization was flattering. Undetected in my pelt, I watched them from the lowest boughs of a cashew tree. The warriors romped frenzied romps about the campfire, impersonating my growl and pantomiming my posture, before massacring a rival tribe, a deserving lot of pompous eagle-worshippers. After being invoked prior to many such victories, I learned the elders had deified me. They told legends of me I never denied. I still regret I accepted this promotion.

As their obsession grew insatiable, my celebrity meant my demise. I no longer eavesdropped on their rituals, whose surfeit of reverence made me long for anonymity. The princes had taken to wearing eagle feathers, and with the eagle-worshippers vanquished, the princes needed new trophies of power. One conquers oneself, then one's fellow man, then one's god. I never saw these princes face to face, only their retainers whom I dispatched in mobs of five, of ten, of twenty. Every man I slew increased the desire for my hide. My doom was inevitable; To reject my reputation was to relinquish my pelt, to which I was spiritually and physically attached. Instead, I disappeared from the world of man.

I have left a void where I was, but man has replaced me with an approximate blackness. Now I am a coat-of-arms. Now I am a luxury automobile. Now I am a football team. I am simple and defined. I hold a tenancy at the zoo and a tenureship in the dictionary.