Molly's Monkey

Thursday, November 02, 2006. Monkey Puzzle Remix - Wow! Or just puzzle some monkeys... the lines were fuzzing...a little...10 years of alter-ego, it's gotta stain the linen... The monkey-puzzle device is a useful and transferable one; a flexible metaphor, aren't we all puzzled monkeys at heart/in essence? And the monkey was given command of a nuclear submarine.The monkey looked up at the stars and he thought to himself memory is a stranger. So, the garden of Eden? Is in London Zoo? Skip the afterlife, go directly via submarine to the monkey enclosure. I have trouble calling you Molly sometimes..or maybe I dont...ooh I don't know..... more monkeys to you. Shock the monkey is one trouble-free option; monkey see, monkey do is another. My grandad had a monkey puzzle tree in his back garden. They (the trees) remind me of dinosaurs. Walking with. The Garden of Eden, with its gaping cleft-jawed predators and dangling snakes, is probably our ineluctable destiny anyway. I can feel it. Don't you agree? It's in the air. And the warm seas.Banging sticks at the rivals, charging at them and opportunistically snatching away of a weak one who isn't off the mark in time, dragged back to the home territory excitedly like victorious undeniable Aztec souls, knocked about a bit, slowly, unconscious, death by exhaustion and concussion, pull off the limbs while living, open the belly, gorge on the vitals, soft and rich, contentment and happy, leave the hair and bone for the birds, reeking warning to others, attracts curious young in game, show them who's boss, except for the big cats and bears.That's business, sonny.That would explain the swollen eyelids and the talk of stick-monkey cannibals. Quite sexual...shows where your mind is. The monkey puzzle could go further if we allow it to. The density of longing is akin only to the sparsity of knuckle joints. We can all entangle ourselves if we leave holes for retreat. But who needs holes when you have the lights to lead us, twinkling purple in the leaves along the river. A beautiful kind of yellow-brick road of our own as we tread lightly and fantastically. I remembered sitting outside on the picnic benches, eating sandwiches and looking up at the trees shading us from the Autumn sunshine. Every time I see a monkey puzzle tree I think, 'but what is the solution?'. Dance on! Leave holes or leaf holes? Drop outs and raindrops. Branches like origami cancer. I like London Zoo's dark room, with bats and kiwis. The best zoo I ever went to though was the Skegness Natureland Marine Zoo. But it wasn't the marine zoology that I liked with the slapping seals and performance and school sandwiches children hanging over the walls laughing and pointing. Splash and dive for the audience.They had a free-flying hummingbird aviary. I'd never seen a real hummingbird before. Just on TV. And in my books.Tiny miracles of flutter and jewel. Purring in the ears at the feeding station and, oooh! Mother! You'll gerrit stuck in yer hairnets!Like a humid magicalplace and never-want-to-leave. Flicker of emerald. Bumble-hover. Still with awe. A watcher. Greenhouse cheese plant leaves. Leaves the hummer with another flicker of its wings. Ruby and amethyst in jet. No adults here now. Alone in the jingle bo-jangle jungle with birds and plants.Quails bobbling around the undergrowth. Wet-me-lips. I still hear it in-mind! Hide and seek.After two hours in heaven them made me go. Please, no! Just five more minutes. Long tailed sylph! Look. Watch. Remember.Twenty years later I trekked back to show my new friends, but it was gone. Replaced with a butterfly house. Normally a butterfly house would have thrilled me, but compared to the hummingbirds... I couldn't hide the bitter disappointment. A jigsaw puzzle jungle where all the pieces are shades of green except for bits of monkey which are bluish brown. I did those bits first and now I'm stuck. I used to like getting jigsaws from the library. This monkey's gone to heaven... posted by Molly Bloom at 8:23 PM 1 comments