St. Elmo's Fire

St Elmo’s Fire

In the world before, in the world that did not know traffic jams and Elvis Presley and vanilla ice cream, things were not tame. In the world between cities and ages, things grew without fertilizer, without any insecticides. This world was largely smothered when the cities came. But still, there lies the green belt: The rapidly diminishing no man’s land that lies between each city, a miniature safe haven for the creatures that remember when things were different. A time when the human being was stronger, in both will and stamina, and now those humans have been forgotten. People live there whole lives without hunting a mammoth, instead they hunt for a bargain. People visit the zoo, and do not remember the feelings they used to have for the beings that have now become their captives. They look upon such creatures with fear, a fear of association to the days when survival and reproduction were the only two things on anybody’s to-do list, and do not understand. Yet deep down, within the void of sub-conscious within every person’s head, lives another entity, or version, of the said person. A person who is happy without macaroni and Shakespeare, Will and Grace and champagne. A person who is happy with nothing but safety, warmth and shelter. A person, who could do so much more, yet did not need to. Somebody who, while they straddled the horse of present times at there own evolutionary crossroads, had a choice to make. Do you think they chose correctly?
Within the green belt that shrinks every day, things from that time before lie dormant. On the surface we do not remember them, and a spark of recognition only comes up if we look to that person within, that Neanderthal who knows fear of sabre toothed tigers and draws on cave walls. To this person, they know fear at these discoveries. On the surface, we know nothing but the fact that for once in our lives, we are staring directly into the face of the unknown. But it is not the unknown to that alter ego within, to them it is the face of fear, the antithesis to survival. And so, the unknown is fear. And fear is unknown.