I figure if I were a bat things would be alright. I'd be somewhere between anonymity and appreciation, beauty and oblivion.
We would catch fireflies and our mom would make us let them go and what if the bats sometimes lit up and she said well then they wouldn't be bats would they?
I stare at them in the zoo house and they are evolutionary facts and what kind of blood is that coating the hair on browntuftbreasts? What cruel zookeeper would shine a light on horror and force us to face our fears and overcome the unknowing.
A screech and then only a fleeting woosh of blackness atop more blackness or maybe a blackness atop a light purple, a dimming yellow, or quickly hollowing blue. Either way we only see a form that might as well be a shadow and then the form is gone and it's almost as if we have captured a shadow, locked away into memories of peaceful summer nights and how long before mother makes us release our jars?
How do we come by knowing this world? We start with silhouettes and subconsciously and inevitably and over time and with precision and discussion and all these methods we never think about we fill the contours in and create images and planes and dimensions and realities as real as a bat's real rodent face and teeth too sharp to touch.
But unless we go to the zoo and force reality's hand bats stay obscure silhouettes and we can admire sublimely and wonder just where their edges end and the universe's begin.
When I write I only ever try to trace the shadows. To find edges where I may slip unknowingly into a void of incomprehension and understanding.
To shine a light on a bat is to take away its only magic: a darkmagic mystery that reflects our self-same spiritual waywardness.
Some things should stay silhouettes lest they lose the spirit of the middle, of not being this nor that, of tangible intangibility.
Why did Peter Pan cry when he lost his shadow? What did he lose really? Not a part of himself but his part of the universe, proof that he causes effect, proof that he is and is not formless.
