Chance a Camel
A Children's Story
It’s getting dark outside. Stars are beginning to shine where night time is painting over day. And like I always tell you, kiddo, every night before I tuck you in before bed: just because I’m with your mother doesn’t mean I want to be your dad.
But she came home from work in that overly festive sweater-vest again. You know, the one that she thinks is crafty and ‘fun.’ After a day of ridicule at the office, she’s sprawled out downstairs with her feet up. Blame that on the Franzia. So here I am, preparing to tell you a bedtime story so you’ll be quiet for six to eight hours and I can get back to watching The Late Show, and then The Late Late Show, and then infomercials, and then George Lopez. It’s not like I’m going to work tomorrow (liberal arts degree). If I accidentally demonstrate any knowledge of philosophy on my part, I apologize- it’s automatic. I’ve been slipping it into conversations for years now. Intellectual street cred.
Once upon a time there was a young camel named Chance. Chance lived in the desert with his mother and an adult male approximating a father figure but who in no way, shape or form embraced the legal, financial or emotional aspects of that role. Chance’s earliest memories were of his hoofs patting the sandy, bumpy ground on the outskirts of an emerald green oasis. He often bounded through the air and thrust his nose at dragon flies, their glass-like wings fluttering against the arid sky. There was an enormous desert on every side of him. Sometimes his pack wandered the dunes, always circling back to the life giving source at the oasis. And like the good camels they were, they always made it to camel church on Sunday.
And Chance never forgot what he was taught about camels. The preacher camel, shaky with grey whiskers, said as he stood upon a rock in the shade, “Brothers and sisters, the way of the Lord is righteous and difficult. We are unworthy but made worthy in the sacrifice of His only begotten Son. The old ways are gone. The kingdom of heaven is made open only to those who love and accept His Son as their Savior. Take heed! The Son knows your heart. He cares not for your outward exuberances or vanities in His name, but that you accept the ideals of brotherhood and charity and serving others. Follow the Son, love the Father and be mindful of his living word. The Father built us camels strong, that we might last through the punishment of the desert, of the world. Our bodies, designed to assume the burden of abuse, absorb it even, shall prevail in his name. Turn the other cheek to this world! Endure it! Those who defy His mercy shall find themselves living in sin and be cast into a lake of sulfure, where fire and brimstone will rain down upon their scorched bodies for all eternity. Also, it’s singles’ bingo night, so single people, we’re inviting you this evening to come on down and be social with the chance to win prizes. There’ll be snacks. Pamphlets over by the sand pile.”
As they walked home from the sermon, Chance followed behind his mother asking various questions. Her answers were articulate and complete. The exchange exhibited a thorough understanding of the religion Camelianity.
“Mom,” Chance said, “All I have to do is love Cameljesus,embrace the moral values that the Camelbible tells me about and forsake the temptations of the body, and then my immortal soul will go to Pet Heaven?”
“Yep,” his mom said.
“Whoa,” Chance said as his feet came to a halt. The horizon was hazy and multiplying. Objects that moved infront of his eyes left a trail. “I think I’m getting dizzy.”
“Well come home when you’re done,” his mom told him as she walked into the distance.
Then Chance was alone. The more he thought about Camelianity, the easier it seemed for him to be a good Camelian. He knew in his heart that he could do all those things and see all his friends in Pet Heaven one day.
“Pssst. Hey, kid…” Chance looked around. There was just the lush oasis and beyond, tiny swirling sandstorms in the dunes. “The bushes,” the voice said again. “Over here.”
Chance approached the leafy cluster, droopy eyed and slowly. His face was low to the ground and his forehead tilted foreward. “What are you?” he
whispered.
“Your worst nightmare.”
“MOM, HELP!” He screamed. “SECULAR HUMANISTS!”
But it was too late. There were already claws upon him.
Chance wasn’t sure what had happened, but when the world oriented itself to his senses, his was far from the oasis. It was just a speck in the distance. Now he was in the sandy dunes, surrounded by no less than six lions.
“What…” Chance swallowed loudly. “What are you going to do with me?”
A lion with a fiery red mane stepped forward. “We are going to tear into you…”
His voice was exactly like Liam Neeson’s but he is not a metaphor for God.
“… with logic,” the lion finished his sentence after a moment.
And so they stood around young Chance and shouted elegant logical constructions about why Camelianity raises more questions than it answers. Some of them mentioned substance dualism and asked Chance to point to his mind. Others mentioned that there was horrific historical misgivings about the actual existence of Cameljesus but a clear agenda in the Camelchurch. One really effeminate lion talked about how awful Chance’s fur looked.
“Stop, stop, stop!” Chance holllered. “My head is killing me!”
“Because we are ripping through the garbage up there,” said Liam Neeson as he circled the young camel.
“If you aren’t Camelians, what do you guys believe?”
“We all believe the same thing. Except for Nihil, over there.”
At the edge of the gathering a cross eyed lion was repeatedly shoving sand into its mouth and spitting it out again. “But never mind,” Liam Neeson said. “We’re creatures of science. We believe in evolutionary psychology. All animal behavior can be traced back to a common source, such as the need to eat, or poo or mate. It’s all explained by the construction of the brain, which is like a supercomputer. You see, dear boy, there’s no such thing as a soul.”
“No!” Chance screamed.
“Search your feelings, “ Liam Neeson told him. “You know it to be true. Also, we have pamphlets over there, next to the sand pile.”
Then a funny feeling began to come over Chance. It started off a tickle. He giggled a little bit, dopey in his smiling and stumbling movements. The pleasant, drunk feeling soon gave way to what felt like his skin ripping apart. He howled in pain and thought, perhaps, the lions had educated him and then began to feast on his flesh, just like student loans.
When he oppened his eyes again, something was different. Liam Neeson stood before him, his proud lion claws in the sand. “Welcome, brother,” he said. “You may now travel to Lionland.”
Chance had transformed into a lion. His muscles felt strong. He was agile. His claws itched from the sand and felt like they ought to be ripping into something… with logic.
So the lions began to travel out of the desert. They wandered for forty minutes and had forty fights… because with that much logic flying around, it’s just inevitable. Chance got to ask a bunch of questions about their ideology and his new body, like, for example, how to use the bathroom. And just like his conversation with his mother, this converation revealed depth and understanding of the subject at hand.
“So there is no soul or metaphysical mind or life after death? Everything is firmly rooted in biology, every thought, feeling and memory? And there are things consistent across all animal nature?”
“Yep,” Liam Neeson answered.
With Nihil the lion bringing up the rear, running circles and biting his own neck, the pride (Did You Know?: A pride is a pack of lions) soon came out of the desert and into the warm, dry grasslands of the plains. Chance had never felt grass like that before, stringy and dry and ichy, and his new footpad on the bottom of his lion’s claw made him all the more sensitive to the earth below him. Chance knew he was growing up. As they wandered out of the desert he had began listening to alternative music and read all of Les Miserables.
In the distance there was the figure of a lion. He was laying inthe shade of a lone tree, a single tower amongst the plains. “Go to him,” Liam Neeson told Chance.
As Chance left the pride to approach, he could see the old lion’s movements in the tree shade. He was laying down and flicking his tail boredly. Chance kneeled down before him and opened his mouth to speak.
But the old lion knew what he was going to say before he said it. “Yes, the lions are correct in certain ways. Young Chance, I tell you, the body and the soul are the same thing.”
“Wait!” Chance objected, the grass itching his lion elbows. “I thought there was no soul!”
“You see,” the old lion continued, “the body is composed of drives. How we express these drives, appease them even, defines our moral values. And these drives all stem from one rule across every creature with a consciousness, because we animals are not human and at this point in the story I can’t use that word in a definition.”
“Nietzsche,” Chance whispered.
“What?” the old lion said quizzically.
“Sorry,” Chance said. “This dry grass of the plains is making my knee itchy.”
“Oh. Anyways, that one rule is called ‘The Will to Power’, and it means, according to some certain textbooks, the organism’s desire to seize stimuli and transform it. Enact it’s will upon it, if you will.”
“Ok, I believe you,” Chance said. “But now what? I’m stuck out here with a bunch of lions who think we’re all biology, and I can’t go back to Camelianity. What am I supposed to do? I’ve been transformed into a lion! I feel the constant need to tear things apart… with logic. This sucks!”
“Yes,” the old lion said wisely. “We lions are so quick to tear apart the world around us. But supposing you live long enough to succeed. Supposing you tore the whole world apart. Entire worlds of values. You would still feel the need to tear with your mighty lion claws. But what would be left?”
“Just me,” Chance answered. “I… have to tear myself apart.”
The old lion nodded fondly and pointed to the pack of lions in the distance, where Nihil was doing back flips and urinating at the same time. “He was once our greatest lion but alas did not survive his own shredding. You must shred, dear Chance, and pray remember life as a creative act and you the artist, not unlike Legos ™ or lincoln logs.”
He was unsure, but Chance began to tear.
Now, the plains are wide and expansive. But if you should go there, if you should step through that dry crinkly grass so bleached from the harsh sun, you might see a lonely, tall tree spreading out across the sky. There’ll be no lions. They’ve long sinced moved on to continue their shredding. You’ll see no camels, who remain in the desert of their choosing, continuing to use their unpowerful and fortified bodies to weather the abuse of this life that they might prosper in the next. No, if you find that tree, you’ll see a child underneath it. About your age, even, six years old. He casts rocks on the grass and they fall in strange patterns. His tiny fingers lift them and move them in wonder, and he if puts one far enough to the west, the sun will set, because the sun to him is a play thing.
Now go to bed, I’m missing Letterman.
