Turtles

      
         I see the Turtles, slow in pace, strong in shell, and I know one day they will survive us. I see the Turtles and somehow, in someway, I am not afraid. I see the Turtles and I only question Man.

       Why can't we face the fucking facts, the only truth we can possibly know? We are born, we live, we die and that is all, no rebirth, no afterlife, no do-over; just hideous, inevitable Death, but oh, how we dread the permanence of it. An eternal rot, not an eternal slumber.

       We are excellent pretenders though. Fooling ourselves into believing that we can live forever, even though forever is much too long for any species, no matter how "superior" we may think we are. We will all reach that empty, inescapable demise no matter how hard we fight, no matter how far we run in flight, fleeing in denial. We will all find the blackened sunset eventually. It is not destiny or fate, it is not predetermined or premeditated, it is simply, nihilistically humanity's dolor, dolor end.

      So if we are all meaningless victims of Death's final doom, then why do we continue to rage War with it? It is, after all, a battle that we will not win or overcome or triumph victorious. History is written by the victors; history is paved by Death. Yet, we continue to walk the pavement, the concrete path to nowhere, hoping to find a Frosted road less traveled, a hidden passageway to something greater. Why? What is the point of such pointless phenomenon? Why do we torture our corruptionist souls in search for wretched, nonexistent meaning?
     
       Because... Because...Because we are human, the ironic hubris of our species; the very fact that we are human defines the degree of our fatal flaw, as sad and poetic as it may be, it is necessary for our survival. It is our shell of protection. Being human means believing in immortality even though there is no such elixir; it means having faith that there is something more even though there is nothing more than this; it means loving with all we got even though the heart is an ugly organ, beating only because Nature tells it to. We are human and we are beautifully, wonderfully naïve.

      One day, one very bleak day, Man will die out. A week of momentary silence to honor the rise, the duration, and the fall of creatures oh so enlightened will occur... But then the sun will rise again and another successor of the evolutionary pool will take our place. Perhaps, it will be the Turtle, heaving backwards onto its hind legs, better equipped for the hastes and traumas of Life, of Earthbound supremacy than we ever were. Slow in pace, never forgetting to smell the flowers even as Time quickens their speed. And when the revolutions start floating too fast, when they become seasick from the planet's ceaseless spinning, they can retreat not as cowards but as survivors. They can close their eyes, crawl into their shells, and endure the damn winter with the same tired, exasperated ease that it took us to shut our eyes, brace the noose, and kick the bucket of our genocide.

      The turtles will survive. They will survive not because of their slowness, but because of their shells. We weren't sustained by such luxury, no genetic shelter were we given to protect us from the cold. All we had was skin, feeble, tearable flesh, the symbol of our mortality, of our temporary residence.