The Wrong Impression of the Jungle

Path: Me & you

We walk in the woods of the Jungle Planet—the green one, Meezed-Zedbee II. Perhaps we’ve arrived here through the pages of Be a Dark Horse! Or maybe through Everything Fails. More likely you’ve read about the alumna abscondita and our trip down the Axon Highway out into the hidden secrets school out there. However we are here, we are here. And I say, “I’m worried that I’ve given you the wrong impression of the Jungle. Like, entirely.”

You say, How so? and I say, “I feel like, for writerly reasons, I have stereotyped the Jungle as a uniformly awful place. A place soaked in blood and chems and ravaged by rich landowners and populated with girl gangs and highwaymen.”

Isn’t it, though? you might ask.

“Yes,” I say. “And that’s what is misleading. Or rather, how I have mischaracterized it.”

You might say something balming here, cos you love me or at least like me, about how you know no place is all one thing and that probably most people do too.

“Yeah, I get that,” I say. “But this is important.”

We walk into a deeper glade, and there is a creek there. 

When you look at me, you can see I am younger. I am my younger self.

How did you do that? you might ask.

I grin. “It’s a secret.” I hop into the creek yet land on a rock you maybe did not notice. I do not slip. I say over my shoulder, “Albeit a rather obvious one,” then I jump to the other side, land there with ease.

I look across to you and encourage you to do as I just did. [See below: play procedures]

You reach me, and we walk up the slope of that side of the bank. I do this, you can plainly see, with ease, as though I am still walking on a flat surface. It does not look that way; it looks as though I am shifting and grabbing vines and small shrubs and things, but the effort expended seems no more than simple walking.

Perhaps it takes you more effort, perhaps not, but we reach the top and carry on walking through the woods.

“The Jungle Herself was quite kind to me,” I say, gesturing to her grandeur. “I can’t say I understand why. I don’t know what I did to deserve such kindness from Her, but She showed it to me just the same.

“When I was sad, I would come here. She would comfort me. When I was angry, I would run here, and She would calm me.” Again, I gesture, and say, “Here, in this place, Her body.

“And there are also all sorts of horrible things out here,” I say. This might put you on edge, maybe it does a little, or has no effect. “There are so many deadly snakes out here, for example, that we don’t even know the names of all of them. Yet they never showed me their faces. Only three times in all my living here did I even see their bodies, and then very briefly.” 

We climb another hill within the woods. And then another, and another.

“There are savage dogs of different sorts here. I’ve never seen them. Rarely heard them. And hunters who shoot things dead. I’ve never encountered them, or even heard them.”

You might ask about the ones hunting me, in part 2 of Everything Fails. 

“That was a literary contrivance to illustrate a developmental period and the thoughts and feelings that go with it.”

So you made it up? you ask. Or maybe you say it. I dunno.

“Well, yes,” I say. “I keep telling everyone it is a fictional memoir. No one seems to want to believe that. I think people—and I include myself here, obviously—are desperate to be a part of a story, to be in a work, to be something or someone special. And that desperation leaks in during small moments, at the slightest opportunity.

Perhaps you agree and say so. Maybe you don’t say anything. Or you might get a little bite-y and say, You maybe.

“Everyone, bae,” I say. “Or, you know, almost. I’m very confident on this point. It’s like a need to eat, sleep, breathe. Some folks are very distressed by a particular need, whilst others are not, so that might create the impression that there are folks—such as yourself, maybe—who do not have this need. But that is not true. It is part of the human experience.”

You don’t have to agree with me. Just to be clear. It’s your ride, after all. Make it the way you wish. But I will not budge on this point, not now, not here.

“The Jungle was a shelter for me. She took me in. I thought I was banished from the Gold and condemned to live here, but I can see now that She was there, too, on the Gold. And on the Homeworld. She has been there for me and taken me in. And held me when no one else would, listen to me when no one cared to. And most importantly, simply let me be. I can be myself with Her, and She accepts me, makes no demands of me. She protects me.”

You might ask if things are so great in the Jung, why did I ever leave.

I shrug. “Who knows. Need to be a part of something out there, I guess. That’s where the real savagery is. In the minds of men, gathered together in meeting rooms, making plans for wrecking things.”

You may be curious if I’ve been to such places.

“Oh, yes,” I say. “I was a man once, too, you know. I was invited to all sorts of meetings. But they’re all the same.”

That may sound reductive, so I clarify some, “The flavor is different. The intention, maybe—stated intention, that is. But it’s always the same song: wreck things. Maybe it’s for fun, maybe for sport, maybe for profit. But it’s about wrecking things.”

You might say, Well what about art and architecture, tools?

“Yeah,” I say. “Those things are out there, too. Mostly used to wreck things. You have to wreck things to make things in man’s world. Beings have to eat beings.”

Isn’t that going on out here, too? you could say, looking around the beautiful, yet menacing, surroundings.

“She’s never showed it to me,” I say. “I mean, of course it is. It has to be. But when I am here, I do not see it.”

And you don’t, you might reason, because you can return to man’s world and someone else has already done it for you.

I look at you, “I didn’t ask to be born into this world. I was escaping a dying world, and this was what was available. And it is beautiful but horrible. Beings eating other beings. Having to destroy things to make things. Needing to experience pain, aging, illness, and death. Who would create such a place? And who would delight in living there?”

Maybe you have answers for these things, maybe not. I assure you I do not. I have my experience which I gift to you gently, humbly for your consideration or to discard in favor of a news site.

But we may abide here as long as you wish, in Her soft embrace, terrifying though it may seem.

Play procedures

• You can narrate your journey across the stream however you wish; or, if you're playing the game version of the novel, make a roll for a relevant trait at a moderate difficulty and describe the results.
• If you have answers for these questions, review them. Share them with us, if you like.
• If you do not, abide in this place of calm and gentle peace for as long as you can.