by Ilja
It could have been another ordinary morning
like all the other mornings of all these ordinary days,
but this morning was not like all these other mornings
because of its shape or more precisely my own shape
or more precisely the form of my body which was
quite deformed that morning in comparison with
all the other mornings because I found myself in
another body which was not the very same body
I used to wake up in on all these very same mornings but
I wasn’t surprised about my transformation – what surprised me, but okay;
who says that evolution knows only one direction, and
instead of waking up, opening my eyes and seeing
my ordinary body with some hairs and some black ink under my skin
wearing boxershorts and feeling quite comfortable under the sheets,
I was covered with hair and instead of having ordinary hands
I had big hands with long fingers on the extremes of my arms,
which were not my ordinary arms I used to have,
but strong arms and long arms I could climb on trees with quite easily
which is what apes do on ordinary days but not I,
I live in what we call a civilised society which would not approve my new way of being,
and ignore that I’m still the very same person I have always been
on every ordinary day in my life,
just a bit deformed or different or changed but not altered
because I keep and I will always keep my true identity which is
integrated in my body which has been just a bit modified, that’s all,
but for my friends, my family and all the other people out there,
– like scientists who display behavioural disorders and I should avoid because
they would want to do experiments with me and on me
which would say a lot more about their own mental state than about mine –
I’m not a human anymore for them
just because of my long, hairy arms and my short, hairy legs and
my big, hairy feet that seem to me to be much more like hands and not feet,
but extremely useful if I had to climb on trees in an efficient and safe way,
which I’m somehow extremely motivated to do right now but unfortunately,
there are not many trees in civilisation,
just high buildings and low expectations of what the future could or would bring,
but they would have never expected to see a man-ape living an ordinary life
in extraordinary times like all the other beings of this society do
without understanding that it is not the form of somebody’s body which
defines the person, but what’s inside of that body going on, or more precisely
the consciousness that person has is what defines a human being
which is not dependent on having a certain appearance to fit in and
to count as equal among all the other ordinary beings who see themselves as
equal members of a civilised, well organised society that fears
the chaos I could bring them unintentionally just with my new, hairy body
which still works perfectly for what I usually do on my ordinary every-day life,
like reading books or writing poems or drinking coffee or playing games on my laptop
or working in summer on construction sides, painting walls for ordinary human beings whose
capability of accepting me as a man-ape doing this most human work I doubt
which I find ridiculous because I can walk and climb and speak and think even better than
all these ordinary, hairless people who would not tolerate me just living my life among them
because I’m too hairy since this morning but perhaps I will re-transform some night
and wake up and open my eyes and see my ordinary, naked body
without all these hairs I started to like because I felt warm and cosy inside of
that body I first tolerated and then ended up appreciating because
there are strange things we usually do not accept but
if we gave them a chance we would end up liking it and seeing the advantages in it
instead of problems which are not even there in the first place
but only appear in the moment we imagine them;
Imagine living as a hairy man-ape with long arms and big hands
in a civilised society that would not tolerate me just because
I do not fit in what they call ordinary.