(Continued from earlier)


Triceratops meanwhile had managed to right himself, and galloped now after Hedgedog, shouting frantically "Don't worry, Hedgehog! I'll save you!" He ran right up to the bank as if to do so, then retreated several yards to safety - Triceratopses, though brave to many dangers, have an implacable fear of water. Up above, Unicorn, who had indeed been frolicking among the clouds, spotted the two making their winding way down the river - one erratically through eddies and swirls, the other weaving between bank and dry land. She leapt to Triceratop's side and asked:

"What's wrong, Triceratops?"
"We must save Hedgehog!" shouted Triceratops back.
"I am a happy butterfly" said Hedgehog quietly, but both the horned creatures were too busy making a plan for his rescue to hear him..

"I know how to get creatures out of rivers" said Unicorn. "We must fish him out!" Luckily Unicorn was able to find a fishing pole nearby, and with some difficulty (such is the plight of hooved creatures) Unicorn managed to loop the line around her horn, which she then flew above Hedgehog. Try as she might, however, she could find no place to hook Hedgehog. Though the hook cut at his underbelly it could not find purchase there, and when she tried to guide it into his mouth as she would a fish he simply spat it out with a look of disgust. Hedgehogs are very silly creatures, reflected Unicorn. She leapt back to Triceratops and told him: "It's OK. I have a plan. You stay here".

She leapt off then, leaving Triceratops and Hedgehog to continue their synchronous trip down the river. Presently Triceratops began to notice a certain thumping quality to the earth, which - he had stopped running now, listening alertly - which was certainly increasing. Thump! Thump! Was it an earthquake? Triceratops began to tremble - Triceratopses, though brave to many dangers, have an implacable fear of earthquakes. He had just curled up and shut his eyes when over the thumping he heard a loud trumpeting. Elephant! Sure enough, Unicorn had brought Elephant to aid in Hedgehog's rescue. This was good news indeed - with Elephant's trunk, they could do anything1 Triceratops stood up just as Unicorn and Elephant came rushing to the bank.

"Yes, that's a hedgehog in the water alright. Well, no matter, I'll just pull him out" said Elephant in his baritone voice. He had already extended his trunk and was about to reach around Hedgehog when Unicorn shouted "Wait!"

"Won't his spikes hurt your trunk?" she asked
"My trunk! I suppose they would! I was so caught up in my magnanimity that I forgot entirely my own safety! Well, no matter," he declared flatly, "we'll just bat him out".

He picked a large stick up in his trunk and took to rescuing Hedgehog. The river made Hedgehog a difficult target, however; one bobbing up and down, now here and now there without any sort of pattern. Worse yet, the few times Elephant did hit Hedgehog, Hedgehog just curled into a ball and bounced off the bank back into the river. Finally, an exasperated Elephant swung as mightily as he could (quite), missed entirely and fell himself into the river.

"Effooo!" blasted Elephant through his freshly wet trunk. He stood up and marched out of the river.

"Well," he said to the other two, "I suppose there's nothing we can do. Hedgehog will simply continue down the river into the ocean".

Unicorn lowered her horn and Triceratops began to weep. The river was slow here, and the three were able to give their pace a funereal dignity. Elephant laid his trunk on Unicorn's mane, and consoled her: "We tried our best. That's what matters".

"I suppose so" she murmured sadly. "Farewell, little hedgehog".

Triceratops said nothing, so great were his heaving sobs. He wailed and gasped fro breath and his cries were so loud and so pained that they penetrated even into Hedgehog's heart, and he remembered then that he was a hedgehog, not a butterfly; for no butterfly ever understood the pain of a friend, but hedgehogs are naturally empathetic. Hedgehog rolled over and swam to the bank, where he pulled himself up.

The would-be rescuers, lost in their said thoughts and morbid procession, didn't even notice the river's sudden absence of Hedgehog until behind them a small voice said "hey, wait up ya'll" and not even then - they were quite sad and Hedgehog was very quiet - not until he waddled up beside them did they realize Hedgehog was returned.

"Hedgehog!" cried the three in unison; and Triceratops danced a four-foot-jig; and Unicorn neighed merrily and soared back and forth over the river; and Elephant trumpeted in pleasure, then lowered himself to allow Hedgehog to climb his back. From here Hedgehog could see all around the valley, and he realized that in the progress of the river they had come quite close to his house.

"Friends," he proposed, "let us retire to my house and eat a meal". And they did, and soon their laughter echoed throughout the valley. All the creatures heard them, and knew they were joyful - except up above one black speck, flying erratically, which never knew anything at all.






For reference sake, I had just read a ton of Nabokov and was beginning David Foster Wallace*, which is why the language is somewhat more florid than one would think necessary for a childrenish story. I was also obsessively reading the Tao te Ching and spending a lot of time feeling sorry for myself; any petulance you perceive is not imagined.


*incidentally David Foster Wallace is a great man. Read "Infinite Jest" sometime, or if you don't have time for an eight or nine hundred page book (with 100 pages of footnotes!) try a short story collection (Oblivion is his newest and I really enjoyed it) or any of his nonfiction is amazing. One gets the sense in all of his stories of a man far more self-aware than can be healthy, really. He's also drop-dead funny.
6:07 PM

About a year ago Nicole, whose art our house is more or less a gallery for, decided to embark upon an ambitious graffiti project wherein we would (with owners' permission) paint a hip-but-innocent series of stories, each involving a hedgehog, a unicorn, a triceratops, an elephant, a spiraly sun type thing which we pulled from the aborigines to be a constant motif for some reason, and, you know, whatever else we felt like painting. Upon our first practice run, it was quickly discovered that I was not in any way lying when I said I had no artistic skills (they caught me looking up on the internet 'how to draw a hedgehog', this after I had accidentally drawn a porcupine), so Nicole charitably told me to write a story we could illustrate. I did, but we never had another meeting and nothing further happened with it because Nicole is a goddamn hippie (who now lives in Berkeley, as well she might). So it's been sitting in the trunk of my car for months, until the other day while cleaning (sidenote: my car is clean! this may not seem worthy of your attention but it is so rare and wonderful an event that I feel like shouting it from the rooftops) I found the notebook I wrote it on and so for your pleasure I transcribe it here, though I think most of those precious few who read my blog have already heard it:

One day Hedgehog was lying on his back by the bank of a river, staring at the clouds and imagining all the white fluffy things they could be.

"That one is a white fluffy duck", he said to himself, "and that one is a white fluffy hedgehog, and so is that one is, and that one is...that one is..."

But he did not know what the last cloud was, because it was unlike any other cloud he had seen that day. It was a small black speck, growing slowly larger. At last, after some study (hedgehogs are a cautious species by nature, not given to wild exclamations) Hedgehog declared: "That is not a cloud at all". He thought then that it might be his friend Unicorn, who was often given to flying merrily among the clouds. But where Unicorn flew gracefully and purposefully, the speck flew erratically, as if nothing but the wind gave it direction*

Hedgehog then thought that perhaps the ever-growing shape was simply a leaf blown high from its tree and now floating gently to earth. But surely it was too lovely to be a leaf - for Hedgehog could see now that in the shape were yellows and reds and blues arranged in swirling patterns that seemed to echo the creature's flight path: chaotic and formless, but with an underlying, ineffable unity.

Suddenly it landed on his nose, and Hedgehog, his eyes crossed from fierce concentration, finally realized: this was a butterfly. His eyes gradually unfocused, and with that strange, dreamy conviction that often overtakes hedgehogs when they stare at clouds, he declared quietly: "I am a butterfly".

Hedgehog and the butterfly laid there then for some time, silent in their lepidopteran camaraderie. This is how Triceratops found them as he came strolling along the river.

"Hedgehog!" he shouted, his eyes wide in terror, "You've got a bug on your face!" Triceratops, though brave to many dangers, have an implacable fear of insects. He centered his horn on the butterfly and charged as fast as he could, but the butterfly was too light: his horn could find no place to enter, he tripped over Hedgehog and landed face first in the ground, where he promptly stuck.

Hedgehog, who had not really been paying attention to Triceratops, was dismayed to see his butterfly friend fly away. "Wait for me, comrade!" he cried after the butterfly, and pranced intently after it. So was intent was he on following the butterfly that he did not notice the ground beneath him switch from mud to river until it was too late. Such are the constant travails of butterflies in hedgehog-form, he thought to himself as he bobbed up and down it the stream, but remembering how the butterfly had let the air guide it Hedgehog relaxed and allowed the river to carry him.

I'll transcribe the next part, in which Triceratops will round up some help, in the future.



*originally I had 'naught but meandering winds' and have changed it here so maybe I won't wince when I read it
10:14 AM