Buridan’s Ass
Based on an image gained from the Murakami novel, A Wild Sheep's Chase. “My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year." Murakami. Where the chickens came from is unclear.
Photo taken from Goldsboro books website.
It was an argument of the imaginary sort between the man Moore and the weaknesses inherent to his character; those that lived within his torso in a desert of sorts as three chickens with combs of such vibrant and rubbery red that if they’d ever been popped from him, birthed like the gods from Kronos at the age of time, and presented before chickens of the real world than those real world chickens would have weeped, cocked, and a doodledooed until the cows probably surrounding them went home; the argument from Moore aimed at one of the chickens in particular, all about their level of attractiveness and their choosing of a mate and the speed with which such a choosing should be done, the argument in return being that wasn’t there maybe a chance that a choice didn’t have to be made, swiftly or not, because maybe one chicken could avoid making a mistake and really have it all!
Moore had been born at the same time as his chickens, the incubated eggs they’d grew in hatching on the day, on the minute, on the second he himself had been spat out onto the linoleum floor of his mother’s single story bungalow, and the moment they emerged the weaknesses they embodied guided him, the trio of them making up a sensitive soul that was sensitive the most as he grew and became aware about the poultry gunking up his insides and periodically dragging him into external situations involving emotions he really just didn’t want to feel; Moore despairing daily about the chickens and the weaknesses they represented but not once, not ever, considering taking a sharp knife to cut away at his flesh to remove them, they were there and there isn’t much anyone can do about things of the alive sort being in you when they are and besides, he was simply far too much of a coward to consider doing something that would hurt quite as much as that. The largest of the chickens within him made sure of that, letting out the classic cockerel sound of morning yore whenever something fearful came into Moore’s life and also making it so that Moore himself let out the noise, loudly and with the effect of one of the Other Chickens, the one that caused his shame to be as sheer and insurmountable as a rock climbing wall with no hand holds to a climber with no hands, to on cue run around the desert in his belly, spraying up dust and sand of the smoky and yet grainy type that made Moore cough outwardly and run away too from the thing he was embarrassed to exist in front of.
The chickens grew larger with each year Moore grew older and more complicated in their little nuances until the role that’d once felt like being the largest and most important part of a team, that role of course being Moore’s from birth, began to feel reduced, Moore feeling instead like a swiftly marginalised part of the team, merely the figurehead controlled by the very things that resided in him rent free; this was a complicated feeling that couldn’t exactly be helped or explained, certainly not to himself, and if Moore tried to discuss it- usually with enquiring strangers who really wanted to know why Moore occasionally let out the cluck of a cockerel or why Moore blushed and fled as soon as they let out the cluck of a cockerel or why Moore got angry all the time at things beyond their control or why Moore swore at cyclists or why Moore swore at drivers or why Moore called everybody stupid or why Moore laughed at others misfortune or why Moore couldn’t swim or why Moore didn’t exercise or why Moore didn’t tidy their flat often enough or why Moore felt sad and at their wits end, and pretty obviously too, all of the time- then those he tried to discuss it with would swiftly turn away with confused or angry expressions that suggested that they really did not understand any of Moore’s references to the chickens inside him or how they were embodiments of weakness and that they not only didn’t understand it but that him saying such things as explanations to what really was a fair question was so completely crazy that they never wanted to see him again.
The desert the chickens resided in- that existed somewhere between Moore’s belly and chest- initially grew with them, expanding to accommodate all the them of them and let all the them of them thrive as fully as possible within the hold of Moore’s body, the desert stopping its expansion despite the chickens still growing only when it was becoming impossible to keep itself within the realms of possibilities, to stop itself from growing to an unfathomable size too large and metaphorical to be contained in a single man; the desert had been clean and untouched when the chickens had been unhatched eggs, but, like angry children in angry play destroy the toys they touch, once hatched, the pecking and play of the chickens festered the desert the way a pill of cyanide would, burning any of the goodness and strength that may have been ingrained in the grains of sand into an ash that blew thisaway-and-thataway. Moore noticed the chickens growth and the slow decay of anything decent of his own character, (which despite the slow decay swiftly became a deformed thing too weak, in his mind, to manage the climb up the side of a horse, let alone the riding it), with the disimpassioned notice of a notice board on a motorway with only a crumbled and illegible fifty year old paper note pinned to its face, the motivation Moore had felt for one day improving upon his inherent weakness getting confused in his head the weaker he inherently got until some days, most days, all days, he cared for the weaknesses and such a part of him were they that if they ever lessened rather than grew, he feared he would lessen with them, so Moore actually encouraged the growth.
Moore became sexually interested in others- exclusively others less weak in matters of the heart than him- at the age of eighteen, but the chickens within him didn’t start to notice one another until he was twenty seven, (before that, the chickens sniffed exclusively at the walls and floor with nary an eye raised to notice others of their kind also pervading the insides of Moore), the largest chicken, one who roosted mainly in the middle of the desert, being the one, the cause, the first to raise the eyes and see and lust, the sensitive fiend immediately doing a flip in place and kicking its feet into the air as if it could move the world around it by traverse force and impress the two Other Chickens whose plump breasts rivalled its own- despite being hidden almost coyishly under plush feathers- and who pecked half-heartedly at the floor.
Moore felt the awakening of the Chicken In The Middle like a bullet to the genitals; a sharp, piercing pain hitting his crotch and brain so aggressively simultaneously he doubled up, let out his Chicken In The Middle sound, and had to flee the public persons he was then surrounded by because the public persons he was surrounded by gawped at such uncivilised behaviour in an otherwise civilised space and Moore was shamed and disgraced to be seen acting and behaving as such a common ass while inside him the Chicken In The Middle, crowing and fluffing its feathers, prepared itself for seduction; Moore, despite keeping one eye on where they were running, watched this happening- his inner eye peering frantically at the scene, (like an all-seer with an ulcer and places to be!)- while praying the chicken’s seduction would succeed and as quick time as a cheetah all aflame because Moore knew, as completely as an empty doorframe with consciousness just knows that one day the right door will come along and fill it and it won’t be empty no more or ever again, that if the Chicken In The Middle of him failed at its quest to seduce and its wild oats were never soiled and it never got to make like a carpet and be laid, then Moore would expire, and Moore was too cowardly and weak and fond of their conscious cowardly weakness to be prepared to expire- especially not when they were running through crowded streets in front of gawping strangers. The Other Chickens, who of course had their sexual appetite woken up around the same time as the Chicken In The Middle, didn’t look up at the Chicken In The Middle preparing itself because they were busy themselves preparing themselves for the experience of being wined and dined, ruffling and primping their own feathers up just like the first chicken so that come the time they were leaped upon, the one doing the leaping would have a soft landing; by the time they did look up, a strange chain of strange black steel had wound its way around their clawed feet and bound them on opposite sides of the desert within Moore, each directly between the Chicken In The Middle that was scuffing at the ground with its own feet like a bull just about ready to CHARGEEEEE.
Moore’s looking within himself and at the Chicken In The Middle got more pointed as his inner eye- which had vision far better than its bespectacled owner- couldn’t see the chains around the side chicken’s ankles and so couldn’t understand what the hell was going on and why it wasn’t done and also couldn’t help but wonder if the Chicken In The Middle was maybe waiting to be approached because maybe that was just how chickens did it but was unfortunately so ugly that the Other Chickens, even though not spoiled for choice, were just not into it; the before mentioned imaginary argument between Moore and the Chicken In The Middle starting because it helped Moore focus on something other than the crippling pain in his lower half, the fabricated exchange going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“You’re pathetic, get some!”
“I’m preparing, getting ready, just wait, I’ll be fulfilled.”
“I’m sick of waiting, stop waiting to be ready, you wait too much, I’m hurting!”
“Don’t rush me, I’ll get some when I’m good and ready and not a moment sooner.”
“But I’ll die if you wait too long, I’ll just die!”
“You won’t die, you’ll be fine, be patient.”
“I’m not patient and you’re not a doctor, are you not attractive enough to approach them? Is that it? You scared because you’re ugly?”
“I’m a fine looking chicken and I know it, so don’t try to bait me into rushing, I won’t do any rushing, not for you, not for anyone, maybe they’ll come to me, you don’t know.”
“You scared because you think maybe those chickens won’t want anything to do with a big ugly thing like you, is that it? Is it? Uglybuglyboo!”
And so on and so forth until the pain crippled Moore got to an alley that seemed dark and homely enough for him to collapse within and be one with the shadowed walls and curl up and really just let out all the chicken sounds and weeps he really wanted to without worry about being seen or caught because who would walk down a dark alley when there were chickenised weeping sounds echoing from the depths of it?; the answer nobody and nobody did and Moore stopped all imaginary conversations because he were too relieved at not having to attempt, and fail, at holding those sounds in. The Other Chickens were trapped fast- and just when they were all ready to erupt like Vesuvius with no vasectomy!- against their walls with their sheer chickeness laid bare for all the see, which was only the Chicken In The Middle who cocked its head at the ground beneath its feet and considered the options available to it in terms of its possible preparedness for the situation involving choosing and satisfying itself and only one of the trapped ones, (it being known by all parties that only one could be satisfied); their cocked head saying nothing that the imaginary voice of Moore hadn’t already said in a much more demanding way, the real voice of Moore while this cocking was going on rising up into the shadows of the alley like a cloud into a spiral of windy wind doing its wind thing, making people walking past look twice at the alley and, after the initial thought of, ‘whoa, I wouldn’t want to go down that alley because it’s dark and it sounds like there’s a mad chicken down there!’, have the succeeding, quite malicious, thought of, ‘I could get someone to help that animal that’s clearly being tortured and prodded and is simply CRYING out for help, but I won’t because I’m a sheep and that means I’m baaaaaa-d’.
Moore’s heart beat like a bongo participating in a bong-o-thon as not a contestant but the star guest as the pain in his nether region increased dramatically and his worry for the reliance of the cowardly weakness within increased with it because, still, the Chicken In The Middle wasn’t moving, because, still, the Chicken In The Middle was cocking its head at its feet and, still, the desert beneath its feet remained a desert; The Chicken In The Middle didn’t move because it was scared and indecisive and it was scared and indecisive because it was scared naturally and because, say the Chicken In The Middle wasn’t a Chicken In The Middle inside Moore but an unrooted flower outside Moore stranded between two pots of equally fertile and equally watered soil, how then could that unrooted flower choose between the two when the two were options identical and probably equally beneficial but still there was a chance that if the decision made was wrong the soil pot it could end up in could end up being minusculey worse; that thought tore all decision making capabilities from that Chicken In The Middle’s damn mind because that Chicken In The Middle’s decision wasn’t even between pitiful pots of soil but between two other chickens of equally bountiful breasts which were only getting larger and larger, that Chicken In The Middle’s heart beating faster and faster as time tick-tocked on because the longer the decision was taking to be made, the quicker it and Moore and all the others would die because it was a philosophical problem and philosophical problems are without grey areas to hide and waste time in.
Moore’s screaming and crowing and crying in the alley was no help in promoting a decision because the Chicken In The Middle couldn’t hear him, (the chickens in him didn’t know about Moore in any literal sense, more of a metaphorical, theological one, Moore as a man being just a myth to them), and how confident the Chicken In The Middle felt in its own attractiveness and ability to seduce was no help either because the Chicken In The Middle didn’t feel confident, the Chicken In The Middle didn’t feel confident at all, and that was because the Chicken In The Middle was wondering just why it was that the Other Chickens weren’t making the decision for it and simply advancing towards it, why they weren’t showing any sign of attraction towards it at all, why they were dragging their claws on the ground and simply staring with poultry eyes as wide and blank as anything directly at it without making a single sound; the Chicken In The Middle’s confidence would have received a boost perhaps enough to prompt it forward into decision time if it could have seen the chains binding the Other Chickens to the strange grey walls bordering their desert, it would have known that the Other Chickens would have approached, they really would have!, if it wasn’t for the fact that they were bound and unable to speak chicken talk anyway- all three of them having their own feathery languages; but it couldn’t see the chains and it wondered as lonely as a cloud while up in the outside world Moore had an idea which cut through his increasing pain for how he could help with the decision and overrode even his shame of being seen acting like he was acting, rolling right out of the alley in the direction of a space he knew a pet shop was placed and running down the street until he arrived, throwing himself in the direction of the grain section of the poultry care section and immediately burying his head in one of the plastic buckets containing high quality grain, swallowing without chewing whole mouthfuls of the stuff, hoping with all the hope it would fall in his belly and land perfectly in front of one or the other of the Other Chickens and make the decision of the Chicken In The Middle for it.
The grains all fell, like oddly coloured rain or half frozen hail, into the belly and onto the desert, (as all food Moore consumed did in some way), but landed not in a direct fashion in front of one of the Other Chickens space but in a fashion directly on and around the Chicken In The Middle, who gazed in confusion at the food because it wasn’t hungry for that sort of thing when its hunger for flesh hadn’t been sated, as Moore up above was dragged out of the plastic bucket and out of the pet shop and put in the back of a police car that then became an ambulance without changing form because you can’t take a person making chicken noises and crying about pain in their crotch as an explanation for their strangeness to a police station, no, you have to take them to a hospital and they drove, nee-naw-nee-naw, straight to the nearest hospital and deposited Moore not in the waiting room, because someone making those noises and crying about those things cannot wait at all, but straight in an examination room with a bespectacled doctor, who gazed at the patient with the patient eyes of a mouse eying a clock before declaring Moore mad.
One of Moore’s weaknesses, embodied within the bones and sinews of the left wing of one of the Other Chickens within him, was that Moore could not take being called mad when he thought he wasn’t mad and when he thought he was actually the sanest person around, and so, upon hearing the declaration, (it going through his pain and worry like a ball through beurre), he managed to utter out a stream of guttural words to the doctor- the gist of which they got as, ‘Not mad… inherent weak… in me… three chickens… one in the middle…choice… lust… die…’- which, while not making that doctor doubt their initial mad diagnosis, did make a nearby sympathetic nurse doubt it, and so strongly that they insisted, for the good of the patient, for the good of the hospital- ‘Because just what if they aren’t lying?’ they queried- they do an X-ray to see if these, ‘weaknesses’, so called, were visible and if they could help with them at all. Rushed like the wind was on their backs rather than breezing through their willows, the doctor, afraid of the possible harsh tone of the nurse and afraid of the what-if-they-weren’t-lying-or-mad possibilities, took Moore to the X-ray room where he was laid, with the bittersweet care of a small lover by the bigger lover come the end of a summer love, upon a table; an X-ray machine being hoisted above him which was a strange shape, more like the engine of an eighteen wheeler in appearance than that of an X-ray machine but that nevertheless flashed luminous green and blue as it took the X-rays of his body, that had to be held still by three other swiftly summoned doctors hands to stop it jerking about while a fourth and final one held the mouth shut to stem the chicken sounds, from above.
Despite appearances, this was no low-tech, old age X-ray machine, it was a sleek new-age one that worked to produce crystal clear images that could be viewed in full colour and in much more detail than the ones usual X-ray machines produced and also could be shown in real time so it was more like a video they were merely filming within; on the flat screen monitor next to the hospital bed Moore was being held upon, swiftly, an image appeared of the inside of his belly and the magnificent, (if you’re into sand that is), desert within it, all the weaknesses borne as chickens being shown too; the ones caught by their chains at the sides of the desert, pulling half-heartedly with their feet, and the Chicken In The Middle whose chain was metaphorical rather than physical but that held it in place regardless, the X-ray video showing clearly the one in the middle getting visibly more sick looking with each passing minute its heavy-is-the-head head did its back and forth cycle between the Other Chickens, its indecisiveness eating it alive. The doctors gaped with the gaping power only those who had mouths used to being simply help open for food and other delicacies to be deposited in and it was up to the nurse, whose mouth didn’t know the meaning of the word gape, to go to Moore’s head and remove the doctoral hand preventing the chicken sounds and look at his face and inspect it and prod it for attention and ask, “So what do we do? I take it you mean you’ll die if that chicken in the middle doesn’t choose one of the other chickens? Is that right?”.
“Cock… adoodle… doo,” was what came out, fragmented and agonised, as Moore nodded frantically.
“You hear that doctors? This means the patient is the chickens and to treat the patient we must treat the chickens and to treat the chickens we must make that one right there in the middle be a steam train and choo-choo choose. Apologies for my language, I’m flustered, but listen to me, I’ve got us this far.”
“Well, ahem, it’s an emotional sort of problem if the chicken can’t choose, a mental sort of issue rather than a physical one, surely!” The head doctor finally broke out of their stupor. “Send the patient to a psychiatrist, umm, Parker, Parker will know what to do, I’m sure.”
“But what if it simply is a matter of the physical,” the deputy head doctor who really wanted to be the head doctor but until that moment had never seen a moment worth seizing broke in. “What if the Chicken In The Middle needs a physical prompt, a push in the right direction so to speak, a push could be all that it needs for it to make up its mind. In that case, surgery would be the best option, and surgery is physical, is it not?”
“Yes, yes!” the doctor who wasn’t a head or a deputy and who just wanted to say something to get involved shouted. “Surgery IS physical and so are we, if we get in there we can simply push the chicken in the right direction… mmmm to the right I think, that’s the best option, look at the way the chicken there ruffles its feathers. It’s rather sexually really… if one’s into that sort of thing, of course.”
The doctors who’d suggested all looked at the head doctor expectantly, waiting for a final word of approval that ultimately came instead from the nurse who reminded them of the rights and correct procedure involved in such physical operating by declaring, “It’s up to the patient,” in a voice quiet but defiant, the nurse then bending despite not needing to and looking into the twin pools of Moore’s eyes to search for an answer, the eyes looking back in a mime attempt to answer, (at least in the nurse’s mind), that they thought surgery, and post haste, was the best bet. If Moore had been able to answer verbally in any way other than in chicken and if the nurse had been a keener reader of the limpid pools of his eyes, it would have been revealed that they were wrong and that Moore certainly thought a psychiatrist who wouldn’t cut them open when who knows how the chickens would react upon being exposed to a world not desert was the best bet, but Moore was as tongue tied and stuck on the noise their tied tongue was producing as the grass of a middle England moor on a perpetually, and no stronger or weaker than the moment before, breezy day and remained so as he was wheeled in the direction of the nearest operating room which was black from floor to ceiling; a shiny black, almost matte, that worked in opposition to the whiteness of the pre-prepped surgical equipment and the whiteness of the operative bed to make them stand out in a strange way, the sheer colour difference making it seem like the doctors had brought Moor out of the real world of colour and into the cinematic one of black and white, the colours of all their bodies too dulling to shades of grey in the dark of the room as Moore was lain, tied down to prevent him from running, and also gagged with a surgical mask tied tight around his head.
There was no suggestion of Moore being knocked unconsciousness for the operation- none of the equipment necessary to do such a thing being visible in that operating room - and the doctors and the nurse, stressed out of all their minds but also incredibly excited because if they pulled off the operation, if they managed to get even a finger inside Moore and really mess around inside him and make him overall and largely, better, than they would do so completely by hand, a modern medicine miracle, didn’t even think about it, proceeding in their cutting and slicing with Moore unable to recognisably scream from the new pain of a scalpel opening their torso like it was a ripe fig being piled on top of the dreadful pain in his crotch already, or even fight them off tied down as he was; no blood appearing from the initial incision, perplexing the doctors and nurse enough to excite them into probing much deeper, probing until they exposed the desert in Moore to the outside world and their faces were blown back by an arid wind with grains of sand held oh so gently within.
“Bawwwwwwk!?” went the chickens tied to the sides of the desert, hemmed in by the boundaries of Moore’s flesh, as they gazed up at the giant faces gazing down, the Chicken In The Middle, remaining in the middle as the Other Chicken’s shocked feet blew more dust and sand up to toy with the nose holes of the ones peering down, opening its mouth to showcase that it was its own sounds that Moore had been serenading them with.
“Fascinating,” the nurse remarked. “The patient seems very connected to the Chicken In The Middle, it makes the noises he makes, they’re unmistakable!”
“I wonder,” the head doctor, who hadn’t bothered in their excitement with a face mask or surgical gloves, said before reaching down into the desert space and poking the Chicken In The Middle in its middle, not in any particular direction but rather straight down.
The Chicken In The Middle, being smaller and weaker than an adult human’s finger, like a ladybird is to a stream of piss, was injured by the impact, one of its legs- the left one- breaking in two with such severity that it became a one legged chicken, rolling onto its side in shock and pain, Moore rolling in the same fashion to their side and losing their own left leg at the same time, (the gravitational positioning of the desert not changing due to Moore’s rolling around, the desert rather staying in its normal gravitational type place, and so the Other Chickens remaining where they were, confused); such was the excitement of this revelation to the doctors and nurse that they instantly forgot the point of the cutting open had been to prompt the Chicken In The Middle into a decision someway, somehow, and their excitement remained at just the right volume for them to easily ignore the feeble sounds of gagged poultry pain emanating from Moore and instead break off the other leg of the Chicken In The Middle in the very middle they lay.