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Ten thousand years ago, his linguistic intuition enabled his front and hind legs, and every bone and muscle, to know —— how to pull a sledge —— how to pull a sledge alongside other canines while 'trusting' those rough hands —— how to 'be trusted' as an extension of those rough hands’ arms and legs—how to ‘accept’ and ‘respond’ to the code and hints of those rough hands —— how to ‘imagine’ and ‘piece together’ in an instant the countless fragments expressed by those rough hands —— how to choose, at every passing moment, the angles and force intimately linked to the sled’s advance and retreat and the survival of its limbs —— how to seize, without hesitation, the unceasing ‘precision’ amidst the countless ‘vagueness’ released and held by those rough hands —— how to seize every breath and every sound left by those rough hands in the air, pouring them into the intuition of a desperate sprint, time and time again —— how to discern, from every variation of ‘density and viscosity’ and ‘urgency and magnitude’ left behind by the mixture of sweat, saliva, snot and tears of those rough hands, the shifts in distance and elevation visible to the eye, and the undulations and twists comprehensible to the mind… And yet, how can one ensure that his canine instincts and every nerve-tip are made aware —— how to ‘prevent’ his long black nose from resisting the scent of sweat and blood on those rough hands —— how to ‘prevent’ his pair of large ears from resisting the sounds and echoes of those rough hands —— how to ‘prevent’ his fine, sensitive whiskers from resisting the flexing, pushing and pulling of those rough hands —— how to ‘prevent’ his pair of front paws from clawing those rough hands until they bleed or tearing them to shreds —— how to ‘prevent’ his upper and lower teeth from biting those rough hands until the bones snap or chewing them until the scent of flesh rises —— how to ‘prevent’ his eyes from seeing those rough hands as the front paws of a grey squirrel or the wings of a grey swan… After all, he is an animal with animality —— after all, he is a carnivore—after all, he possesses the sharpest combination of ‘teeth, claws, head and eyes’ in the animal world —— after all, he is not a herbivore like cattle, horses, sheep or rabbits —— after all, he is not a primate, bear, elephant or monkey that favors stems, leaves, melons and fruits—after all, he is certainly not a bird or fish with a prejudice against ‘biting through and chewing up bones’—— after all, he possesses the same muzzle, whiskers, flesh, sinews and bones as the grey wolf —— after all, he possesses the same legs, claws, tongue, teeth, ears, nose, intestines and stomach as the grey wolf —— after all, he possesses a ferocity and taste similar to that of the grey wolf —— after all, he possesses a collective instinct and a sense of mutual aid that resonates with the grey wolf… After all, he had witnessed time and again those rough hands grasping sharp wooden sticks, piercing deep into the chests of one grey wolf after another —— after all, he had heard the heads of grey wolves being struck again and again by stones clenched in those rough hands, until all that remained was the lingering echo of ‘mud and stone entangled’—— after all, the pools of wolf’s blood spilled forth by those rough hands had, in wave upon wave, flooded his entire nasal and cranial cavities like a river or a downpour —— after all, when those rough hands gripped conical stones and silently shattered one wolf fang after another —— the competing sounds of cracking, reverberating from the roots of individual teeth and the entire skull, had time and again echoed through his ear and mouth; after all, when those rough hands gripped crescent-shaped stone slabs and quietly crushed one wolf tail after another —— the soft, low sounds produced by the twenty-three tail vertebrae, swaying and sliding apart in the dead silence as they pushed against the sacrum and slipped from the spinal column, had pierced his sacroiliac joints and skull, one by one…

Ten thousand years later, those non-symbolic characters ‘etched’ onto the wolf’s tail by its fangs —— still remain…

Those non-symbolic characters are letters after letters, letters written to oneself by those rough hands…

Those ‘letters’ were perceived with the utmost subtlety and precision by the ‘Chiang-Chiang' of ten thousand years ago…

The ‘Chiang-Chiang’ of ten thousand years ago had long since woven those ‘letters’ into his intuition and genes…

The ‘Chiang-Chiang’ of ten thousand years later, shaped by his genes, and likewise trusts his intuition, is reading those very ‘letters’…

He reads the letters not merely by ‘grabbing’, ‘biting’ and ‘howling’, but by reading them in ‘two languages’…

His ‘bilingualism’ includes ‘wolf-speak’—— the ‘wolf-speak’ through which wolves express their thoughts to the pack and the ‘wolf-speak’ through which humans express their thoughts to the pack are, for him, two parallel yet unified forms of wolf-speak —— for his situation ten thousand years ago was one of ‘existing entirely within the pack’—— and at that time, the wolf pack he belonged to trusted the thoughts expressed by those rough hands in another form of ‘wolf-speak’—— and so, within this wolf pack context where these two forms of ‘wolf-speak’ were interwoven, he ran unconsciously for ten thousand years —— he fully trusted that, in the present moment, he remained within the wolf pack and was still effortlessly employing both forms of ‘wolf-speak’ to express any ideas… There was also ‘human-speak’—— the ‘human-speak’ a wolf uses to express thoughts to a human, and the ‘human-speak’ a human uses to express thoughts to a wolf, were, to him, two forms of human-speaks that existed in parallel yet were also one —— after all, ten thousand years ago, he would only use ‘human-speak’ when expressing thoughts to those rough hands —— and at that time, those rough hands within the wolf pack would only use another form of ‘human-speak’ when expressing thoughts to him —— the parallel existence of these two ‘human-speaks’ has allowed him to exist within both the wolf pack and the human community over the past ten thousand years —— whilst the fusion of these two ‘human-speaks’ has caused him to hover silently for ten thousand years in a liminal state that is both ‘wolf’ and ‘human’—— yet when ‘human-speak’ and ‘wolf-speak’ clash ferociously, he finds himself suspended, alone, in a liminal state that is neither ‘wolf’ nor ‘human’… Then there is sheer ‘bilingualism’, where the sheer elements of ‘wolf-speak’ and ‘human-speak’ coexist in parallel whilst unified and in synchrony, this ‘sheerness’ born of parallel coexistence allows him to trust both the wolf’s instinct for ‘assault’ and the human’s instinct for ‘rectification’—— and to be trusted by both humans and wolves as a ‘comrade’—— and is trusted by humans as a ‘wolf’ that does not bite yet can pull a sledge —— and is trusted by wolves as another kind of ‘wolf’ lacking territorial instincts and aggressive impulses, and this unified ‘sheerness' allows him to both vaguely ‘reveal’ his sense of boundaries and precisely ‘restrain’ his own aggression —— thus escaping death time and time again and, by sheer luck, surviving ten thousand years of bloodshed and turmoil —— and even now, within a community that possesses both ‘wolf-speak’ and ‘human-speak’, he steadfastly upholds this ‘sheer’ quality that has endured for ten thousand years… Moreover, there exists a ‘bilingualism’ of mutual dead angles: those fragments of ‘wolf-speak’ that perceive the nuances of ‘human-speak’s’ flow, and those scraps of ‘human-speak’ that see through the dead ends of ‘wolf-speak’s’ advances and retreats, coexist in parallel yet are unified in synchrony, and whether it is those fragments of ‘wolf-speak’ in the blind spot or those scraps of ‘human-speak’ in the blind spot —— he is fortunate—for he can, in an instant, ‘splice’ the wolf’s intuition with the human’s to near perfection —— so perfect that it seems the optimal fusion of complementary strengths between wolf and man —— so perfect that he appears capable of joining the wolf pack and the humans to pull a sledge of any weight, unflinchingly, towards a distant horizon where no loneliness exists, or into a corner where no pain resides —— so perfect as if he were the very pair of rough hands capable of both leading a lonely wolf away from ‘loneliness’ and a human in pain out of ‘pain’—— yet he is also unfortunate —— unfortunately categorized as that sort of ‘sled dog’ that, ten thousand years ago, had already completely severed ties with the wolf pack and fully integrated into human society —— and is also unfortunate to be classified as that sort of ‘pet dog’ that harbors a fondness for the pristine whiteness of ice and snow yet harbors no prejudice against the grey desolation of deserts or ruins —— and is further unfortunate to be elevated to that ‘omnipotent’ status where he can at all times resolve the deadlock of ‘wolf-speak’ and transcend the shifting perspectives of ‘human-speak’—— and, most unhappily of all, trusted as a sort of ‘working dog’—— part wolf, part human, yet neither —— that can forever weave those scattered fragments of ‘wolf-speak’ or those jumbled bits of ‘human-speak’ from the dead angles into ‘linguistic intuition’ without pain and without ever feeling alone……

Is his ‘work’, for eternity, to ‘illude’ both the form and abilities of a wolf and the perspective and intellect of a human?

Human intellect is supremely sophisticated; can it always be ‘illuded’ without any pain?

The human perspective, meanwhile, is profoundly deep; can it also be ‘illuded’ in such a way that it is never lonely?

Can an ‘illusion’ that is never lonely enable a wolf, filled with the fear of ‘loneliness’, to forever cease to fear ‘loneliness’?

Can an ‘illusion’ devoid of pain also enable a wolf, deeply attuned to ‘pain’, to forever cease to perceive ‘pain’?

[Unfinished. To be Continued]