Chameleon Men

This extremely short, fictional story is about following powerful dreams when the multifaceted lures of mediocrity and the "status quo" mentality attempt to dampen our spirits. It is almost parable-like. I wrote it a couple years ago. Peace out.

The desert is overpopulated with chameleon men of all ages and sizes. Banished from the homelands because their elusive statures disrupted life’s domesticated flow, these men now have to seek refuge in a land yet imagined or developed. They have nothing but a few canteens, some crude weapons for slashing at cactuses and stray animals if the opportunity arises, and the skin on their necks glistening underneath the unruly sun. They will probably walk until death injects its fever into their bones.

As their feet dredge into the sand, as their eyes stare ominously at the horizon, the hordes of men pass by a strange circular pattern of bones. Remnants of coyotes they are—dead fucking canids. Their ribcages stick out of the sand, and it reminds some of the men of abstract art they used to own. The circular pattern of bones is peculiar enough, but they refuse to stop until the sun disappears. When the nocturnal arrives, and the starry night sky covers the men from all around, they will build fires with their tattered clothes. Unquestionably, they will all be naked ten days from now.

How did chameleon men from all over the globe congregate in the desert anyways? Synchronicity? Luck? It is because they share a mental field—non-local field, mind you—that enables them to communicate with one another over vast distances? Or is this congregation one of those strange, baroque puzzles we will never be able to make sense of?

What we do know is this: chameleon men rupture society’s plane by being the flames that attract the moths. The moths in this case are slaves to consensus reality. Unlike the haughty dramatists and the sycophants, the chameleon men remain undetected. They blend into their environment, take the information pertinent to them, and then disappear without leaving a trace. Friends never recognize them, family members do not know much about them, and their whole purpose on this planet seems to serve an otherness we can’t even begin to fathom. Why are they flames if we the moths cannot see them, you ask? Because we are all secretly attracted to the mavericks who stand amongst us. Even though we cannot name a place or time they communicated with us, we deeply intuit that their presence establishes some sort of sanity in the metropolitans, the towns, and the roads in between.

If this is the case, and the chameleon men mean us no harm, why are they partaking in a pilgrimage to their deaths? Well, I guess it is because a society has to succeed, and a maverick has to agree with society’s definition of success or else. The moth says, “Success, why that is the ability to remain labile in times of economic tension.” The flame: “Success should be taken with a grain of salt. The key to life comes in not trying to net its wind.” And seeing as society likes people who don’t question the dizzying ride of technological progress, we can clearly understand why the chameleon men have been ostracized for their views, even though nobody can clearly determine whether or not they have heard their viewpoints at any time. When you think about it this all seems truly insane and irrational.

But laws and the governments who promulgate them are irrational and insane. This is why the chameleon men have been banished. Their mere presence could provoke a paradigm shift that would reduce the pillars of consensus reality to rubble. Paradigm shifts are really dangerous according to the governments of this world. They threaten to dethrone order and pave the way for chaos.

But the chameleon men aren’t mongers of chaos—molotov cocktails hurlers, insurgents with strong artillery stockpiles, or progenitors of caustic or slanderous ideas. In fact, the chameleon men have been able to transcend the chaos/order dyad by remaining unfazed amidst its workings. Of course they’re able to accomplish this by embodying whatever happens to be arising, moment-to-moment. Their tacit motto is panta reis—all flows. Why bother being an incongruous stone in the pond of consensus reality when you can be the water itself?

As I was saying, the chameleon men have probably been banished to the desert for irrational and insane reasons not of their own. Why even the president of the United States said, “We shall give these men their space to live in, but the space cannot be amongst us. They’re like terrorists. Once they’re given enough materials, they will attempt to overthrow and subvert our commonwealth. Even though we cannot prove these men have been involved in any anti-constitutional activities, we have our hunches. I shall leave it at that.” After these words were broadcasted throughout the globe, people took upon themselves to track down the chameleon men, round them up, and force them to leave in exile. Of course this brings up something absolutely crucial to this story: how do you track down a being that is beyond detection? An irrational and insane task, isn’t it? Surely it is.

But maybe, for these baroque chameleon men, it is best to live in exile in deserts when the world is the way it is. The spaciousness bequeaths a certain amount of sanity to the minds of many mavericks. And maybe these many men will bring about a new civilization when the cities crumble under the weight of psychic stress? And maybe, just maybe, the many mistakes of the past, the mistakes that led them to such a fate, will not be repeated. Maybe the chameleon men can establish the alchemical city of gold. Just maybe.