The
New Nissan Micra will Save Your Soul
by
Brian Willems
We are animals, not descended from chimpanzees
but on a parallel branch of the tree, born from a common ancestor,
and we still need deodorant. On a bus making its way out of
Zagreb last week, in front of the new city library on the edge
of the city, there were two billboards, one on each side of
the road. On the left was an ad for deodorant, a naked woman
facing away with her arm raised applying the stick, on the right,
an ad for the new Nissan Micra.
In the 17th century, when the new Indian numerals
were making their way around Europe, through Spain, merchants
found them easier for doing sums, although they were still not
trusted, and the final tallies were written in official Roman
numerals. We still do this at the end of movies, living in MMIV,
so we know for certain when it was made.
When I step out of the shower and look down at
my hairy legs descending into feet, like a monkey's that could
so easily curl around a branch, or feel someone's toes wrap
around my shins, it reminds me of my backaches caused by walking
upright.
And when I see ads for new mobile phones that
have color pictures and moving images it makes me feel primitive
again. In 300 hundred years these will just be a joke like swords
or spats.
But on the other side of the road out of Zagreb
was an ad for the new Nissan Micra, like a New Beetle with angular
fenders. Its design reminds me of the cozy retro-future in Logan's
Run. A future in which Farrah Fawcett-Majors could bail you
out. The only type of future that doesn't make me squirm, because
it's already in the past.
The only hope I have for humanity lies in holding
onto youth, neoteny. It is more comfortable knowing that some
fishes' fins are de-evolved legs, that they have gone back into
the primordial soup. I find solace in humans having evolved
as far as we have because of the slowing down of our body's
physical development over its lifetime, that human adults resemble
baby chimps and apes rather than adult ones, and that we might
use the new Nissan Micra as our Bathysphere, easing our transitional
crawling back into the sea.
....
Brian Willems is an
American living in Split, Croatia where he works at a local
university. He has recently had a story published in Retort
Magazine.
