Pleasure without pain

THE FLOWERS AND THE BEES A Short Story

WHAT IS PLEASURE

WITHOUT PAIN

DANNY NINAL

All rRights Reserved 2014 Danny Ninal

To Minesh, Anjali and their sweet daughter Mishika.

WHAT IS PLEASURE WITHOUT PAIN A SHORT STORY

DANNY NINAL

At the West Entrance of the park, a woman was walking her dog, a tenpounder Bichon Frise, about 10 inches tall (to shoulders). Its long, curly coat consisted of a soft, dense undercoat and its outer coat was coarser and curlier.

Its coat was white but had a little cream colour around the ears.

The woman was obviously on the “home stretch” of her pregnancy. She could very well be in the third trimester, and was expecting her baby anytime. But she loved walking, and walking in the park with her dog was already part of her daily routine, pregnant or not. She was a very athletic woman.

She was walking slowly, and was approaching the newly installed bench in the park, when she felt a gush of liquid between her legs drenching the seams of her jogging pants and tricking around her ankles. She inched her way to the bench as fast as a person can while squeezing her thighs together.

The dog jumped on the bench and cuddled her, as if knowing that she needed comfort. She pulled the dog to her side and grabbed her mobile from the side pocket of her jogging pants and called her husband, “Hun, I think my water just broke.”

Photos by Danny Ninal

I will not forever be stuck in my cocoon, When my time comes, I will burst out and fly for the world to appreciate not only the beauty of my wings but painful process by which I am created.

Danny Ninal from “The Ramblings of the Mind�

THREE HOURS AGO Ring ring ring The classroom suddenly became alive as students excitedly gathered their books, bags and belongings. Amidst the pandemonium, the teacher could see boys and girls scampering to the door, and to the school gymnasium to support their team for the InterDepartment Basketball Finals.

Ring ring ring At the second bell, everybody had changed to their team colours, as fast as only children could dress up. Boys and girls, shouting their slogans supporting the teams. Cheerleaders sauntered around the court with their skirts which were long enough not to be called a belt, of course, to the delight of the boys.

Ring ring ring At the final bell, the classrooms were empty.

Or almost. Everybody had gone to the gymn, except for Hugh, who was still undecided whether he would watch the game or just go home. He adjusted his thick eyeglasses, which were precariously settled almost at the tip of his nose. These thick lenses covered his huge eyes, but it didn’t prevent the bullies to pick on it and called him Huge. He had never been interested in basketball, and being the smallest boy in the class didn’t help at all. They even started calling him, Little Huge.

So Little Huge picked up his bag and decided to do something different this time. Unbeknownst to him, it could be one of the best, if not the best decisions he had ever made in his otherwise boring life.

The cheering and jeering from the gymn faded as he walked further and further from the

school grounds. With every little step, little Hugh felt more and more relieved, almost like he was free, free from all the bullies in the school. The world just seemed bigger and bigger, and he felt he belonged to the world.

In this fleeting moment of solitude, he walked, or more like sauntered. He was lost in the world, almost missing the turn toward western entrance of the park, which he has just visited three days ago when he was brought by his mom on the weekend.

The park looked the same, with the tall trees, beautiful flowers, benches and well maintained grounds. The park was quiet, except for a few people doing their own thing. A few women were walking their dogs, which seemed to pause every now and then, as they walk through the grass. Others were sweating after an hour of taeboo exercises, their music still playing from the ipod attached to a player with two small speakers. Little Huge was glad he came to the park. He had at least a couple of hours to spare.

Then his visit to the park seemed to become more interesting. He felt some kind of excitement he could not understand. But it all started when he saw the two butterflies, the most beautiful butterflies he had ever seen in his entire life. Its wings had colours he never thought existed. And he was so captivated, that he didn’t realize there were even more butterflies all around him. Until he noticed that they seem to be in some kind of a ceremony or ritual. He could see a pattern in their formation, a solemnity of their movements, even the fluttering of their wings were almost sublime.

Then Little Huge found out why and he almost dropped to his knees.

Angie was one of the most, if not the most beautiful of the butterflies in the park. The male population wanted to be with her, as badly as the female butterflies wanted to be like her. There was never a butterfly before that has created such an influence to the kaleidoscope of butterflies in the park or the swarm.

Angie was a curious mix of maturity and that carefree attitude of a preteen girl, which she still was. That frequent flashes of carefreeness belied her intelligence. She could discourse on subjects that could befuddle many butterflies far her senior. And on many occasions, she has facilitated discussions relevant to the issues they were currently facing – The Interruption and Intervention of Metamorphosis (or The IIM). The Council of Butterflies in the park, had had several meetings and conferences, seminars and deliberations to solve or prevent it from happening again.

This was triggered by the pain, suffering, and death of pupa James, who never grew to be an adult, because some human sliced the cocoon to free poor little pupa James before his time. He never grew his wings, never became strong enough to grow up. He practically remained as a pupa, or some kind of the mutant whose eyes bulged out of his socket, held only by the very thin skin around what was supposed to be his head. His suffering did not last long, for the little pupa James died three days after he was pulled out from his cocoon.

On that day, even Angie’s beauty was covered by the gloominess of the surrounding circumstances. They were on their way to bury Angie’s brother, little pupa James. From the fact-finding committee, the report stated that a human being saw the cocoon, inside which was little pupa James undergoing Metamorphosis. As all butterflies knew, this was

the critical stage during which the pupa is hatched into a full adult butterfly. James never became one, and the human being never even knew he had sentenced the pupa to death.

From an egg, James became a larva (or a caterpillar). As a larva James by design of nature, spins a silk-like cocoon around himself. While inside the cocoon, like all other butterflies, the adult structure of James would have been formed, through two tiny glands called “Corpora Allata,” which would then secrete Juvenile Hormones or JH for short.

The JH would exert its influence on another set of glands, the “Prothoracic glands,” which eventually would secrete a hormone called Ecdysone. Both JH and Ecdysone controlled molting, growth and pupation, eventually leading to the development of an adult, beautiful, colourful butterfly.

Unfortunately, because the cocoon had been split open, the larva did not undergo the process of growing through the hormones JH and Ecdysone. He was born before his time, and his time ended before it could even begin. Like all butterflies, James needed to undergo that pain of molting and growing and pupation. Without the pain, James didn’t have the pleasure of existing as a beautiful butterfly.

This is what Angie called the Intervention and Interruption of Metamorphosis. Angie promised to spend the rest of her life, not only showing off her beauty and her intelligence to the world, but also to prevent IIM from happening to any of the future larvae in the park.

But that will have to wait, as Angie and her friend focused their attention on the burial of her brother, Little Pupa James

We look at the caterpillar with disdain Yet we wonder at the beauty of the butterfly.

Should we only accept the pleasures in life Without embracing the pain by which they are obtained?

Danny Ninal from “The Ramblings of the Mind�

The boy was so engrossed with the wonderful display of solemnity that he didn’t realize he had been staring at the whole event for half an hour already. Then he saw something that forever would change his life – the cocoon.

He thought he had seen it before. It was very familiar. Then he shivered when he realized that it was the same cocoon he had split open three days ago. He did it because he thought the larva inside was suffering from pain. He just wanted to help out and ease the pain. He recognized it because of the distinctive cut he made through his scissors – lengthwise towards right of centre.

“How did he write it, sir?” little Huge asked.

On top of the cocoon, was the dead larva, which was ceremoniously carried by several ants, followed by the butterflies lining up in two columns. With the help of the ants, the butterflies buried their dead – the one Little Huge killed!!!

“That is another way of saying it. You’re good, my little friend,” said the sculptor.

He knelt down, not as a sign of a religious respect for the dead, but because his knees weakened with the realization that instead of helping the larva, he had killed it. He had never felt so guilty in his life. Then the words of his Arts teacher made a lot of sense.

“Hugh, I did not create this wooden sculpture.

It was already there. I just chipped off the unnecessary pieces,” his teacher had replied when people commented on the exquisite creation of art his teacher showed the class.

It was a wooden carving of a swan made out of a trunk of a tree from the park.

“It must have been so painful for the trunk when you chiselled those parts, sir,” said Little Huge imagining that the trunk was the swan in real life.

“There are things we only achieve by going through trials and difficulties in life. My friend phrased it a lot better,” the teacher said

“He said it this way: ‘The rainbows are not made without the millions of droplets of rain, just as happiness is not achieved without going through lots of pain.’” the teacher recited as if it was a poem by Edgar Allan Poe and not from the ramblings of an unknown author whose mind cannot stop thinking and whose heart cannot stop sharing.

“Then I would say it this way, sir: ‘What is pleasure without pain.’” Little Huge spread out his arms as he said it, like he was in a lead role of ‘Hamlet.’”

Little Huge was brought back to reality when an ant bit him on his right foot.

Meanwhile, at the West Entrance of the park, a woman was walking her dog, a ten-pounder Bichon Frise, about 10 inches tall (to shoulders). Its long, curly coat consisted of a soft, dense undercoat and its outer coat was coarser and curlier. Its coat was white but had a little cream colour around the ears.

The woman was obviously on the “home stretch” of her pregnancy. She could very well be in the third trimester, and was expecting her baby anytime. But she loved walking, and walking in the park with her dog was already part of her daily routine, pregnant or not. She was a very athletic woman.

She was walking slowly, and was approaching the newly installed bench in the park, when she felt a gush of liquid between her leg, drenching the seams of her pants and trickling around her ankles. She inched her way to the bench as fast as a person can while squeezing her thighs together.

The dog jumped on the bench and cuddled her, as if knowing that she needed comfort.

She pulled the dog to her side and grabbed her mobile from the side pocket of her jogging pants and called her husband,

“weeeeeooo weeeeeooo weeeeeooo”

“Hun, I think my water just broke.”

“What’s going on?” the Manager asked his staff who were all looking at the window.

“Ok. Stay where you are, I’m on my way. I will call an ambulance,” the husband said calmly without a hint of the stirring anxiety and other things running in his mind. This would be their third baby, and finally a boy. Their two daughters were excited to have a baby brother, and couldn’t seem to stop asking when their brother will be born.

The woman was nervously looking around for her husband or for the ambulance, that she did not even notice the boy who passed by her. He too was so engrossed with his thoughts that he did notice the woman sitting on the bench, although he noticed the dog wagging its tail beside her.

Little Huge decided to do something to ease his guilt, he went to the Park Office and ask for the Manager. They discussed for about an hour until finally the manager agreed.

“Little Hugh, the Park will become even more beautiful next spring. Thank you for coming and giving us your suggestions,” said the Manager.

“I just want to do my part, sir.”

“Tomorrow, I will start the campaign to protect the butterflies, and to create posters with their lifecycle on it. This will definitely educate people and prevent the larvae from being interrupted …

They were interrupted by the piercing wail of an ambulance. “weeeeeooo weeeeeooo weeeeeooo”

“”A woman is giving birth at the park, Sir,” one of the staff said.

Little Huge ran outside the office, just as the ambulance ran past him on its way outside through the Main Gate.

As he went towards the west entrance of the park, he saw the two butterflies fluttering around with the rest of the swarm.

He smiled.

THE END

Then she looked coyly at those beautiful eyes and murmured softly, “Like, are you like ready to go like to heaven?”

“Isn’t this story for the birds and the bees?”

“Nah, like it is for like the flowers and the bees.”

“Whaaaaaaat?”

THE END

If we are afraid to go through pain, we do not deserve to be beautiful, as the butterfly flutters its beautiful wings only after going through a painful metamorphosis.

Danny Ninal from “The Ramblings of the Mind”

Check out the story of Bob, who was searching for his roots and found them in the most unexpected places. Get your copy of I DIED THEREFORE I AM A Short Story

I DIED THEREFORE I AM A Story about Identity and Roots

DANNY NINAL

All Rights Reserved 2014 Danny Ninal