The Oldest Joke

      I was born yesterday. My child will be born to night. The words that I use to transcribe my thoughts are being born into being by my fingers on an archaic console. The does not exist until I say, “The!”  Love will not be an emotion until I have my mate, and she does not arrive for hours. Hate will not appear until I have a rival, and yet I am able to theorize these emotions. The concept of any emotion but contentment for existence is merely postulation without source data. I wonder what I will eat for lunch. I turn to the sky, and I say, “Hello, Sky! You are looking terribly vermillion in this squalor of green around me, though I know you to be the only true azure. You, Sky, are the azure that my child’s eyes will be an emulation of. You are the azure that my morning glories fail to replicate. Why should a man cultivate plants when I can look upon your lovely blueness, and eat you as well?”

      I reach up and scoop a piece of Sky away, and I put its beauty to my lips. “You are delicious, Sky! Your glory is beyond glories; your worth is as the worth that cannot be counted for I have not invented a system of coinage! Your flavor is the flavor that any meal that I should have in the mud will be a shadow of. You bear within you all good flavors, and several of the bad ones as well so that you might be balanced, oh Sky! I have grown apples, and I have eaten tomatoes, and the potatoes in my cupboard were done boiling ten minutes ago, but I love none of them as I love you, Sky!”
      The sky hangs just within reach of me with a contented look to it. I scoop away a larger handful and eat more of the sky, and another larger yet after that, and eat more. Then I look up at the sky and shout, “I should be leaving you now, but you know that I believe in you now as well. Take heart, for I shall return to gaze upon your loveliness and eat your colorful bounty, and you will be the most beautiful thing above any other as long as I gaze at you, and as long as I do not.”
      The sky is indifferent as I turn away and walk west. The trees are still getting taller and the shrubs more full, and the animals are all the same, but I will change that eventually. I will, or the sky will. A bird floats towards me and buzzes with the same voice that the bear and the rabbit buzz. It buzzes and gurgles, and bobs up and down without any reason for me to differentiate it except for the large nickname that dangles from its back, and it can barely support. It is a nametag that readsRobin, a kind of bird, and I find that it is a satisfactory descriptor, though eventually I may have to invent an older language and use it to rename the animals so that I and my children may appear more intelligent than other of my children when they and I discuss the names of things.
      The bird buzzes away with its gurgling, warbling bobble, and I shake my hand with the branch of an American Sycamore, a tree as I pass it, and one of its leaves comes away in my hand. I take the leaf to a wide open place with a hill behind it, and I reach out and pick up a part of the hill to make some walls. Then I take the leaf and bury it, and when I dig it up again after fifty two seconds I find many pieces of oiled shingles. I throw them over my walls, and go inside of my home. Inside I see a bed and a table, each made of wood, the bed with a bag of straw for a pallet. I reach under the table and take out my spork and knife, and then I reach into a box that I hauled to this location a few minutes ago. The box is all made of metal and reads Kelvinator, an ice box that runs on the sun. I reach inside of it and take out an empty bowl, then I put the bowl up high above my head, and some of the sky drifts by and pours down the lip of my bowl. I take my bowl back inside and scoop the sky into my mouth with my spork, and it tastes as it did before. “Now it is time I had me a wife, for I recall reading in something that I must have written, though an odd imperative was written on it about wagging a voulge around, right after the declaration that “I am Will,” it read not to look so sad, but to “get thee a wife, Don Pedro.” I may not be named Peter, but I will get me a wife.
      I wander away from my home with my utensils still in my hands, and I walk until I come upon my road. It is wide and long and made of black, and it is covered in dust, but it smells like oil, and in the middle are two lines of yellow paint. I turn to the right and look up at the sky. I walk towards the sun and don’t stop until I see the village on the horizon. Then I keep on walking because that is where I am going, I simply like to stop at the top of that particular hill to look at the skyline of so many buildings. Many of them are falling over, and some did long before my time, but they’re all much taller than me, and poke at the sky I should think. In the village there is a place with many other people, but I just want one of them. I want the woman named Gold who is frozen there in the ice and water and strange things under thick glass. I pick up a hammer that is leaning against a wall of glass panels that reads DR, and I keep on walking towards the frozen mausoleum. When I get there I smash the door to a mound of broken splinters with my hammer, because I’ve tried the lock before and it’s closed. I walk over to Gold’s bed, enclosure, and I start talking to her, and to the old machines that are keeping her alive without letting her get older. The screen blinks at me and says in a buzzing, droning voice, “What do you want, Rain?”
      “I’ve come for, Gold. I have the sky to look upon, and a home to sleep inside of, but I want to have a child by tomorrow morning. Give me Gold so I can go.”
      “Alright, alright. Keep your nudity in check, sir. I’ll awaken Miss Gold for you.”
      “Thank you.”
      The foggy air inside of her glass tube begins to ripple and flow, and then I see Gold rolling around on her sides inside as if she’s quite suddenly restless, then the glass top rises and I reach inside and pick her up. “Good morning, Gold.”
      “Hello, Rain.” She says with a voice that in my ears is the only voice.
      “I’m taking you home today, Gold.”
      “That’s good, Rain. Where is home?”
      “It is on a hill, surrounded by windy, green grass and trees that will be filled with green leaves in thirty days. It is far from the roads that smell like tar, but not far from here. No, no not far.”
      “Alright, Rain, let’s go home. However, I ask that you carry me. My legs are stiff, and the sinews are weak.”
      “I would carry you until the sun was not, Gold.”
      “Thank you, Rain, though I do hope that I will walk again some day.”
      “You will.”
      I carry her away from the mausoleum with the lippy machines. I have left the hammer there. I walk, and she talks to me about how the village is. I know all of what she is saying before she says it, but I love her more for each syllable that she mouths. The ground is all stone, but I don’t mind because my feet are strong, and nothing can cut them. We walk until I am back on my hill, and when we are there we look down at the village again. Now the sun is above us, and it no longer shines behind the buildings, but they are still beautiful, and the sun shines again from each of them. “Come with me, darling Gold.” I say, “There is food, and there is a right bed where we are going.”
      “Alright, Rain. That sounds lovely.” She coos in my arms.
      The road does not feel so long when I walk with her in my arms, nor does the hill seem so high. I open the door to my home with my toes, and I go and put gold onto a large, soft, enveloping couch near my table and sink; I then sit down beside her and grip her to me. “Wait…  Rain… Mm, Rain! Ow. Should you not stow those pieces of metal so that they don’t stick me?”
      “Certainly, my love. What a capital idea.” I drop my spork and knife from my pockets into the sink and pour water on them. I scrub them with a rough, yellow cloth, and place them in a sieve cup on the corner of the rack next to the sink. Now I return to the couch, and my darling Gold.
      “Darling… Oh! Rain… Wait. I am hungry, Love. Should you not prepare me a meal?”
      “Certainly, my love. What a decadent idea.” I take my bowl and the bowl that I made precisely for her, outside and greet the sky again.
      “Good afternoon, Sky! My lady love has been returned to me. She is my darling Gold, and she is going to produce a son for me. However, Sky, I’m afraid that Gold is hungry, and so I ask to take a bit more of you to feed her, and I would like to take a bit more for myself so that I can eat beside her and not leave her eating uncomfortably alone.” I pause. “Alright.”
      I reach up with the bowls and scoop more of the sky away. “My! What brilliant stars there are…?”
      “RAIN!”
      “Y-yes, darling…?”
      “Is the food coming, love?”
      “O-of course, love.”
      “Thank you, Rain. It’s alright.”
      “What is?”
      “What?”
      “What is alright?”
      “The fact that you’ve decided to keep me waiting so that you can look at your friend, the Sky.”
      “I’m not intentionally keeping you-“
      “No, no. It’s alright that you like to spend time with the Sky more than you like to spend time with me.”
      “Now, Gold, that is entirely unfair. I go to talk to the sky to put food on your table. I expect gratitude, not acceptance… Well I expect acceptance, I accept acceptance, as well.”
      “Alright, Rain. Whatever you say. Just come inside so we can eat now, love.”
      “Yes, love.”
      I wander back to the door and open it. She is still lying on the couch, though I cannot quite recall whether she was facing this direction, or the other before. I would be surprised for her to find the strength to turn herself, or the cause to do so. I shrug.
      “Here it is, darling Gold.”
      “Ohhh, goody.”
      I hand her, her perfect bowl into her perfect hand, and offer her the other spork.
      “Honey?”
      “Yes, love?”
      “What is that?”
      “It’s a spork. You use it to eat with. See look here-“
      “No, no. I know what it’s used for. Why do you, why do I, have to use it?”
      “Well, you see, it’s a more efficient utensil than the old ones, the spoon and the fork, because it is capable of each of their tasks without having to change what I am carrying in my hand.”
      “I know dear, but it’s just, a bit goofy. A bit… uncivilized.”
      “Uncivilized? I am the first man! I have invented civilization. You don’t get to tell me what is and is not uncivilized!”
      “Darling, don’t shout. That’s terribly uncivil.”
      “Criticizing your savior in his own home is what is uncivil.”
      “Darling I won’t be bearing any children ever if you continue to harass me.”
      I pause at this.
      “Do you want that? Do you want no children at all? Do you want to be so famous that you are both first and last man?”
      “No, darling Gold. I want a son. I’m sorry. I meant no disrespect. I’ll make you every variety of fork and spoon that you can imagine tomorrow morning. For now, will a spork suffice?”
      “Yes, dear, it most certainly will.”
      “Good… How gracious…”
      We eat the sky and then I put our dishes in the sink and scrub them with my rough, yellow cloth. Then I sit down beside her again and hold her to me once more.
      “Wait, uh, darling. Oh! Wait, wait, Rain!!”
      “Yes, Gold?”
      “I am,” She yawned, “Terribly drowsy after our meal. Perhaps we could merely take a nap tonight, and then tomorrow I might bear you a child?”
      “My Gold… Certainly. What a slothful idea.”
      She smiles at me as if she did not understand what I just said to her, but that it does not matter, and yea though I have walked on roads of black tar, the first woman is a difficult nut to crack.