The Other People

As I was sitting out on the deck of our boat tonight I was listening to the river creatures. I could hear the beaver relentlessly gnawing at a tree: tic-tic-tic-tic-tic. Tic-tic-tic-tic-tic. An inexhaustible worker, that guy is, always busy at night. And then the loud splash when he dived. That made me think of all these creatures living here by the river, and it made me feel small and insignificant, just another creature among the others. What is it that makes us humans think we’re the center of the universe, what is it that makes us think we’re the most intelligent? How presumptuous. Maybe beavers think too, and maybe they think they are the center of the universe. Maybe they think we are those insignificant obnoxious strange creatures. Which makes reminds me of another popular belief in Tunisia, the one of “The Other People”. Seriously. They are there. We can’t see them, we poor limited humans, but they are out there. Cats can see them, that’s why cats seem sometimes to be following something with their eyes, or suddenly spring forward at the pursuit of an invisible chimera. Some people can see them. Folks who know of similar traditional beliefs welcome to comment. There may be a common ground, something of that “collective inconscient” where all these stories originate