A Fox is a Beautiful Little Thing

She needed to look ugly to me, so I gave her that disaffected stare that would cause her to grieve within for part of the day, even as she didn’t see me, she was happy before me, before that open air encounter when I, passing by glanced in her direction with known disaffection, the moment wrecked her day as she mopped up my, “my world doesn’t need people like you in it” mode, not by seeing me, but as women see, by feeling; a quality that men can not muster because they are so used to physical observation that they have never developed their sixth sense to detect and feel without those scan-view-energy bothersome and intrusive eyes.

Many moments like that, have come my way, I have existed them, and created them, moments when you make someone feel terribly uncomfortable simply because one feels insecure oneself, or because one needs to reaffirm an independence from the ugly world, and along comes this fragile soul and they get the eye bullet that will satisfy one’s insecurities and diminish the quotient for global cruelty.

I manage a company for a living. While people think that being president of a company is an easy doing, I happen to not always want to come to work. Sure, plenty of people are there to pad my ego, but they have to do it, because they feel they have to and because when you get abused as much as a president of a company gets abused, you have to have your ego padded even if it is fake padding. Anyway, at work, sometimes, I hunt someone down, just like the British Gentlemen took huge pleasure while on Safari or in fox hunting days. Well, maybe not on Safari, safari is when you hunt down someone bigger than you, someone like Goliath when he got done in by David, or when you kill a tiger when he is just pouncing on you, or when you get a crocodile off your back, or manage to only lose one leg to your attacking shark; no, I don’t mean like that, it’s more like fox hunting. Like a president, the fox hunter is all dressed up and nice and clean, there are the ferocious dogs, all full of papers proving that they are bred for success like their masters, all alert, all blood trained to find the Fox, and they have those able and more papered and worthy horses, able to leap, able to dodge, able to out corner a corner, and between the race horses, the sanguinary fox-smelling hounds, and the gentleman sportsman fitted with a high powered rifle: it is only the Fox that is sly and cunning!

Much like that it is at work. For me, the president, I am like the fox, everyone compliments me on how sly I am, how cunning and able and fast and so forth… while, as for the hunt, there are the tailors that make the tight pants, the black coats, the cute velvet hats, the gloves, the guys that groom the horses, the guys that train them, the guys that feed them, the guys that do the very same thing for the blood hounds, and the gentleman that must have big houses, mansions and fireplaces, and brandy and cognac and whiskey, to smooth over the details of the hunt with friends; like with the fox, an entire industry depends on me, and like the fox I am but a miniscule part of the enterprise that I manage. Fact is, three months can go into the preparation for a nice hunt, the guests, the tea, and all the horn charade before and during and after the hunt, involved people and consumed time and money, but the fox only comes out at the peak of the game, when you need a smashing climax. Right there and then the fox is called in to act out the maddening tradition: Fox you must come out, and we must decide one of two things, you either get caught and die, or you get away, we’ve got all these stables and ranch-trained animals, and hands, and all these sophisticates, and all this ammo, and now in order to complete the ritual we just need to induce a chase. We need that the chase be long and arduous so we can prove we are more intelligent than a cunning fox; sheer virtuosity will be the victor. Oh we may lose a dog or two, a horse might fall and break a leg, might have to be shot to save him the pain, another rider might too fall and cost him a concussion, but Fox, may one amongst us many be able at last to trap you, and kill you and throw your dead body to the blood hounds. This all makes for a good afternoon.

Same for me at work, most of the time I don’t matter, things move from design, development into production to client without much ado about me; and then when something goes fatally wrong, after others have done more to make it even more wrong, then they call me in to fix it, and it hangs in the balance of my judgment, of my nature to fix it, else everything will fail completely; the entire system will come to a halt. I am only called in when everything will fail, and that is when they need me to fix it, and if I fix it then myriad things that happen without me will continue to happen, or if I fail, then myriad things and myriad more things will fall apart and so I am wholly responsible if everyone has a good time doing their job, or if I they suck at it, or if they fail at doing it. Always, the one thing that is clear to me, is that I will only have a day, or less than day to make all the decisions that make or break the company; and it is my responsibility to make sure that no one notices that what they do is work, it is supposed to be fun and easy, just like the fox makes it look like he is a cunning animal, able to avoid the hunters indefinitely; so, too, I must make our employees feel that they are playing games while they are being productive. The fox hunt is to train men to hunt, the fox hunt is to determine the most able hunter, but the fox hunt is also to determine if we can work as a community: there is the blacksmith, there is the rifle expert, the crying hounds, there is the saddle maker, there are the cooks for the party, the maids for the house, the big city waiting for news of the fox hunt. The list grows, the only thing not clearly involved and stays the same is the pivoting point, the fox.

One day a fox wakes up; it’s like any other, expecting to visit the hen house to hunt per say chickens; this is the prey that the fox is genetically trained to hunt and kill, a chicken or small rodents, a dog even but a dog is probably more than the fox wants to hunt, especially because they are cousins, so the fox prefers chicken. A surprising diet for an animal that is suppose to be so cunning, a chicken is the dirtiest and clumsiest and blindest and most aesthetically handicapped animal ever produced by nature; and this is the food the fox, a very aesthetically, mentally sharp, and agile animal, eats! And this fox, this very chicken hunter fox, gets an entire army made up of humans, dogs and horses to one day rise up wholly against him.

To be a fox you must be able to subconsciously generate an army, to have them prepare for battle over many intense days. They must muster strategy and they must first and foremost be able to feed and finance an army. And when you are a fox, you are aware, silently aware that the preparations are taking effect, that the success of the whole event will depend on you, and that you had nothing to do with it, say one little tiny thing, quiet inspiration. A fox is a beautiful little thing.

RC