Overture
“Do you see it? Do you see it yet?
Do you see what I’m saying
And how I’m saying it?”
Prelude
There is a place where it falls into place, where the tumblers tumble and the mysteries unlock, and all is plain to see.
Come with me now, take my hand, and we’ll walk this road going that way. I fear we may never find the place, but as long as I let the fear guide me, I know we won’t.
And so we walk through the fear with almost nothing but faith to keep one foot moving ahead of the other, and we walk until we’re weary and then an hour more until we can hardly stand, and then we’ll walk an hour more until we must sit, and we’ll think about crawling the rest of the way, but rest is what we will need and rest we will have.
Maybe, mayhap, perhaps at that moment we will look about and see that it has all fallen into place and the mysteries have indeed unlocked and we shall see all plainly, and we will understand at last that which we do not understand now.
But first we must take that first step, first we must walk together, first we must keep going until we think we can’t take another step and then an hour more.
Are you ready? Neither am I, but this appears to be the time, and so ready or not (as they have said since time began), here we go.
Journey
First on the way is a row of ducks, and the first thing we notice is the ducks are indeed in a row, without our intervention. The ducks have found their own way, and we were unnecessary this time.
Second, a figurine of a dinosaur, a movie monster who ravaged a city for no other reason than monsters don’t like cities, and it could be they know something we overlooked.
Now a snowman in sunglasses wearing a sly smile, a scarf, and a top hat singing an ancient song, if by ancient we mean very old, and how old is very old anyway?
Now a wood carving of a lion, and a wood carving of an antelope, and smiling-cow salt shakers, and at once I see we are knifing through knickknacks, and what to my wondering eyes should appear than a moose in a fedora on the top shelf?
The moose’s imperative
“Listen, you,” I hear a hollow voice say in my ear — or was it spoken from that top shelf and only seemed very near? “I have watched from this perch as you lurch through your rhymes, times after times until limes secrete juices and kiwis slide down sluices and the rhymes become crimes.
“Enough,” screams the moose, “enough and enough! Here in this august first company of clowns I declare nothing! I have nothing to declare and neither does this foolish band of declaimers. And so adieu to this ado.”
And so, with a flourish, he stops talking, nestles the fedora on his noggin, and resumes his quiet watch, as if daring me to stop walking and consider all I had seen.
But I know I dare not stop, because somewhere beyond these four walls is a danger of some sort, and only if we stop can it catch us. At least, that is what they seemed to be telling us when we started along the road.
“Don’t look back,” I heard an old man say. “You never know what’s about to catch up to you.”
Whether it made sense or whether it didn’t, we were bound to move on — bound and determined, even when we sensed it would be easier if we were unbound. And boundless possibilities rose from the horizon just then, fueling our ardor and giving us another round of hope for a better tomorrow around the next bend.
“Keep going and going,” someone or something whispered, then shouted. “Keep going and going! The journey has just begun, and here we now go.”
