I heard that children can’t tell time anymore, not unless they see a digital number staring them in the face. The face of an analog watch is too complex to decipher, the unfriendly hands moving in a perpetually circular motion. But isn’t time more circular than linear? We always end up where we started, little hands on the clock waiting for a new minute, hour, day, time as the world continues to grow.
Elephants once ruled the world, and it was a gentle world under their rule. The earth bloomed with life, flowers, fruit, trees, plenty of grasses to eat. The elephant queen was fair, treating each creature with respect and gentleness. But then the world perished along with hundreds of thousands of elephants. Now all we have left are stories. To this day elephants understand life and death better than we do.
Always dressed his best, the little boy walked his little dog. They strolled through fields of flowers and grass, and often showed up in the main strip of town still looking clean and sharp. All of the shopkeepers and residents loved the dog (who the boy had gotten as a gift from his grandmother, and subsequently named Gigi in her honor). There was nothing in the world the boy was more proud of than the fluffy coat of hair covering Gigi’s little body. He brushed her everyday, washed and conditioned her weekly, and looked upon her like she was made of gold.
While wandering the forest, we found a mystical pair of pants. It seemed like they belonged to a creature that had hands for feet, and we laughed at this image in our heads. “Feet are made for getting places, not hands,” someone said. “At least these pants are stylish. I would totally wear them if I had hands where my feet go,” someone else added. Inside the back pockets we found a collection of pressed leaves and endless red string. The creature became more and more strange in our imaginations.
A pretty girl is not always whole on her own.
The dog dreamed of swimming to France, but she knew it would take a lot of help. She wrote letters to family and friends about her desire. She wrote about the waves and how they would carry her to the land of very strong cheese. Some laughed and scoffed, but others sent words of encouragement and money. She started to train and map out her trip. And for months she had dreams about breathing under water while eating brie and pear baguette sandwiches.
