Blugliness

Have you seen a big city? A city built with the open sky above your head, with roads below your feet, with great buildings, with stories that lead on to one another. A city so big, that in a moment you could live your entire life, yet you feel the road slipping from under your feet, the sky growing dark above your head; your moment turns away like a metronome.

There is a place in this city, a place separated from the rest, a place so unclean, that the gathering dusts refuse to obey the laws of selective nature and multiply shamelessly. People come here, for this is the market district, and they throng the shops, quarrel over prices, stare clueless through others, and leave with full bags. Our story begins in such a place.

If you take the second left from the clothing store, a flight of stairs will bring you directly to an ice-cream parlour, the name being inconsequential. Leaving the first two tables on the right, you will see a boy occupying the third. He is staring at the empty cup in his hands with an expression of suspended disgruntlement, a spoon tucked inside his mouth.

A sense of dissatisfaction is pervading him, slowly, from the bottom of his feet to the tips of his fingers. But he must not be mistaken for an atheist, for he believes Him to be most kind in granting every bit of his existence.

Yet, he cannot help but feel the desire to revert back to the time when his cup was full. For, incredulous as it seems, he is feeling that he should have talked to the ice-cream. He feels, indisputably, that that would have helped. He must not be confused for a madman either, as he has solid grounds to believe thus.

A story, he surmises, would have quite untangled the knot in his heart had he related it before falling prey to more immediate desires. A story of a man so beautiful, that when he sang the birds chirped above him, when he ran, wild flowers bloomed below his feet, as great willows moved to give him way, leading on to one another. This way he ran for years, growing almost as old as the roots of the willows, yet not in appearance, till he reached a lake.

A lake so still and serene, like a mirror, that he could not resist taking a look down at it. And even as he looked, a leaf fell from a distant bough on the surface, and ripples mutilated his face. Horrified, he looked away, and left forever, shedding a single tear, a flower that still blooms beside the lake.

Yet a simple conversation would have kept him from his misery, a tale perhaps, to relate to the misunderstood. For as he talked, the lake would have turned still, and his perfect form would have been revealed.