Chatterbox: In This Month's Issue

Only one or two people will see this, but I want my thoughts to be out there. Think of my mind as one of those touch tanks you see in huge aquariums, the ones small children paw through all day until their small, soft hands turn into cold blue raisins. Open to you. 

The Chatterbox is a beautiful world.

It has a lovely coastline, with clear dark blue water rolling in great swells. You can see the sails of huge ships far out, and smaller boats closer to the shore. The shells in the beach are marvelous colors, and each one contains a story that someone is too shy to share. Those shells are forever sealed, until the right moment. The moment when some finds their bravery, tucked away where no one would think to look. In the pocket of an old pair of jeans, or high up in a dusty jar sitting on an even dustier shelf in a house that not a soul has lived in for many years. 

It has giant forests tucked away in seemingly bottomless valleys, with great rumbling rivers coursing through the trees in their rocky beds. There are animals in the green branches, and in caves, and in the streams. The animals live everywhere. Under the ground beneath your feet, in the trunks of trees, under rocks and boulders, and in the very air on which you rely for life. These forests stretch high into the mountains, and across the rolling hills of land that no human has set foot on for many ages. These forests are older than time itself, if you can imagine that. 

This Chatterbox has huge bustling metropolises that spread out as far as the eye can see. They have busy squares filled with vendors calling out, people sitting on fountains and tossing their food to birds who peck it up without a glance at the humans. There are alleys in which you can hear the yowles and hisses of cat fights, and the occasional crash of boxes tumbling down. In the strangely beautiful glass buildings that stretch to the sky, people sleep. They eat. They read. They watch television. They have lives. Lives that no one will no about unless they come down to the streets with the lesser people and share their minds, just like I am doing with you. On street corners before you cross, the sweet sound of music reaches your ears. Glancing back over your shoulder, you see a beautiful person playing music or singing just because they love the world.  A guitar case might be open on the ground in front of them, waiting for a dollar or two to help to musician get by in this cold world. It could be a hat that keeps their head warm in the winter, or there may be nothing there at all. 

The Chatterbox is a beautiful world.

But.

But, but, but, but. 

There is another world out there. The honest to goodness, tangible, audible, real, if you like that word, world. 

I will leave you now to ponder this. Ponder my meaning. Do you think there is one, behind these words? Do you know who I am to say them? Just think.