The darkness from his heart crept into the room, eliminating any joy that may have inhabited the empty apartment before he arrived. “I am oh-so-sad” he whimpered to himself. As he sat in his large, comfy, armchair, pondering the misery of his life, he suddenly felt a warm wind sweeping around him. “Oh no,” he thought to himself, “the window must have a crack and must be letting in a draft.” He got up to go to the window, to stare out into the lonely city full of strangers that was New York, and also to find the crack that was letting in the draft. But, when he went around the chair and dragged his glance up from his feet to look at the window, he saw a glittering shape sitting there on the sill of the open window. “Oh, alas, some random terrorist has decided to blow me up with a shiny bomb; woe is me,” he thought. He braced himself for the impact of the shrapnel that would no doubt explode from the crude explosive. Squeezing his eyes shut, he reflected on his disappointing life and all the hurt that said life had brought him. After about 30 seconds of uneventful silence, he sighed, disappointed once again. “And here I thought it was all going to be over,” he thought, “bummer.” Opening his eyes, he couldn’t help but be in awe of the shiny object, after all, who doesn’t love shiny things? Even people who have given up on life love shiny things. He dragged his sullen feet over to the sill and bent down so that he was eye level with the object. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be an old fashioned oil lamp, gold, with swirled engravings and script in a language that he couldn’t read, partly because the letters were unfamiliar and partly because there was dirt encrusting much of the lamp. Sighing, he stood up thinking “just because my life has evolved into a dirt-encrusted nothingness doesn’t mean that everything has to suffer the same fate.”
to be continued…
