The Tent

“Step this way. For just a mere pittance, you will experience the mystery of the Orient, the secrets of the Universe, the truth about…” 

A small car of figures dressed in outlandish clothing, their faces emboldened with accentuated expressions, sped past to the sounds of bulbus horns and laughter. I didn’t hear the prophetic end to his proclamation about discovering anything, and everything, you’d ever considered experiencing. I had to insert words and meaning suitable for the occasion.

It didn’t matter. I didn’t have a pittance, whatever that might be. The introduction to the fantasies of futures unimagined, was not new to me. I have found escape in many of the books and magazines dedicated to the exploitation of the imaginations of the unimaginative, for financial gain I suppose. If your imagination has yet to develop, or has for one of so many reasons been unable to be expressed, the examinations of alternative realms might be interesting, even educational.

My imagination wavers at times, but for the most part answers when I call. Not to say I can’t use a charge now and again to keep the neurons colliding with the overabundance of reality. I believe that the mind has a special place for things that don’t fit elsewhere. It is a place where we can rearrange the unarrangeable to fit our purpose and needs. It hurts no one, costs nothing more than a wish, and has only the limits one imposes upon it. Kind of like living the dream.

I watched them line up at the ticket booth. A woman dressed like a man, acting like a child, was pulling tickets from a roll dispenser in exchange from what I assumed, were pittance. The man proclaiming enlightenment, even for those whose imagination was on holiday or lost, claimed one could find subliminal expansion by simply entering the tent, and experiencing the magic within.

Having only experienced a tent of my own, I was curious, although I doubted that there really was anything new under the canvas canopy. And besides, not having a pittance worth of admission, I need seek alternative means of advancement, a distraction. It is only a way of averting detection by the capitalistically infused. Looking for, and finding, an alternative to alternatives, being visibly invisible, by becoming one with the universe; something as simple as lifting the tents edge and slithering into its imagination the next time the clown car arrived.

What could be witnessed, that would titillate the imagination to invent something, anything, unimaginable? 

The tent was completely empty. I stood for the longest time thinking I had fallen through a wormhole of some kind and had ended up in the recesses of space yet to be explored. And yet, the canvas felt real, the dirt floor covered with an assortment of popsicle sticks, straws, cotton candy cones, and popped corn covered with an illusion of butter, were strewn about. It all seemed real, as well as possible, had it not been for the trapeze artist hollering something about, “Not supposed to be here,” from above me, while hanging from a stick by bent knees.

I have always found it difficult to take someone fifty feet above me, swinging upside down from a bar suspended on ropes, seriously. What was she going to do, jump? There was no net, nor any means of salvation should she succumb to gravity and return to the dust we are all famous for.

Just then as the explosions of unmanageable neurons dispelled my sense of practicality, as I watched her dismount, and flutter to the floor of the tent like a one-winged butterfly. She landed like a moonbeam on a blade of grass, and then stood like super woman, hands on hips, her face obligatorily masked, as if going to, or returning from, a costume party. “You aren’t supposed to be here.” 

Again the words, like evangelical rantings from a distant radio, filling the space with an air of surrealism, that I was surprisingly accepting of. I am not frightened by things I can’t understand, as I realized on more than one occasion, that understanding and God are one and the same, and I’m not prepared for the responsibility of a universe other than my own.

I decided to play along, see where this was going. I enjoy surprises of my own making. “Why? And who might you be, if may be so suspicious?” I felt I need say something.

She didn’t seem detoured by my pessimism regarding her authority, and pressed on. “May I see your ticket, please?”

I wasn’t expecting her directness, and had not prepared for the ramifications of having been found to be a trespasser, so I lied. It was the first lie, or rather interpretation of truth, I had expressed in quite some time, so was curious as to its effect.

The pittance phenomena did little to sway her inquisitive look and smile. She took it all in stride, as if she was used to the diverse reactions of those being cornered by their own insecurity, when it came to the evolution of truth. 

“I am Leopold” I proclaimed, as if I were the Lion King, but had taken the day to visit unexplored realms of a third kind.

She smiled, this time a peculiar smile that relayed neither curiosity or indifference, and held out her hand. “That will be a pittance, if you please,” curtsying.

I couldn’t remember if a pittance was considered legal currency, or if it was an abstract term used to confirm the uncertainty of a neurons disposition, when put to an extreme test. So, I distorted the truth once again to obtain the optimum leverage possible under the circumstances. “Look, there!” I yelled, pointing to the far tent wall, hoping for a distraction that would allow me to slip from the tent, back into the reality of my universe. 

She apparently had been to that play before, because she both failed to be directionalized, and her eyes remained fixed on mine. Then she said something I will never forget, “You came with nothing, you leave with nothing. Why is that so difficult for you realists to understand. It is not quantum genealogy.”

And then she was gone. The tent was gone and the rusted skeleton of a tilt-a-whorl stood arrogantly before the afternoon sky. I could feel the cobwebs of sleep disappearing a thread at a time, as she shook me from my other universe and said, “School!” 

At a certain age everything seems like a death sentence, complete with the last meal.  Your spirit being repossessed for nonpayment, and possibly, all because of a delinquent homework assignment.

And then the words lit up on my celestial bill board, “You came with nothing, and you leave with nothing.”

As the last strand of filament disappeared, and I found my pants, I realized no truer statement had ever been uttered. Now, I could only hope Mr. Hemp, my English teacher, could see past his first inclination, and observe the universality of the statement I would repeat for his benefit, and react appropriately.

And if not? There is always the tent.