Are You Listening?

☉︎ in 4° Aries : ☽︎ in 16° Leo : Anno Vvii

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

To my Unknown Friend: Greeting and health.

Allow me to tell you a story.

One morning, a little boy left home and found his way to a park. At the park, he met a little girl on the swings. She was a pretty little girl, but she looked sad.

“Why do you look so sad,” he asked her?

She looked up at him, with her bright but sad eyes and said, “I’ve been here all night with another little boy who just left me. I have no one else to swing with me anymore.”

“I’ll swing with you,” the little boy said excitedly. It had been a really long time since he had played with a girl in a park like this. When he looked around, he saw all manner of things on which to play. There was a slide and monkey bars. There was a horse on a spring. There was even a merry-go-round and a seesaw both of them could go up and down and up and down. There was so much to do together.

The little girl clapped her hands, jumped up, and hugged him. She sat back down in the nearest swing to him and he began to push her as she went back and forth in the swing. Higher and higher she went.

All day they played in the park in the different areas together. They laughed together and chased each other around. They never once thought about the time at all. Occasionally, other children would run through the park and join them for a moment and then run off to their homes. Once, as the little girl was coming down the slide, she reached the bottom where he was standing waiting for her, and he suddenly kissed her on the cheek. He blushed, she blushed, they paused, and then they both ran for the monkey bars.

About noon, the little boy said, “I should go home now.”

The little girl said, “Why? You just got here. And I like playing with you. Stay here. Play with me more.” She threw her arms around him. “You said that you would push me on the swings. See? I’m on the swing now. Push me more!”

So the little boy pushed her on the swing until she laughed and laughed and swung so high he thought she might fly up into the sky.

Later in the afternoon, another child showed up in the park and they all had great fun. The little girl liked to play with him as well. They watched the clouds go by and named them by different animals.

Eventually, the little boy said again, “I should go home now.”

So the little boy pushed her on the swing again just like before until she laughed and laughed and swung so high he thought she might fly up into the sky.

As evening grew close, the little boy grew restless and distracted. But they continued to play and run and laugh. As during the day, other children would run through the park to join them here and there, but stay for varying lengths of time only to run off home when they were finished playing. The little boy watched them go off to their homes and wondered if the lights would be shining through the windows of his home.

Darkness approached and the little boy started to leave the park.

“Where are you going,” the little girl asked him?

“I’m going home,” he replied. “I’ve had a lot of fun today with you, but it’s time for me to go home.”

“But you said that you would push me on the swing.”

“And I did push you on the swing, but I did not say that I would push you on the swing forever.”

“It’s not fair,” the little girl cried. “We’ve been here all day. Why can’t you just stay here?”

“Because it’s time for me to go home now. I needed to go home earlier, but I stayed longer because I like to play in the park too. We had our fun, but now it’s time for me to go home.”

The little girl scowled at him. He felt dreadfully awful, but the sun was setting low on the horizon even more quickly now and he needed to hurry home. Someone would be worried about him. Wouldn’t they?

“I said stay!” The little girl screamed at him furiously. “You can’t do this to me! You’re a jerk!”

The little boy stopped. Motionless, he just stood there for a moment before turning around to face the little girl. His eyes blank of emotion. That look stopped her in the middle of the word that was about to start her next tirade toward him. It wasn’t fear that caught her attention. It was curiosity. She was captured by his curiosity, a curiosity focused on her outrage at his ability to walk away without the slightest feeling of anything at all.

He moved closer to the little girl. She didn’t step away.

As he walked through the backdoor of home, the jaundiced light struck him in the face and left the impression that he had been gone too long today and missed dinner. There was no one around, yet the sensation that he was missed still held him close and it was a comfort as the little boy made his way up the stairs. He headed into his room on the right side of the hallway.

The little boy shut his door and crossed the dark room to the desk that was illuminated only by the light streaming through the window under which it seemed to protrude from the wall.

He turned on the lamp and emptied his pockets: a leaf, some blades of grass, a small neon rubber ball, pocket lint, a dead ladybug, a paperclip, a matched set of bloody ears.

“It’s not like she was listening anyway,” he thought to himself as he turned away from the desk and toward the inviting bed on the opposite wall.