The metaphorical rabbit Tuesday December 11, 2007, 2 comments

In a field lived a metaphorical rabbit. Once the rabbit had been white, but years of living in the shadow of the great city had turned him a dark brownish grey. Though he was no longer white, he believed he was mostly a happy rabbit.

Each morning the rabbit would poke his head up out of his rabbit-hole and look around, each morning he saw the same thing. The grey, sooty grass that surrounded his home stretched as far up the knoll as his rabbity eyes could see. At the edge of the world, just barely visible, was the big city.

The sky above the city was much darker than the sky over the rabbit’s little world. Dark chimneys pointed skyward like soldiers and belched black smoke into the sky. The rabbit had an idea that once upon a time the sky had been blue, not brown, but he could no longer tell if that had been a dream or not.

After looking around, the rabbit would go about his daily routine. Forage for food, with an eye skyward for birds of prey. He was industrious, and worked hard to find sustenance in the grey field. In his mind’s eye, he saw that food had been abundant once, and that this field had teemed with rabbits just like him. The other rabbits, whether from his memory or his dreams, told him he was crazy to think about things like that when there was food to be gathered, and his tummy agreed with them. But like the blue sky, he couldn’t remember if they were simply a dream. In any case, there were no other rabbits in the field now.

The rabbit worked hard to scratch a living out of the grey field. Every year there was less to eat, every year the chimneys at the edge of the world grew taller and the sky got darker. The rabbit grew thinner. But he still told himself he was mostly a happy rabbit.

Some day the food would run out until it too would be nothing more than a dream, but the metaphorical rabbit couldn’t grasp this eventuality. He had enough to feed himself at this moment. Yesterday was a dream. Today he believed he was a happy rabbit, and tomorrow was barely a glimmer in his mind’s eye.

At the end of the day, exhausted from the toils of life, the metaphorical rabbit would lay on his bed and stare up at the sky through the rabbit hole above him. In his mind’s eye he could see twinkling lights in the blackness, but he couldn’t remember if the lights were just a dream.


Comments

Ann Torrence Thursday December 13, 2007


Another pearl in the great sandbox of the Internet. Thank you.

Adrian Thursday December 13, 2007


You are far too good to me, Ann.

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