he lives in SOPOPOPAPOPIOPOLIS, the city of lost things, old dreams, something like the island of misfit toys, only for grownups who have forgotten the simple pleasures in pursuit of more complex ones…. as if they are different.
it’s a sophist’s trap, these ‘adult’ things. ever think about it? oh, we’re far too grown up to enjoy a breeze or the feeling of the sun on our skin, or the crisp, sweet smell of clean sheets at night. too busy thinking of the bills or the promotion or all the things we’re supposed to do and can’t to even notice them.
he lives in my country, actually. but it’s a dimensional thing. phasing in and out according to which perspective is being used – mine, his, yours, or theirs. SOPOPOPAPOPIOPOLIS is everywhere, and nowhere at all. we sleep in its lush fields at night, drowsily nuzzle its shoreline every morning, only to race into the riptides upon ‘waking’.
i’ve met him there, on occasion, when we’re both too tired of pretending what’s real. we sit by the river and whisper to one another. sometimes we pitch pebbles. sometimes we sit back to back and weep, our gazes jetting into the distance and hoping to find the mobius-ness, meet face to face in spite of ourselves.
it never happens, of course. we’re not wishing hard enough, i suppose. or maybe we are, after all, we keep meeting there.
the funny and odd and sad part is, i’ve been living in SOPOPOPAPOPIOPOLIS all along and most times, there in the cross-currents and swells, he swears it doesn’t exist, swears i’m insane, swears it’s all ill intent and poison.
i have to remind myself the knives he wields aren’t any more real than the things he thinks he sees. it would be easier to believe were i not bleeding. of course, i’d not be bleeding if i’d stay out of reach.
hard to do. but it makes it easier to remember he’s a figment of my imagination; a lost boy-man upon a make believe island.
if only i could remember that it’s supposed to be make believe.