Once upon a time, there was a little boy. He had no name because he had many names. This little boy used to love to look out his bedroom window. He saw many things out there. But the thing he loved the most was the downpour, the pouring rain. He could sit in that window for hours just watching all of that glorious streaming. Poor little boy. His Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t let him go outside when it rained. They just didn’t understand him. Why? He would ask himself? All he wanted to do was frolic in the rain, dance in the rain, become one with it. So he just sat in his room looking out and at times his face was a mirror to the little streams running down his window.
He also loved to read. When he wasn’t looking out the window, he was looking into a book. It was his second favorite pass-time. The only real thing to the little boy which surpassed the many books he read were the raindrops which sadly were not allowed to fall upon his head except through certain circumstances. He made a vow to himself that when he grew up he would spend most of his time outdoors, especially sitting in the rain, and even more especially than that, sitting in the rain at night and peering into the light, watching how the rain became so magical to him. Yes, he made that vow and it gave him so much hope but alas at times, it almost filled him with despair since he was just a little boy and had such a long wait before he could come into his own. But still, he had his many books and someday all of that reading would make the mind of that little boy into such a brilliant mind. He had such a strong thirst for knowledge, a thirst which would never ever be assuaged. The more he would learn the more he would want to learn, to know. It was almost as though he had unconsciously adopted the battle cry of Socrates – “I know one thing – that I know nothing”. The power which his thirst for knowledge had over him was akin to the power of Niagara Falls. His brain itself would someday become like the Library at Alexandria – or at least appear as such to some.
He also promised himself because of watching old television shows and feeling the sheer romance of the hobo’s life and the passionate surging of the gypsy blood that flowed within him, that he too would ride the rails, he too would become the rebel by jumping onto a train, by refusing to pay for a ticket, like all the commoners did. He remembered that it was father who used that word all the time – commoner. He used the word with such distaste that it left a foul residue in his own mouth. He would never become a commoner.
Oh, the sheer exhilaration of it all. He would become an outsider, a maverick. His little boy’s heart and spirit would soar at these thoughts. He would even bath in the river. He would hang his hat on a tree instead of a rack. He would sleep all curled up by that river with nothing but the leaves for his blanket or he would spoon a wall or a tree. He would happily drink his hobo’s coffee, just as he saw in the television movies. He wouldn’t answer to the call of nature by the commoner’s methods – oh, no he would nurture the Earth and the ground on which he walked, carefully of course, in his own way and thus, the earth and himself would be as one.
Oh, this little boy – he had such glorious plans for himself and I wonder – did all his dreams and plans come true? I can only hope – when visualizing that little boy sitting in his room looking out the window or sitting on his bed reading sometimes by a flashlight under his covers in the middle of the night unable to tear his self away from this page or that page – is he now a happy little boy all grown up? Does he at least see his life as being half full or does he simply see the glass? But even seeing just that – the glass - can that too be good?
I hope so.