You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Easter egg agitator.
The street is narrow, surrounded by a canopy of trees. There is no sidewalk. There should be a sign that says No Pedestrians.
There is no warning and the woman finds herself in a precarious position.
The resident of this upscale community doesn’t normally walk to the super market on this narrow back road, but today, on this blistering blue sky afternoon, she has decided it is the correct choice.
Sidewalks? Who needs them?
Right of way? The cars will slide over for her, won’t they?
So this athletic, attractive young woman continues down the road with a determined stride.
She is carrying a pretty bag with pretty wrapping paper and ribbons for a birthday gift she will wrap.
Cars pull up to her, slowing down, staring, wondering.
“Isn’t that….”
“Is she ok?”
“What’s she doing in the road?”
The young woman stares at the drivers. She is agitated perturbed.
“Drive on,” she waves, wondering what everyone is staring at.
She tip toes down the narrow road, clinging to the edge of the asphalt which drops precipitously to the storm drain below.
The birds are chirping and spring is in full bloom. This road is beautiful and nothing bad can happen here.
As she walks under a horizon of branches, that form a chlorophyll cathedral above her, she notices glimmers of sunlight penetrating through the branches.
The warmth feels good, the light is soothing like a hypnotic wave of calm.
She likes the sun and she is enjoying the walk.
But there’s a constant buzz of cars, slowing, people rolling down windows and shouting. It begins to annoy her.
What do they want?
Why won’t they just drive on, she wonders, clutching her little bag of tissue paper and ribbons.
“Do you need a ride?” one man says coming to a complete stop in the middle of the road.
The young woman with the brown eyes and determined gaze looks at the motorist. The man looks familiar, but she cannot place him.
He seems to care, but the woman is not sure she can trust him, trust anyone. She knows she has to get home and rest.
She feels pain shooting through her limbs and she is not sure how much further she has to walk.
The man slowly drives on, as other cars manuever around her, into the middle of the lane.
The woman is growing fatigued and annoyed at the motorists who are swarming her spring walk like mosquitoes smelling sweat.
The road is narrow and bordered on both sides by forest.
The road ahead seems to grow more narrow. The drop off is more steep and dangerous. The traffic is steady and the end nowhere in sight.
The woman is confused, nervous, unsure why she is on the road.
Suddenly, there is an opening in the forest. The woman looks to her right and there is a small cut through, a path, that leads away from the congested annoying road.
She enters the path. Suddenly she is enveloped by beauty and serenity of a forest rarely seen.
She shuffles along the path, moving forward, not quite sure where it leads.
Behind her, she hears an occassional car zooming down the road she just left.
Ahead? It is quiet, the path surrounded by foliage and the occasional chip of birds.
But the woman is lost. The path winds and meanders and nothing seems familiar. One tree looks like the next tree. All the bushes look like the other bushes.
Should she move forward or go back?
Her mind is racing, nervous, unsure.
The woman is feeling more pain now. The walk is strenuous and she is using muscles she hasn’t used in a while.
The doctors told her she would be sore after the surgery, but she needed to fight through the pain.
“Walking is an excellent exercise,” they will say.
So walk she does. To the super market.
But now the walk back is presenting issues; potentially dangerous issues.
She is demure, petite, highly susceptible to narcotics.
Her pain pills say take as needed for pain.
She is so afraid of becoming addicted, so she has a care taker cut the dosage in half.
Her kitchen is filled with bowls of half cut medicine tablets.
“I don’t like the way they make me feel,” she will say.
The path she is walking is undulating ever so slightly. Up and then down, and a bend to the left.
When she walks to the store, she is pain free and feels strong. But somewhere along the way, the pain returns and the medication begins to take hold, affecting her mental processors.
Suddenly she finds herself on a path that leads through a forest near her home.
But where?
She nervously eyes a tree. It has a sinister look. The bark makes a face that appears evil, staring through her soul. The branches extend forward like two gigantic tarantula claws, prepared to strike.
She clutches the bag of ribbons and tissue papers closer to her bosom.
She is tired now. She is disoriented. She is struggling to push her feet forward.
“I just need to sleep,” the woman says to a bush that could care less.
Suddenly, she looks down and she sees it.
Purple and white and so large.
It’s an Easter Egg.
But how did it get here?
She doesn’t care. It is magic for her tired senses.
She hovers over the magenta colored orb. Like fresh oxygen blowing up the side of a water fall in a jungle gorge, she feels a replenishing energy.
The world around her is spinning like a mescaline filled kaleidoscope.
The woman’s senses are dull, but the purple calls to her.
She stares at the large purple egg, focuses on its soothing form.
She will later describe it as having a pattern across its center like a Charlie Brown sweater.
The woman stares at the magic oval, her Technicolor fried brain telling her to take the Easter Egg.
“It’s so big. What’s it doing here?” she mouths silently.
The tiny patient out for a walk, pain meds now surging through her pulsing veins, has a decision to make.
Teeter tottering like a dradel about to topple, the disoriented woman, possibly hallucinating, definitely carrying a bag full of ribbons, decides she cannot possibly lift this massive Easter Egg on her private sidewalk.
The woman inhales the rejuvenating air emanating from the egg. She waves good-bye to her Purple messiah and pushes forward.
The trees are green and their bark now seems to smile.
The path, still dark grey undulates less.
The sun is still pulsing through the foliage, blinking, tinking, flitting through the leaves gently swaying in the branches above.
The athletic woman with a low tolerance for pain meds is Goldilocks without her Bears. She is a Rapunzel letting her down in the middle of a forest she didn’t know existed.
With every step the woman writes another sentence in her own storybook. She is Alice falling through the looking-glass and landing on a purple Easter Egg where magic saves the soul.
She contemplates going back for the Easter egg. How can I carry it she muses to herself.
Is it real? It must be. I just talked to it.
It is a few days before Easter, she rationalizes.
But who would leave such a luscious lovely purple Egg in the middle of a forest for no one to see?
Her mind is playing tricks on her. The powerful pain medicine is winning the battle. Her senses are slowed, her reasoning altered.
The 1/2 a pill of whatever has taken over her body and corrupted spacial relevance and sound judgment.
The woman feels lost. She feels the forest compressing upon her. Does she see rainbows and unicorns floating through the trees?
The woman with the colorful bag of wrapping paper and ribbons only knows she is in pain, and she is tired and she is lost.
She presses forward.
She thinks about crying, but crying will only complicate matters. She knows she has to hold it together.
So she says to herself; there is a back of a house near the path. There is a front of the house there. Where there’s a front of a house there must be a road.
And that is her rationale.
There are backs of houses, so there must be fronts of houses, and where there are fronts of houses, there must be roads.
The young woman with the desultory plan pushes forward.
Backs of house, fronts of houses, roads, OH MY.
Somewhere the wood monkeys swirl, waiting to pluck her off the path and take her to the wicked witches castle.
She finds a road in front of one of the homes.
Her plan is solid like a leprechaun dancing on a pot of gold.
And suddenly, the fog lifts, the pain meds pull back the curtain.
There it is! Her street. Her house.
She pushes her key into the slot and enters her door.
She is safe. She is home.
She is exhausted and in pain.
She will sleep for 8 straight hours.
When she awakes, there is a text from her friend.
“Bill saw you on the road. He thought you were contemplating something very serious.”
The walk? Was it a dream. The road, the cars, the big purple Easter egg?
Was it all real?
She finds the bag of wrapping paper on her kitchen counter.
For the young woman, now recovered, now strong of heart and mind, the answer is unclear.
Perhaps one spring day, not too far from now, she will access that secret path near her home and look for the Purple Easter Egg.
Will She find it?
The mind’s eye is a powerful looking-glass.
Life’s Crazy™