Spring.

Crazy, fluffy, aloof chipmunk. Always outside the inner circle, always looking from outside the stained glass window, in. Outside, barefoot, sun on back, one with the frigid, fragrant and fertile soil. He was always golden, when the others were brown. Dull, brown. They were beautiful. Why was this his fate. To shine, from the outside, laughed at, judged, told what to do, never fully himself. Though illusions stem from his worldview, mere hallucinations at the colorful reality of life. But hallucinations they were not. Because perception is subjective. And subjective is real.

He tried desperately to be his own golden, anxiety inside masked by illumination. Illumination like driving fast into a setting sun, unaware of the deer standing right ahead. But that only furthered him from inside that circle. So far that he forgot what it was like to fit in. in fact, he forgot so badly that he turned to the very extreme, painted himself dull brown, and fit at the center of it all. He was finally happy. But there was something missing. Himself. He was not himself, he was what others wanted him to be, what he always thought he had to be. But that wasn’t enough. So he scrubbed the paint off, and emerged, gold as the sun, not caring about his warmth and its effect on pink passersby annoyed with their bourbon vanilla ice cream melting and landing on the sparkly, suburban city cement. He did what he wanted, climbed the dusty pine trees he wanted, ate the oily pine nuts he wanted. He was Tarzan emerged, if only for those moments, as life is all about moments, sometimes so lost in a moment that the next few years…