ldquo;Life goes on,” said the funny clown-man

“Life goes on,” said the funny clown-man with the round nose over his shoulder as he walked away on the woody path flapping his flat feet flattening fallen leaves so he could be heard and remembered still. In the woods and circus meadow, words have a curious shape. We see a round-nose flabby baggy clothed clown-man leaving a motley group of circus accessories under oak trees and green grass on damp brown ground. To avoid an argument, he steps to a path through the bushes and autumn leaves. Those remaining, animals and performers alike, lay with puzzled looks on their cocked heads for a moment. Then the elephant takes initiative. “This is life?” questioned the comical elephant with her big ears on her useless roly-poly head listening to the resounding flip flap of the retreating funny clown-man with the red round nose. She was sarcastic, and she stomped her foot in the grass for emphasis and stopped her flapping ears and her tail flapping at flies. “That’s a good question,” the dignified scholar in the scarlet tuxedo presumed. “Seeing how we can perform the various acts which one real man has grouped so well together under the one word, ‘life,’” the sun lit on his forehead while he tried to wipe it off, “and yet because I cannot truthfully say that we or anything we do exists independently of he who knows so much better than we of our perhaps imaginary existence, but an existence nevertheless,” waving his arms and raising his brows in unison with his volume, “I can say with an almost confirmed assurity that that is indeed a good question.” “That’s right,” one fat lady elephant confirmed. “I know that, because I never forget.” Then the monkey yelled, “I never forget, never forget. I never forget. I never forget. Oh my! Oh may the good saint of holy adages confirm your stupidity!” The exasperated monkey continued, “If all of you must know what that she-elephant never forgets is to always say she never forgets!” The funny yelling monkey jumped up and pointed his finger at the scholar. “Ah!” This is the shabby, dignified scholar. “But we must not allow this little, unfinished man, ecologically speaking, to undermine our determined efforts to answer the question of mockery by our comical lady in the guise of an elephant. How could we forget to ask that curious question in the overflowing presence of such a monsterous body, and” (with an absurd bow to the she-elephant) “with such a monsterous memory?” The scarlet scholar sneaked a furtive sly mouth movement to the monkey at his side. “Yeah, how could we forget that!’ the monkey dittoed. The dignified scholar’s expression, although in a comparably immature, inexperienced and underdeveloped manner, totally adapted to the funny monkey’s monkeyality. The scholar, a man who misses little, continued. “Monkeyality not personality. I observe that our righteous and also knowing author wished to point out to my little-deserving presence the fact that our monkey canoot have a personality since he is not not a person, and that word brings to my mind a train of thought, one no doubt plotted out by our distinguished author, which begins with the not too awesome fact that our funny monkey here is not even, in all reality, a monkey. He is but the whimsical materialization of an honest idea by our wise author on a piece of paper. My train, noisy, rambling, and continuing still, of thought continues on to an answer to the question not so long ago raised by one lady elephant in our company in response to a too-often used adage by the funny man with the round nose over his shoulder as he walked away on the woody path flapping his flat feet so he coudl be heard and remembered still, and so he is remembered.” The scholar paused to observe the effect of his speach on his audience. They are not so dumb as one might expect. They understood. But of course this could be all imaginary, as is to be explained directly by the knowing scholar, if not of English grammar, then of the author’s intents. “Life, this is not life.” The scholar smiled gracefully. “This is but a fanciful representation of life scored on a piece of paper by one of the real world,” he paused again before he added, “our author!” in a flourish of the manner of an introduction. “Let me straighten things out now,” the author says, “as the author. So we don’t need these annoying quotation marks. Sit down and listen my imagined scholar. (He sits himself.) I here expound my honest idea for our reader. (The scholar solemnly nods.) For, as the scholar said, the scholar nor his whimsical companions do not live, in reality; however, the words that bring them to you do live, or exist, as one might have it. I as the author might also expound the idea that there are but two other dimensions to the existence of my funny clown-man, my she-elephant, my scarlet scholar, and my scrawny monkey. They exist, certainly, without doubt, in my mind, in a place, if an abstract concept may be given a solid position, called by some, in two words, my imagination. They exist there as real as they exist as words on this paper. The other dimension lies in one’t mind, and there are two facets to one’s acceptance of their existence. One remembers then not the words which represent them. You couldn’t possibly remember something that doesn’t exist, so they exist in your memory. Now, do they exist in one’s imagination as they exist in mine? (That is not a nonobjective question.) If one who reads the preceding can accept and believe in the whimsical figments of an imagination detached from one’s own, I can say that there existence penetrates even further into reality. In spite of their so-called imaginary existence.

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