Lion of Gripsholm Castle

The hapless taxidermists piecing together hides and bones from an unknowable distant land constructing an abomination of majesty and strength out of withered pelts such that anyone who had witnessed the cat stalking about the savanna would be incapable of correlation and would instead stare into the dead marble eyes with something like disgust at the uncanny valley before them.

Once I traveled these same streets in my white mustang of youth with beautiful smooth skinned consorts riding shotgun toward a future of passion and hope and mystery and rebellion, driven by a belief that the world could be forged by will and desire. I am now passenger 34 in seat 46 of a commuter bus. Fuck, this is all so dark and hopeless, and it is only 7:30 in the morning on a Thursday of a year that doesn't even hold the virile promises of summer vacation.

I counterfeit the person I was in my youth to protect the youth of my daughter. I smile the simulacrum of a smile I see in memories of myself, likely with no more authenticity than the stuffed lion of Gripsholm Castle, but hopefully a close enough approximation not to cause disgust or fear, but it has been so long since I was visited by that specular image reversed in the morning mirror that I have reason to doubt my artistry.

I have been holding my breath, convincing myself that if I persist a little longer and fight the burning pain in my chest and the rising panic in my gut that I can break free of the surface and expand my lungs with a desperate gasp of breath and the sun will warm my face and the wine dark depths will recede and lose their grip, but I am beginning to swallow an ocean of truth that I foundered too far before I started to kick and strain upward and resurfacing is unlikely.

And off the port side of the bus, just beyond The Varsity, you will see the NS building with the thoroughbred emblem. Run wild and free black horse.

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." --Sir Isaac Newton