The Pickled Egg

Two men

A wandering man came upon another, who was crying into his folded arms.

"Are you alright?" the first asked.

"No," came the shuddered reply.

"May I ask why not?" the first asked softly.

"I will never have what I want," said the second, and resumed his sobbing.

The first wandering man sat down on the ground beside his new companion and said nothing. After a few minutes the sobbing man looked up and wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeves. He told the first man that the only thing he wants in this world is to see tomorrow, but because tomorrow automatically becomes today, he will never be able to.

The first man thought about this for some time, and then he spoke.

"I can see your predicament," he began, "but please listen to mine before you consign yourself to a life of tears. When I was younger, it was my wish to relive yesterday. As I drifted off to sleep at the end of a particularly enjoyable day, I knew with a sinking feeling that it would soon be consigned to yesterday, and would be unobtainable for ever more."

The second man considered this and looked at the folds in his sleeves.

"But you have memories. I have nothing," he said after what seemed a very long time.

"Memories fade and alter with every recall," the first wandering man said easily, "and I was fully aware that even the most vivid and memorable events would become so altered by my thought processes that if you were to watch them again side by side, they would be almost completely unrecognisable."

The two wandering men leaned back on their elbows and watched the sun as it started its descent behind the mountains to the west. Just as the corona of light was swallowed by the sky, the second man spoke.

"You say that your wish was to see yesterday. So you somehow cured yourself of your problem. May I ask how you did it?"

"It's very simple," the first man said softly. "The fact that we shall never see tomorrow or be able to see yesterday again pales in comparison when we consider that we shall always be irretrieveably shackled to the eternal today."

The second man leaned back and thought about this for a long time. Thinking of something, he sat up to share it with his new found friend, but he had already gone.

posted by Kenyon @ 7:12 pm