Empty

He didn’t intend to become a shell of a man and he didn’t realize that was what he had become until one day, late in life, he took an actual look at himself and discovered that he in fact had become a shell of a man.  He reached deep inside himself, deep inside his chest cavity, and felt around and felt nothing but the empty swish and swash of emptiness occasionally feeling his boney spinal cord, which he was glad to feel.  At least there was his spinal cord, he thought, otherwise he might have slumped over long ago into a lump of immovable flesh and he would have been deprived of the ability to do so much of what he had enjoyed doing in life such as reading the newspaper and…and….and….and…, and to his surprise, he couldn’t think of anything else in life that he actually enjoyed.  All he could think of was that he enjoyed reading the newspaper every morning.  It was what he looked forward to and it was what motivated him to get out of bed in the morning.  He thought some more about it and thought some more after that and he couldn’t figure out what there was about the newspaper that might be enjoyable.  Upon deep reflection he realized that newspapers mostly reported on the problems that precipitated from the progress that was supposed to fix all the problems and the dissatisfaction of life felt by so many after they bought so much of the stuff that was assured to provide so much satisfaction.  He started to wonder how much of his life he wasted with all the problems and stuff that he ingested through the syringe of the newspaper.  He felt agitated and needed to move around and dissipate an unsettling energy that overcame him.  He got up and began to walk around and eventually found himself walking around outside.  He was about to conclude that his entire life had been wasted but was soon distracted when he began to observe things as he walked around outside.  Upon observing things, he found himself thinking about the things he observed and then began wondering about the things he was thinking about and wondering what else he might observe if he were to walk some more or if he were to walk somewhere else that he had never been before.  More and more he observed, thought and wondered and wondered what more there was to observe in the world and he desired more and more to observe whatever there was to observe and wherever he might observe such things.  After spending considerable time observing, thinking and wondering he started to feel something inside of him and the more he observed, thought and wondered, the more he felt something in there.  He got curious as to what might be going on inside of him so he reached deep inside himself again and felt around.  To his surprise, instead of the swish and swash of empty emptiness that he remembered feeling before, he felt the squish and squash of strange gelatinous liquids and lumps.  He tried to grip those lumps but mostly they slipped from his grasp until finally he was able to find one that he was able to wrap his hand around and hold tightly as he pulled it from his chest cavity.  As he pulled this mysterious object from his cavity, he was more excited to learn what he might observe than by the fact that he was no longer just a shell of a man.  To his further surprise, he observed a flower unlike any he had ever seen before and he wondered how it got in there and then, as he reached back in to replace it, he wondered what other things he might grow in there.