WHIRLYGIG
I seem to be living upon the shiny surface of the present. There does not seem to be any reason for living in the past, does there? Live for the moment, I say to myself. Seize the golden day. Or grasp the nettle. Whichever is what is to be.

Indeed, I wander into the street from a place the past calls my humble home.

I wander memory-less if not mindless through avenues of mansions, an area of town far richer than I can ever imagine existing alongside the poverty I seem to suffer so stoically. But imagination is not a requirement. All is here and now before me, each front door polished up by servants with bunny-cloths.

I remember a vocabulary from the past, as filtering through the clumsiness of any present skills that comprise my ability to express myself. Surely, being who I am, I must be illiterate. Stands to reason.

I somehow sense a noisy fairground whirlygig that traps me like a static cage of colourful riders and mounts frozen in time. Protecting me from the past, as well as imprisoning me in the present.

Yet, I tell myself time and time again that Time is a friend not a foe. Keep that, at least, in the forefront of the mind, I say. Or the nettle will grasp you, instead!

I approach one of the mansion’s buffed-up doors, struggle along its steep donkey-stoned steps gleaming red in the ever-present sunshine, grasp the door’s golden goblin-headed knocker and let it drop with a thunderous ricochet that continues to ring with the effects of a raging ear-drum infection. But how can I possibly know what I do know about the past so as to be able to express such conclusions of cause-and-effect?

The question remains unanswered, because the door opens on freshly-oiled hinges and a servant, still grasping her bunny-cloth motions me to enter without even asking me my business. This takes the wind from my sails. I have no intention to prove anything about the past, but why else do I go along with this particular train of events?

I am introduced to a pipe-smoker in the library, one whose face is unclear through the billowing fug. I shake the proffered hand. In the distance, I hear the carousel music that seems so incongruous with the posh vicinity and my vocabulary. But I shake my head clear of such hallucinations, knowing now that I might be deaf.

I am taken by the servant with the bunny-cloth who then (still wordlessly) dresses me in a pinny and shows me how to oil the hinges of the front door. I wonder what cleaning job is next.

But the future is just as slippery as the past, as both whirl silently around the happy perfection of the moment.

I hope next for the other servant to show me how to make a mirror squeaky-clean.