the Closet

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(This is dedicated to Small, a good friend and fellow spelldown player, with whom a good word is never hard to find and with whom the last word is always a smile)
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It is a special place, a niche from which a moment of reality can be transformed into a fantasy. It is a secret place, a mystical chamber wherein few have been permitted. Legendary, and yet its existence has become urban folklore.
~ Some have imagined it to be the enigmatic Shangri-La, a place found in a different plane or dimension. It has been said that time stands still there. There, when darkness is abhorred, aurorae bathe those within. Should nightfall be desired, so it is with but a wish.
~ To others a closet is only a small room scarcely large enough to store a few hangers of clothing and a collection of shoes. Boxes of memories, objects forgotten and gifts unwanted line the back wall. Barely large enough for one to move around, almost claustrophobic, it hardly evokes paradise.
~ You could say that closet is a metaphor for asylum away from life's travails, a sanctum of solitude. It could be a playland or an adventure park. You could be one of a throng cheering for a team or a favorite band. You could be there with someone special, seeking comfort or intimacy beneath a sky full of stars and moon. But now, I look at the night and it don't seem so lonely, we fill it up with only two.*
~ Such a special place should have an ode written in tribute to it: An Ode to the Closet. Someone needs to write a song of dedication to that closet. I had a few thoughts, but they didn't sound just right, not to mention that they were already taken. Don't sleep in the closet, darling? We all lived in a yellow...closet? Under the ...closet? Up on the ...closet? Love closet, baby? Sugar...closet? So much for the song ideas, eh?
~ We can be there while we are here. When we aren't here, you can find us there. We cannot be there all the time, but if we were it wouldn't be enough time. When you aren't there, we aren't there. Such is the place, that special place, that it becomes magical when we view it.
~ It is empty now, cold and dark. It's a closet scarcely large enough to store a few hangers of clothing and a collection of shoes. It is what is, and it can be what we will. We'll enter into that domain of laughs and fun again. Soon... (Pats lap..)
~ And yes, it is also a metaphor.
~ Said the spider (Point) to the fly (Small)...won't you step into my parlor?
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~*From "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond.
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No.98