There was something about the snail, in the way that it moved, that was more like life than any other animal alive.

We know the simple home-on-its-back platitude, yet at the same time mustn’t forget: this shell which is its home is also its everything— and this everything is not just with, but is moreover atop & thusly daily bearing down upon its little snailbody perpetually, for each & every moment of its existence, till that last moment of death’s release. At which point: its shell is either a) preserved for being deemed of cultural value, b) sent off to be crushed into natural fertilizer for other of life’s purposes, or else c) a forgotten curiosity entirely & left to disappear at Time itself’s opted-for rate, centuries far past decomposition’s completion with its softsmall body for sure. And even in the best possible outcome, a) : this outcome isn’t determined by the shell-bearer him|herself, but by other snails heretofore unknown, snailing along as they may— or, may not.
        [But we somewhat digress— future generations’ judgement of a life’s work’s worth being not the main of what occurred to the MC whence looking down upon the steadily-but-slow-moving mollusk before him. What he saw was the same thing most anyroo sees when they first really notice something: movement. Though specifically, here: the particular mechanics thereof.]

The snail’s potency of metaphor lay not simply in the aforementioned platitude, but moreover in the observed fact of its constantly reaching forward, at great strain in its extension, not just to get somewhere, but: to get somewhere only so as to have to pull the rest of its life (its everything & entire past, failures & joys, sense of security & even said sense perhaps lost, the sum total weight of which is never not felt) slowly back up to where it needs its whole self to be; i.e., back to the place of & in sync with where its head is at— and all ad infinitum & till death. Looked at this way, a snail’s time on earth almost seemed a bit not unlike the myth of Sisyphusroo.

§

The image of the snail hit K-Roo hard this evening, perhaps a little bit too close to home, & so delivered him pause. For what was it when something hit you too close to home, and your home was on your back? Well, it was essentially like getting struck from behind— it made you turn & look around.

And my what there was to see— as well as my what there wasn’t to be seen at all.

Life hadn’t added up to or unravelled what he’d long ago thought it might’ve by this point, and the perspective was sobering— even with drink in paw.
        The MC K-Roo thusly— with help from & under the aegis of Platy— looked at the image of the snail & the possibilities around other of its potential and/or laden-within metaphors more closely. Under the circumstances & considering the sharp sting in the moment felt, it seemed more reasonable to see the snail’s shell not only as a symbol for home, but moreover also for baggage, so to speak.

Whereupon the Rooster understood: that there can sometimes develop or even suddenly occur an undesirable relationship between these two above-italicized nouns, & specifically: if & when the former becomes the latter— as it perhaps just recently in his life had.

§

Here are the only two motions, which all of the world’s roos understand: if a roo doesn’t exert to get to, s|he exerts to get from. In our three dimensions, those are the only options. For while staying in place is certainly a physical possibility, given that the nature of life is grounded in change, let’s just say that remaining still is “metaphysically prohibited.” To wit, if you don’t take action in the physical world now, you’ll someday later have to— or else pay the psychological (or, i.e., spiritual?) consequences for not.
        Which is to say & to bring it full-circle: by opting for stasis one will either be adding to the baggage having to be dealt with later, or else unceremoniously died with later still. Picture a law of physics, or think exercise: when wanting to continue existing as one heretofore has, but suddenly now without moving around at all, without exercising: excess weight will be gained, and not in the more helpful form of muscle.

§

Beneath or within the snail was the slug. Freed of the baggage of its shell it could more deftly penetrate the earth, fertilize through living endeavor the world it was solemnly born into. Freed of the bounding fact of its carried & surrounding shell, it would need redefine its idea of home by virtue of & through newly-encountered, farther-from-its-flesh surroundings: the planet earth wide, alone & itself, its unknown blessings & staid deadly presence; quite effectively: sanity’s only option. What conceived and gave birth to its tender flesh in the first place, of course.

Outside, the world kept turning; inside it did as well, invisibly so but felt. The rotations of the earth in relation to the inner lives of those roos upon it might thusly be pictured comprising a set of gears: one massive one turning alone through space, billions of tiny little ones turning in turn together upon it— a billions-of-years-old one and billions of years-old ones simply a circuitesque & birthwrithing one.
        And it was in so many places that all movements flowed swiftly in sync, spinning smoothly without the slightest resistance between the earth & others & others still & beyond. Yet in perhaps even more places, however: the gears were grinding and slowing, leaving those farthest from the center sans even the slightest hint of any motion at all. In other places still: the teeth of groups of gears had become so completely gnashed that they no longer moved with any relation to their surrounding others whatsoever, simply spinning solitarily whilst pinned in place, going faster & faster still until the inner circumferences about their axes inevitably began to soften and melt, a wobble’s ill-fated way thusly begun. After a time of which: they simply broke off from their fixing axes and floated away mutely, either disconnected for forever or else wrecking havoc by falling back down between still-functioning gears ever-susceptible to having such havoc wrecked. And when this happened, of course: the teeth of those unsuspecting gears below became gnashed in turn, resulting in their being that much closer to slipping and spinning faster & faster & then off & away & et cetera & et cetera— the cycle thereby continuing & being, suffice it to say: a rather vicious one indeed.

And it constituted a picture of the world presently, and unlike it’s ever been at any point prior. Recently read was a New York Times article about how ISIS— a terrorist organization with propaganda material made to Hollywood-level production values yet wherein actual murder takes place— has set about kidnapping women & little girls so as to use them as sex slaves. Moreover: specifically doing so in order to attract & recruit new fighters to their claimed-as-holy cause; the act of killing in God’s name assuring the ability to rape essentially whenever, also in God’s name. Today.

§

While the world didn’t make any promises, it did hold answers. Close to the chest, as they say and as it were. Inside of which was the heart / inside of which was a gilded treasure; it lay at the bottom of the ocean in the psychological sense as well as in the metaphorical sense— revealing, it seemed, an understood or effective equivalence between the two.

And Platy was down there. Now & again she had a need (or even responsibility) to leave her place in K-Roo’s pouch. [Pause. Let’s be clear here: ultimately it was very much up for debate as to whether she was kept in K-Roo’s pouch, or else that it was she who kept K-Roo around her— picture a sort of “exoskeleton of agency,” say: to more efficaciously maneuver throughout the wide & arid world at speeds & with a facility which she on her own could never, doing things that she alone never could? The possibility of this notion cannot be forgotten.] Beneath the surface was possibility, freedom: floating down within the depths she stared at the glint of the barely-cracked-open treasure chest below, man-of-wars hovering in de facto guard all around. There was danger, yes— but generally: isn’t danger that against which promises are so often made? [They did tend to go hand in hand: a promise is made when a less-desirable reality exists in the balance as a possible outcome— ergo by this only-semi-sound-yet-ever-enticing logic: whenever Platy saw danger, she often peeked around the corner for a tethered promise, as well.]

The glow— emanating from just the slightest sliver of a gilded surface area, yet with unmistakeable promise of far more light & worth within— seemed greater than that of the sun itself. She gave the chest one last look through the languid & viperous curtains of jellyfish tentacles in the deep sea’s darkness, then swam up to its surface and then back to its shore.
        The sun was setting in the world above as she thought back to the light just seen below. Silent, she wondered for a second Whose heart was this?, before quickly concluding with the more accurate wondering of Whose heart was this not? Being amphibious, the literal & the metaphoric were forever to exist exchangeably in her thinking; without doubt, this was much of why she was so rarely confused as regarded the more immediate matters around fighting through both her & K-Roo’s lives lived.

But a darkness still hung for a deficit still lingered. It was hard to place a finger upon precisely where; looking down to find one’s pawfists still unconsciously clenched only added to the mystery. An armchair psychologistroo might interpret such unconscious muscle clenching as indicative of anger held & therefore of a need to fight (but physically? or metaphysically?); yet another interpretation could just as well unveil the desire to hold on to, the desire to not slip up away into: up into the air and from a hard-earned & still-fragile standing arrived at, say.

There were some problems with the volcano island upon which The Rooster & Platy stood— chief among them: the tornado forming above. Accordingly, not all was idyllic & bliss; however contrary such newfound, caution-laden feelings may’ve been to the so many openly hopeful feelings felt so very recently prior, just days back. This was also to say: anything accomplished merely seconds ago by The Furry Fury could be unaccomplished in mere fractions-of-a-second flat; it does happen that doers who do can slip into recidivism until all of their so-recently-done doings are all but entirely quite suddenly undone. A flat black & oblong cloud presently whirled high overhead, beginning to dip a vorticular protuberance downwards. It was shaped not unlike a stiffening Horse of the Apocalypse’s member, set to penetrate into our heroic pair’s present day & close future anon.

Yet K-Roo wasn’t quite looking upwards, and so couldn’t exactly quite see. Nevertheless & despite his not looking up, his perception of the atmosphere in which he strode having palpably changed was unmistakeable: whereas whence before upon the shoreline he’d felt his feet pressing into its sands with all of his formidable weight, he currently all-but-inexplicably felt his step step lighter & lighter still— his groundedness hence being in question. Until when by glancing back & perceiving an increasing shallowness over the course of his footprints’ path behind him did he recognize a steadily-progressing lessening to their depth outright: it was as if the atmosphere around him had been administered of an admixture of helium, invisibly pernicious & drunken rooclowns having let the valves of their unfailing balloon-filling tanks run free & amok.
        But even as all of the aforesaid stood the case: the feeling was, in part, pretty amazing; and felt, on a level: rather desirable. Like strolling a drifting moonwalk across the silver moon as one always sees space astronautroos doing upon the silver screen, the limiting chains of gravity shed. Nevertheless, the fact of this sensation having just manifested in the baseline of his existence— i.e., within his so-recently-established & newly-grounded day-to-day, no less— made him realize something was likely amiss.

And so it was at this moment then that he looked back once more to assess the footprints he’d been leaving, only to find that they were gone.

And then it was at that moment there that the famous & nigh-kitsch poem Footprints in the Sand came slamming into mind, like a tidal wave & a brusque headlock both. For not only were K-Roo’s footprints not there, but neither were those of the Christroo in the poem; all that was seen was a barren beach. It was thusly apparent that neither walking nor carried was he, but rather: just anotheroo whose travels made no discernible impact upon the world, yet all the while did his said travels absorb its resources all the same.

§

The troubling conditions behind this fact were obvious, perhaps even starkly so: K-Roo wasn’t fully there. Perhaps it was that with all of the comings & goings of his bounds he, at a certain point, didn’t realize how he, at another & soon-after point: failed to return to the ground? Or perhaps some other reason? It was difficult to say— many arguments could be made, and then those same arguments argued against. Yet however it happened, the defining place in a roo’s life of the fertile earth below hadn’t changed: fixed firmly beneath one’s waking feet or else set softly behind one’s sleeping back. [Though even as the prior sentence’s unassailable assertion is made: as regarded formulating unilateral proclamations— such as how “Groundedness is prerequisite to creating any works of any lasting meaning”— both K-Roo & Platy knew such statements could only be relative, would always be incomplete: for there were indeed times when “compromised” states of being could & did, in fact, now & again segue or lead into significant revelations and/or cultural productions; both had borne witness to or engaged in as much before, to oftentimes positive effect.]

But such effect registers changes over time. As for K-Roo & Platy & for the moment, those days were gone. No judgement was passed upon those still in the midst of their own Those Days; yet it was also duly to note that such days weren’t for the present their game. The problem at present was the whirl of air pulling them up & away from the world they’d only so recently, finally come into a closer contact with.

§

And it was a significant problem. For if this present tornado was, in fact, the dark member of one of the Apocalypse’s Horses, in what manner & by which machinations would it inseminate its world-altering, future-effecting seed? Probably: in the worst, most devastating of ways possible: by a pulling-up & a driving-down, & all at once; an inquietude & instability perpetually resulting, setting a torrid, discordant condition unceasingly & infinitely.
        Given as much, K-Roo could thusly expect his footprintless-spacewalk-heights to be followed not by deeper footprints in due time (compensating for his absence’s duration), but rather by the arrhythmically repeated imprints of his body’s pliant, wingless-snowangelroo-esque outline cast of gruff, violentsharp hurls back down into dampened sands, over & over & until an undefined end; each successive sandprint bearing less definition than the preceding, of course.

§

With each of their steps in our sands such Horses record not hoof-shapes as we might picture, but the shapes of the bodies of those roos met & judged in their eschatologically-charted paths, forming final & impermanent records trailing, for awhile, behind. And after that while: all disappears into the fact of the natural order of things; the natural order of life. Erosion & evolution; a pair. Perfected.

Too much time had passed in his life— and with it the fact of how truth be told, some truths are hard to tell; yet a shift in perspective via injection of distance— with said distance specifically being in the form of a vacation— often helps to regain lost clarity. For probably everyroo, it seems evident that without the intermittent pauses of stepping back from one’s day-to-day, not only might smaller dilemmas become bigger, but those less-than-ideal facts one may’ve been too close to to see (i.e., unpleasant truths, say) come sharply into focus at last. As it happened & fortuitously enough, the MC K-Roo and his longtime pal-in-pouch Platy were just in returning from an extended trip to lands far off.

And the clarity attained was earth-shattering— perceptibly so insofar as they now stood upon a newly-formed shoreline watching old pieces of broken-off earth float off & away into the sea, simultaneously knowing that towards these fragmented regions never again would they ever willingly build bridges or charter ferries, pilot planes or copters or otherwise make a point of ever visiting again. And while for this their island was a good bit smaller, for this also: their island was a good bit surer. Staring across the horizon, “What is our island but a castle the moat of which is the sea itself?” thought Platy aloud.

For Platy’s thought & for other reasons, K-Roo pictured fences. Oftentimes as made by roos, fences can seem violent and/or austere things: between posts pounded or pile-driven into the ground stretched rows of pickets or lengths of chain poised like standpoints or quarrels against everything existing opposite a defined perimeter. All of which spoke of energy expended, intention & force applied— and, often enough: with great strenuousness against something which mightn’t even be there at all. And, if unwanted presences were there? In due time these malicious presences could subvert the erector’s efforts all the same. Yet above all, perhaps: a view of life with fences forever in the foreground can alter one’s psychology profoundly, not least of all by fostering a sense of isolation, as well as that of the loneliness so often in tow.
        But the sea is of a different perimeter. To stare out at looping coils of razor wire elicits different emotions than hearing folds of lapping waves upon a continuous & rounded-rock shore. A boundary of fencing can be a defensive of a hundred arms tensed and ready to fight; the tides enveloping an island just the calm of a heartbeat perpetually. Forever it’s been the case: the sea brings a different & surer sense of security: a more primordial & so perhaps more-definitive one, as opposed to the fruits of one’s own inherently fallible labors.

A number of things and roos which needed to change or go now had. Life has a brevity.

The island they were on was a volcano. When it erupted, new bridges would be born not out of intention, but of necessity. Not of newly-manufactured materials in directions thought important, but of molten-into-solid-rock formations where the earth our mother saw fit. It was upon these bridges & in due time that The Microphone Commander Kangaroo & Platy would soon bounce, in a timescale not necessarily precisely tailored to their desires, but certainly affected by these desires of theirs all the same.

The Furry Fury preferred a plethora of names, for it seemed that such an approach was perhaps the closest he could come to not having one. For it was over so many years & at numerous & particular intervals prior that he’d felt: the difficult-to-describe-yet-clear-to-the-heart feeling (or sensation) of not having a name at all. These moments (like so much of what’s formative in a roo’s life) always arose unprompted, and furthermore tended to end as abruptly as they’d begun. In a certain respect, one could perhaps liken such an experience to walking along in total darkness when suddenly… /////!, you find yourself within a shaft of light, able to see everything clearly & for the first time— even if this aforesaid “everything” is but a slow swirl of theretofore unseen dust particles, gently-chaotically inhabiting an otherwise-emptiness so newly illuminated.

Put another way: you’re walking within a pitchblackdarkness, moving one foot before the other & then the other before the one, steadily & at a pace of unwavering stride. You’ve felt & known this body for forever— having, what’s more, regarded it as yours. Not least of all because any option for regarding it otherwise would essentially be impossible. And should ever there arise desire to question this body’s reality? By merely stopping to scratch your head & ponder the question, the very fact of feeling your fingers coming into contact with your head precludes the need of employing said head for aforesaid pondering: by default (as well as by touch), it’s a given: you have a body.
        With the readeroo now bearing in mind these obvious bits— i.e., knowing what it’s like to 1) question one’s physical reality & 2) answer the question by moving to scratch one’s pate— now imagine what it would be like to walk under a spotlight, looking down to where your body ought be, but finding only dust drifting slowly through space.

Probably, the most significant aspect to understand about the experience is this: that rather than seeing “something” in the what-was-nothing of darkness, one perceives the what-seemed-to-be-something of you: as actually being “nothing.”

At different points in the life of a kangaroo, it’s necessary to question whether life is going well or else maybe-not-so-well / not-as-well-as-maybe-could-be. A lifetime, for all of its ostensible solidity— clothes purchased, albums recorded, beverage cans recycled, toilet paper crumpled & browned before being sent down into the relatively intricate, watery abyss of a municipality’s ably-engineered intestines, photographs of moments & milestones framed— is largely dreams, sometimes recurring nightmares, as well. In mind is less the sleeping kind, and more the born-in-daylight kind, the ones conjured up so as to move roos into the future & into change— so that when we’re finally in the future: we might be other than what we were in the past— and, hopefully: in a fashion more reflective of our intentions applied for days on end in those days gone by. This makes it that much of a lifetime is pretty much the experience of feeling hopes— as well as the occasional reconciliation with their failure to manifest as life.

These hopes are minted to tender, at some future date, the terms whereby we evaluate our successes & failures: i.e., how many we’ve had of each, and to what degree. And while of course the final reckoning comes at the deathbed: wiser roos can’t help but develop the habit of checking in now & again, however at intervals of varying prudence. No roo really being able to judge what constitutes for anotheroo “a sufficient degree of prudence,” it’s probably still safe to assume: the more frequently the better.
        But not only is it prudence inscribing these interval marks upon the meter: oftentimes there’s circumstance, as well. When the shit hits the fan, not only is it good to assess one’s clothes, but also to check & see if any’s landed upon the meter to mark a new & unfortunate interval of shittiness. Assuming circumstances are in fact bad & that a new, shitty interval has indeed begun (and maybe also for reasons of kangaroos’ tendency to become what they behold) not infrequently can one’s meter assessment send a roo spiraling downwards into a state far worse. Thusly: when a roo isn’t doing so hot— or even when the world around one isn’t— circumstances can require the meter being read more often.

§

Kangaroo wasn’t doing so hot. The things he’d taken out of his pouch having thought he’d done away with “once & for all” had silently found a way back in; the clutter & excess expunged had gravitated back towards him, circling ever closer & closer still, at once like coins in one of those very-precisely-engineered funnels on display in some science museums, as well as like vultures. Only in his case the spinning change wasn’t an additive monetary donation into the pot, so to speak, but rather a negative & unwanted presence in his pouch, as it were.

Such was his incitement to assessment; the details of which did not need going into. Addiction is the opposite of transformation. Addiction is the state of a kangaroo being bound (seemingly perpetually) to a repeated course of action, the result of which is to always achieve a familiar, known state— a pleasant one at first, and then not at all. The emotional result of this rise & fall is simply to be saddened by the expected & understood fall… again.
        Addiction vs transformation fights in an arena where it’s clear how each are opposites in virtually every way. A for instance: how the addictive state is familiar, where you instantly recognize you’re getting what you signed up for. With transformation, on the other hand: when you’re bounding along on the path towards it, you’re never quite sure if you’re there or not, save perhaps until after a long & uncertainty-riddled while; familiarity does not apply here.

Addiction exists on one plane, with the addictive act bringing glimpses of a different, seemingly lighter plane— until only to throw one back down upon the plane just left. Transformation, on the other hand, moves a roo from one plane to another.

§

This is where K-Roo stood, looking down into his pouch, Platy nowhere in sight. Yet that now & again a new year may’ve gotten off to a rocky start should be of no surprise, no concern, even: life itself is no different; all of it having started billions of years back with the ocean’s tides crashing upon pebbled & sandy shores, persistently.

And so the day was here. The morning sun had risen up behind clouds, beneath which fell drops of rain. For practical reasons this was somewhat of an annoyance, as it precluded him from wearing what he’d planned to so as to make the impression he’d hoped for. For reasons apart from the practical, the grey weather just didn’t strike as the best of omens, so to speak. Feeling the lesser amount of light and hearing the water he’d imminently be under, he left his bed slowly & without much enthusiasm, the tangled sheets of which pulled him back more than its mattress springs sprung him forth.
        So, it wasn’t ideal from the start. Nevertheless he got dressed & ready to go, looking in the mirror at a large, bedheaded kangaroo covered in a soon-to-be-damp grey rain parka— and one who, moreover, hoped to appear completely normal in the act of delivering a sprawling, pawwritten letter (written two years ago, he’d need mention) to a pretty & famous rooette about maybe half his size. This picture too, he realized, was not entirely ideal.
        But neither was it unforeseen: such being the case, he remembered how when writing the letter, he’d taken pains to make clear how his intentions weren’t roomantic in the least— and not least of all because: she was married to another MC whose rhymes MC K-Roo regarded highly & with great respect. [No less: an unusually high-level of (very) unlikely biographic similarities were shared by both her husbandroo & he: both grew up skateroos, attended the same, tiny music college (where they studied the same instruments, even), and then briefly worked as farmers— all while dropping albums along the way. Statistically, out of all the almost 7,000,000,000 roos on the planet, there were maybe 6 otheroos fitting this description. Because it was such an extremely weird coincidence, he took it upon himself to mention it to her in the letter.] [Moments after penning this mentioning, however, K-Roo realized such an observation could be misconstrued as tantamount to telling a complete strangeroo: “Hey sweetieroo, I’m exactly like your hubbyroo!”, which tended to be a rather unwise and somewhat off-putting thing to say. While he likely probably should’ve left the whole husband coincidence thing out, in his enthusiasm for Future Beats he simply spilled everything out onto paper as if he were writing to a longtime pal, the album having made him feel as though he knew her, like she knew him. Realizing that tens of thousands of the album’s other listeneroos probably felt exactly the same way (the elicitation of such a sensation being one of the hallmarks of great art, anyway) he made mental note to never again— and especially not when in the process of crafting a first impression— to tell anyroo of how he was exactly like his or her spousearoo.]

And so there he stood before his front door, cringing at the recollection of his lack of restraint. The envelope was sealed; what was done was done. Opening it & rewriting the letter, omitting the section in question— and writing it from a plainer psychological space so different from the highly-enthusiastic one which’d originally produced it— was problematic in different ways, mostly pertaining to authenticity & sincerity; a couple of critical things which, if off in any way whatsoever, his readeroo would surely sense.
        “Goddamnit,” mumbled K-Roo with regard to the prolongation of his vacillations… .. . ….  .  …  ..  …. .  …..before then ultimately-albeit-tenuously slipping the envelope back into his pouch & pulling his parka hood over his head. He wasn’t entirely sure that his mind was entirely made up, but he was fairly certain he’d be late if he waited another several moments longer.

§

As it turned out indeed, he was very glad to have arrived on time: once again & exactly like the day before— and yet in a manner completely different— everything she did, every aspect & element of her performance, was right & full & on point. The audience’s applause & ovation was extended & standing; how fortunate they were that an artist such as she was performing in a city such as theirs.

And so now there he was towards the back of a line of a solid contingent of a hundred or so roos, all wielding CDs patiently in paw whilst waiting for their signing, exactly like he— save for exception of his bearing a letter to perhaps leave.
        To avoid seeming too odd, he also brought along two of his own works to give to her— a short EP about 20 minutes long, & a CD with which more time could be spent should she ever so wish. This way, it’d at least be immediately recognizable that he was a confrere emceeroo engaged in the game, and not the likes of a sideline-glued stalkeroo.

(It also somewhere had to be said that he had no idea as to what he wished to come of the transition of his writing into her reading: he just wrote. He was a kangaroo who saw things as he did, and she was a kangaroo who saw things as she did— sometimes their aesthetics were related, most other times not. But their works were both grounded in something similar, and often had to do with how matter, matters, & kangaroos themselves interrelate— as well as the language reflecting as much. A letter seemed in order; it could be discarded if & as the reader wished— the crossing of lives doesn’t have to happen at intersections where the roads are on the same level: sometimes roads cross other roads via bridges, never touching at all; which would also be fine: ships pass in the night everyday. If only because he presently possessed it in his pouch & nothing about now was especially clear: a fog horn seemed in order. Once sounded he’d needn’t have to ever again— if unresponded to his ship would simply sail on, the oceans were big. New ports emptied & filled all the time, quite regularly in fact. Ultimately: whatever was whatever— & the path was the goal.)

Now he was only five or so roos away, and the situation wasn’t the least bit different. In the oddest of ways, he also realized: trust was an issue, as well. Being alive was an issue, too; and while he’d live no matter what he did or didn’t do, he’d be more alive if he acted in a manner which called trust into being in some way. This is also to say: even if a received letter was discarded & no connection made, at the very least a space was being drawn in which two roos could see each other from opposite sides thereof, nod knowingly, & then carry on with their respective independent endeavors.

Whereupon like a flash of lighting in a field of night it occurred to him that his long letter sounding as a foghorn was essentially the written picture of a kangaroo’s proffered nod to anotheroo a ways off in the distance ahead.

By a very strange coincidence occurring at the very moment of his standing in line now just two roos away, Platy poked out from his pouch wielding his laptop to relate the following news: “K-Roo! You’re not going to believe this!” Pointing to a just-received email from one of their old friends, Platy exclaimed & explained “Dude! Look at this! Peteroo goofed with his annual studio email and accidentally put everyroo’s personal email address in the ‘To:’ box,, instead of bccing all the recipients!”
        And there it was, staring up at him from down below: just a few inches beneath his own personal email address was that of MC Yolandajoon’s. It was a pretty strange coincidence, sufficiently such so as to definitively check his vacillations regarding delivery. He had no idea that his old pal Peteroo was friends with her, but now that he did: he sighed a sigh of relief in recognition of the following assurance felt: if on the off-chance his letter was misconstrued as being anything other than a knowing nod, his friend & former roommate Peteroo could vouch for K-Roo’s normalcy, kindness & sincere intentions, as well as goodness & reasonableness generally, if ever so asked. Things were in the balance again. [He then deleted the email immediately after reading it, imagining that that’s what everyroo on the accidentally-exposed list would want for all of the other recipientroos to do.]

Now at the signing desk where sat the esteemed emceeroo, K-Roo had handed to her his own purchased copy of Future Beats, requesting that it be signed “For K-Roo & Platy.” Upon her signing it such & handing it back to him, he handed to her his CD & EP & the letter, mentioning he’d written it a couple years back after first having heard her album. “That’s weird,” she said. He had to admit (and Platy would later corroborate) it was a somewhat awkward exchange.
        However, now it was done. This was good because now it couldn’t be thought of again. This in itself was extremely good, because now he could more-focusedly get back to the never-finished task of composing & propounding his own lyrics & beats, ultimately arranging them into a forthcoming album. It was good to get back to work whilst under the spell of having been inspired by anotheroo’s creative oeuvre; it was a privilege to be able to do so whilst said roo was still in the steady process of reaching the height of her powers, essentially guaranteeing decades of future inspiration anon.

Just a couple years back, one of the MC’s favorite MCs dropped a genre-defying album that was so tremendous it moved him to write her a double-digits-pages-long letter in which he praised her singular work at sizable length. For several specific reasons, however: K-Roo opted against mailing the letter. For there was 1) his worry that she didn’t read long letters from unknown roos; there was 2) his considerable anxiety over whether his effusive praise (& possibly overly-familiar tone) might lead her to think he was a crazy kangaroo at best, or stalkeroo at worst; and there was lastly 3) his wish that his words be heard as coming from a fellow MC, not just a fan.
        Given these concerns, MC K-Roo knew that a personal delivery— ideally through a mutual friend— was in all likelihood the only plausible option. Given that he didn’t seem to know anyroo who knew her— and the contents weren’t time-sensitive in the least— the letter’s delivery would have to wait. Which was fine by him: she was busy, & he was busy trying to become as busy as she. And “Perhaps,” he further mused, “it’d be better to have more ‘recognition’ before attempting an introduction, anyways…?” Whatever the case, Poochypouch accepted that Yolandajoon wouldn’t be getting the letter anytime soon, and simultaneously reflected that the music world was, at the end of the day, a small world: meeting his liaison was thusly but a matter of time, the proper moment of which chance was probably best left to determine anyhow.

And so for a couple of years, the letter sat.

Then one day in the autumn, The Marsupial Troopa was passing his favorite local music venue when he looked up at the marquee to read SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT TONIGHT & TOMORROW NIGHT ONLY: MC YOLANDAJOON, which he basically actually couldn’t even believe. So he went over to the window and asked. Whereupon the rooette at the box office confirmed it, noting it was she herself who’d placed each & every letter of the words up there on high, adding it was also she herself who’d sold each & every ticket to the show but one… and wouldn’t he like to purchase that last one? By way of reply to the nigh-unnecessary question did he remove from his pouch his wallet, pay the requisite dollar amount, & then receive said ticket in an envelope in exchange. Thanking the box office rooette with a nod & a smile, he then slipped his wallet & the envelope back into his pouch, and headed off for home for the remainder of the day until the evening hour printed upon the ticket arrived.

And before he knew it, there he suddenly was: in the middle of a long, around-the-block-winding line of dapper-dressed & chic-looking roos & rooettes, all there for the same shared reason of being swayed by the peerless sounds of one of their generation’s greatest beat-makers & lyricists: MC Yolandajoon. It was pretty exciting, not least of all because he’d never seen her live before & didn’t really know what to expect— especially since the albums he felt her finest were ones the perfection of which showcased her ample & influential studio mixing skills. Thusly & in sum: about to see a never-before-seen, long-time favorite MC & without expectations of any kind: he paused for a moment to think: just how great that situation was; and— looking up & down at the smiles of the otheroos ahead & behind— far from the only kangaroo thinking as much was he.
        As the line shortened & disappeared into the door of the venue, The Rooster imagined a long strand of yarn collecting itself into a ball on the other side of the door. Very soon would he be wound up warmly within it. “Tickets,” said the rooette working the door, whereupon K-Roo reached into his pouch and then handed to her the envelope produced.
        “…?” read the expression on her face, followed with a “What’s this?”
        “…!” read the expression on his face, followed with an “Ah! …sorry, wrong envelope,” as he took it back with his left paw & reached back into his pouch with his right, quickly producing the correct envelope & handing it over to her with the ticket inside. When she handed back the stub alone, he was left with the one, incorrectly-handed-over envelope in his left hand, the center of which read “For MC Yolandajoon” in his own handwriting from over two years back: he’d almost completely forgotten, but there it was: the long & unsent letter he’d written to her after first listening to her last album, Future Beats.
        “Huh,” he went. This was unexpected. Upon finding and taking his seat, he opened the unsealed letter, flipping through it briefly. The sight of its pages brought flashing back to mind images of the room in which he wrote it, as well as of that summer generally. The plan, as then hatched, was to give the letter to a (TBD) mutual friend to give to her, or else to give her the letter himself in the presence of said TBD friend, however many years in the future that may have turned out to be. But from the present moment sitting in the venue’s seats— with MC Yolandajoon on just the other side of the curtain, upon the venue’s stage— it almost seemed the imagined future would never come. Indeed, one had to admit there wasn’t any guarantee that it ever would: what if he simply never had a friend who was friends with her? It was quite possible. On the other hand, the present had the following certainty: he, she, & the letter were all there in the same place & at the same time— now. And so it was strange: for while generally when a letter & its intended recipient were within 50ish feet of one another, immediate “manual” delivery tended to be a no-brainer: here, however: he had absolutely no idea whatsoever as to what to do.

Thusly unable to determine a path of action (or path of none, as it were), he decided it likely best to chill & enjoy the show, wait & see if his feeling changed one way or the other by its end. He wasn’t sure why the yarn in this mind’s eye was pink, but it was: and like everyroo else around him, this pink yarn was precisely what— with Yolandajoon’s beats now beginning over the speakers & his private mental space being exited & the collective one around him entered— he & all the otheroos in the room in essence became.
        And it was good to be a piece of yarn— especially in the midst of all the other yarn sufficient to sum to a ball thereof: there was still nothing like live performance. For the duration of the show MC Yolandajoon would gently bat this ball around, playfully here & more seriously there. Sometimes she’d just roll it back and forth in a line or a zig-zag, and other times in small circles. With adept timing she’d  periodically switch the axis upon which it spun, thereby subjecting the audience’s emotional baseline to the seeming whim of her calculated flux. Now & again she’d slacken it a bit and then play with the slack, letting it fall loosely around her feet in looping patterns, all so as to cause her body to appear as the center of a flower the audience memberoos were each but petals growing out from. Then in the next instant the aforesaid image would disappear as she’d tauten the line, sometimes subsequently plucking at its tautened length to produce soft & curious sounds… until then slackening the line once more, lessening its sound again & into silence, a silence from which she’d rise as & when she wished, always at moments no roos could guess of— but moments which, later & after the show, everyroo would agree were precisely the right ones. For over an hour, this and more is essentially what she did.
        While there was no precise measure, at some point after that first hour it was clear that a shift had occurred, that a finale of sorts was en route in approach. Description was difficult, but it was almost as if one could feel the tension dropping from the yarn, yet the movement somehow not. For didn’t the speed of everything seem to feel on the increase? even as the perception of said speed registered near a standstill? More or less, that was— however paradoxically— how it was. Perhaps as an analogue: one can imagine staring from the window of an airplane taking off, the speedblurred tarmac racing beneath at a hundred miles an hour— and then a few minutes later & several times as fast, the window’s view of anything below or beyond being perfectly clear and nearly entirely still. Certain performers can do this, of which Yolandajoon was a one.

(It’s worth it to note here that the ability to collapse time & space is oftentimes used to describe the functions of both airplanes & art. One may see how each operates in the following fashion: after the moment of leaving a point of origin (a), one enters a realm where perception seems unlimited or unfettered, time nonlinear or practically paused… until the moment of arriving at the intended (or even unintended) destination (b). Here, one discovers being in a distant & completely different place, even as hisher legs have scarcely moved in the least. It is often & accurately said of such an experience that one has been transported— literally in the first case & metaphorically in the second.)

While the tension had left the yarn, it seemed to remain in the air; K-Roo could not help but picture little fibers of tension slipping out from the yarn, as light as air & joining ends together to form tiny halos of tensions hovering overhead. The audience was on the edge of their seats, such that if an earthquake at that moment occurred & the room’s front came up as its back fell down: everyroo would be perfectly balanced upon the fulcrum of their chairs, staring up at the stage from which MC Yolandajoon would be continuing to emcee sans interruption.
        It was thusly apparent that the end of the performance, as it were, was near: having slackened it all to the degree of nearly unraveling it, she wove and wove the yarn around and around the seats so that when suddenly she chose the moment to pull it all taut: new tensions were present where previously there were none, thusly drawing new figures & figurines in areas previously blank, creating new forms where previously existed empty space— the genius of which was best appreciated by mapping the turns & tensions as a whole (via imagined bird’s eye view, say), and not by experience of the individual points alone. K-Roo pictured the gridded nailboard / elastic band toys of his youth & of how, if seen from above, MC Yolandajoon’s manipulations of the audienceyarn shared a similarity of resulting aesthetic.
        As to what it all represented in the present, however: was as tremendous as it was ineffable. From up above the yarn amidst the seats below comprised an epic & pink Rorschach blotch of sorts: by turns it looked like a spinning galaxy, a burgeoning society, and a playground with young kangaroos playing and bouncing all around. An aspect of it had elements of a medical illustration of the inside of a marsupial’s heart, as well. And while it mightn’t have been possible to enumerate the total number of nouns it looked like, the underlining feeling for each was essentially the same for everyroo: a sense of wonder over the fact of what it meant to be a conscious rooman being existing upon the earth in that place on that night, together with otheroos feeling the same.

Metaphorically and almost literally did she tie each & every instant of the evening’s performance together, a cat’s cradle of kangaroos’ paws. Before The Rooster could even register that the performance had actually ended, applause was roaring all around him, and he found himself spontaneously clapping and standing in ovation as well. The many rows of silhouetted, pokey-eared heads of audience memberoos slowly dissolved back into the myriad identities of the individualroos they were as the lights went up & the curtains down. “MC Yolandajoon is a fucking geniusroo,” he found himself saying to himself as he stared at the shuffle of feet & tails and made for the exits, repeating as much to himself several times over. As the reluctant exodus was dense and slow, his words were overheard by other roos & rooettes who agreed & subsequently spoke similarly; conversations were thereby started and new alliances made, even if they didn’t necessarily lead to friendships (or even acquaintanceships) in fact.

What was important was what was felt. And, how the same or a very similar feeling came from everyroo who’d come that evening, enveloping each like a warmest of blankets, and how these eternally-had-but-sporadically-used blankets were now shown to be of a kind of velcro, binding strangeroos together en masse de facto by virtue of their simultaneous proximity to the music & each other alone.
        It was pretty incredible. K-Roo wondered why more roos didn’t take these blankets out of their proverbial pouches more often. “Probably because everyroo would be all stuck together all the time & nothing would ever get done,” Platy said in response to his thought. And, it was true: it was good to hear the right music at the right time instead of all the time. For if art— which speaks of a specific space & a particular time— were everywhere always & ever-present, the entirety of the Earth would be the map & the territory all at once, and newborn roos would be raised in confusion over whether they were standing upon the signifier or signified— the significance of each thereby being forever unknown.
        “And the almost magical relationship of each to the other thereby being forever unknown!” continued Platy in hypothetical lament. Which was also true; and so it was good to occupy the space between the map & the territory, which was rooman consciousness precisely. K-Roo’s & Platy’s conversation on such topics specifically & of the performance generally lasted them a quantity of minutes sufficient to carry them home. Once inside, MC K-Roo took his wallet out of his pouch and set it down, the fold of which inadvertently pulled out his unsent letter to MC Yolandajoon as well. “Whoa…!” was he. Under the spell cast by her performance and in the resulting half-daze with which he wandered out, he’d forgotten about the letter & its question entirely.
        To himself he said “I guess there’s always tomorrow,” knowing that while his words were true as he spoke them, they wouldn’t be were he to repeat them the following evening.

Father’s Day was not yet, but was minutes nigh. All of the emotions, all of the terror. Nothing about anything was good about the day to come, and nothing about anything was good about these last minutes in the day prior to the day to come.

There were stars in the sky, the clouds having opted to show respect by rolling back for the evening leading into the fated day. A bit of trivia: K-Roo’s father— a man of the world with prismatic interests— when younger wished to understand the far away spaces beyond this world, wished to be an astronomeroo.

When Kangaroo was but a joey, there were so many nights when his father would take him out into the fields, telescope in one paw & little K-Roo’s little roo paw in the other, to look up at the stars. The stars impossible, the stars sure. Glowing spheres of gases & energy, they were the very embodiment of illumination; and what they essentially were— light— travelled headlong to the Earth at the fastest speed known to roomankind. It was strange to know this speed, and how that by which one saw was a measurable thing in motion, coming from outer space.

And now, turning around the sun, it’s Father’s Day.

And MC K-Roo reached into his pouch & extracted a small book by a beloved authoroo who had also not long ago recently passed: Small Memories, by José Saramagoroo— specifically the hardcover & dust-jacketed English edition, priced in British pounds. On the lower half of the cover: an illustration of a father & his son, the father’s arm around his son, they’re sitting up against a tree, looking up at stars, constellations. It caused The Furry Fury to tear.

K-Roo had put on some weight, as he was sadly wont do. Having been spoiled with sweets by his grandmotheroo when little had created a trajectory which turned out, years later, to be a little bit tricky at times. Yet a first-world problem if ever there was one was weight gain. The evening was a Saturday night; and in the City, one needn’t a calendar to tell, just a window out onto the streetlamp- & starlight-lit world of skirts & dress shirts outside.
It was an odd imprisonment, the imprisonment of oneself in the present on account of one’s actions in the past. Such actions affected the future always, and by simple virtue of physics & one’s death ever-impending, accordingly posed an extremely serious problem.

The present is what everyroo has. The future is all that anyroo has the ability to shape, make in accordance to his or her will [in the present] or no. There are obvious conditions & impediments as regards this edict of sorts, but suffice it to say for roos living in the West in 2014: a lot tended to be fixable. At all events & speaking solely for himself: K-Roo had to readily admit that any shortcomings in his current appearance were due largely to his own failures & missteps, and all having occurred over a definable period of time. And while it went went without saying that not everything in this world could be fixed, it also might be said that it was a terrific waste of time & energy to be troubled by broken things that, with some time & other energy, could be set back into working order.

§

It happens in life that sometimes a kangaroo sees a rooette so stunningly attractive that he remembers the image of her— a perfect strangeroo (and all the periphera about the scene & moment in which she’s seen)— for the rest of his life. Depending entirely upon the mood of a given, later moment in which the beautiful strangeroo’s image is recalled: either great inspiration & a potential for new life is felt, or else the diametric opposite thereof— generally in the form of a cue for self-loathing.
Poochypouch wasn’t feeling so inspired or loveable this evening. He wasn’t feeling all that well at all, in fact. The morning mirror reflected a total absence of the jawline he’d just a couple or so weeks ago had— a fact wholly unsurprising given the great quantity of ice cream he’d recently eaten versus the paucity of hours he’d exercised or for that matter even slept.
But not feeling it interesting to dwell upon the mistaken ingredients of his last few weeks, he decided to digress to a more substantial problem. [All the while: knowing full-well that his “more substantial problem” directly resulted from that which he neglected dwelling upon.] Riding his bicycle in Manhattan today, K-Roo saw one of the most beautiful black-haired rooettes he’d ever seen in his life. Trackstanding at a stoplight as she passed, his neck was made of rubber. No chance with her did he have. Her legs were unprecedented. The whole situation was just amazing. He’d never even used the word “unprecedented” in describing anotheroo’s legs before, but that was the fact of what they were. She looked amazing, was beautiful. Just the realization of his total lack of chance— the unlikelihood of her eardrums even registering his voice— was as astounding as it was depressing. Nevertheless: in a split second he was ultimately grateful for the moment, as it let him know where he stood.

Over time & in the best and worst of such times: MC K-Roo had to admit that he was not always comfortable in his body. Lucky was he to have known times when he in fact was; but it was his largely self-created problem that he presently existed in a time in which he was not. Life can kill— just because it feels like so doing; and this time around it did, and so a part of him felt pretty dead accordingly. So here it seemed was a fork: he could thusly continue to be dead in that one way, or he could get on with it & die in another. Understanding metaphor, Platy once mused, was in all likelihood the world’s primary hope for forging through its present darkness, the only finger holding fast betwixt the neck & the noose. The winter of 2013–14 was long & with menace; but now, however, the spring was here. (Was it not?)

K-Roo poured himself a light beer. He was switching off between it & non-alcoholic beer, as the idea of drinking less appealed to him. Everything was in the balance. He’d experimented with sobriety before & rode the wagon for some months, eventually jumping off for fact of the fit not feeling quite right. The middle ground posed a project worthy of investigation: not infrequently did either/or relations tend to create new problems in place of the old ones “solved”— not least of all by frequently presenting false dichotomies. K-Roo was currently looking for something different, and if in the end he didn’t find it: then at least he’d have had the experience of having tried.

The out-of-his-league rooette bicycling upon the bicycle remained in mind. The night wasn’t great. He poured another & wrote. To the tune of the great 1982 Altered Images song I Could Be Happy, he— quietly & in his room, softly before sleep— penned a slightly revised version as follows:

Trapped in a body on a Saturday night
I could be happy, I could be happy
Clothes aren’t fitting ’cause they’re feeling too tight
I could be happy, I could be happy
You’ve gained some weight & now you wish didn’t
I could be happy, I could be happy

All of these things I do
All of these things I’ve done
To get away from… what?
Get away, run away, far away, holding on
Get away, run away, far away, where am I?
Just here again.

Trapped in a body on a Saturday night,
I could be happy, I could be happy
Beautiful rooettes out donning spandex so tight
I could be happy, I could be happy
Well-groomed roos link their arms on the street
I could be happy, I could be happy

All of these things I do
All of these things I’ve done
To get away from… who?
Get away, run away, far away, holding on
Get away, run away, far away, where am I?
Just here again.

Their laughter trails off as I stare at my feet
I could be happy, I could be happy
Their bedroom door opens, the room remains dark
I could be happy, I could be happy
Fur against fur and a few static electricity sparks
I could be happy, I could be happy

Get away, run away, far away, holding on
Get away, run away, far away, where am I?
Get away, run away, far away, oh how did I?
Get away, run away, far away, please help me now
I’m here again.