"Carousel"
by
Rebecca A. Varley
Gloomy day. Typical.The children are never satisfied. Screaming and fighting against youth. Little do they know this is the time to treasure. The tracks are especially irritable today, all the corners, jarring. The turns, especially fast. Every passenger too consumed to revere the beauty around, yielding even gloomier perceptions. Even the parents are particularly obnoxious today. They aren’t even pretending to admire their children. One is screaming business on a cell phone, remembering to look up at his now downtrodden little redhead only once, just in time for her to let out a bloody scream. One of the mothers is too consumed with hedonistic details of the previous evenings outing to notice her only son has burst into a violent tearstorm, having accidentally chosen the deceptively beautiful front horse, adorned with gold and flowers, but undoubtedly the fastest, most dangerous of the bunch. He continues to scream and she continues to disgust me. And life goes on. And the cycle continues.
Another group of unsatisfied mongrels, sticky-fingered and rotten, cotton candy escaping from their mouths, climb aboard mocking the shrill carnival music and its attempt to bring cheer to a world of decay. Chuggachugga skiiiiiirt.
Fastforward to another group. This one full of pukers and pouters. Fastforward to ungratefuls. Fastforward to gloomers. Screamers. Fighters. Ignorants. Spoileds. Each their own little unfortunate downward spiral. Skiiiiiirt.
And all along, I’m stuck here witnessing it. Alone. Completely. Utterly. Alone. Never, do they choose me. I ward them off well. Chugga shriiiiek.
Rewind to before they switched me to the back of the inside track, right behind the bucket seats. Before I stopped rising and falling. Rewind to when I was in the middle behind a beautiful gold number, on the outside track, perfectly positioned. When tempos and speeds were right, the corners were always a delicate balance of fast and slow. When I rose and fell gracefully, in synchronization with the then loveable sounds that resonated in the air. The children were children then. Innocent. Sweet. Laughing and gay. Enough to make one envious of their purity.
Fastforward to right now. The last group of kids for the night is stumbling around, their stomachs full of tilts and whirls, and they are attempting to find balance by riding out an old childhood memory. The music is slightly less brash than usual and for some reason the shrieks seem dulled.
And I see her.
She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Her eyes are intense and sincere and tell me she’d spotted me long before now. Long before today.
She is not a fluke; this is purpose. My purpose. She is here to set me free.
She is heading for me, humming melodically, sweetly, some gorgeous big band number full of brasses in tender embrace.
She gracefully positions herself side-saddle and faces the outside world, seeming to admire the bright lights and fresh air. No one is around but she and I and it could be no more perfect.
Gingerly, she runs her fingers over the smooth metal of my positioning pole, allowing her fingers to linger down to the crevices of my mane. She is admiring the idiosyncrasies.
She is a see-er. She sees life. Beauty. Balance. It is obvious in her mannerisms. Scooooot Scooooot.
The turns are gentle. Scooooot.
We ride together for what feels like three minutes of endlessness.
And to me, it is.
My existence starts and stops today. Now. In this moment. Completion.
Silence.
