Monday, October 19, 2015

October 19, 2015 - The Blue Thief


The blue is dripping out of the hydrangeas now.  They have sprung a leak and it can’t be fixed.  I’ve tried to tape it, but it didn’t work.  I’ve tried glue and packing them with sand and soldering them, but it hasn’t worked.  The blue is still dripping out, and there’s very little left.  I thought I might save some for myself, horde it for hard times, but I was wrong.  A thief has come in the night and stolen the blue.  He has beaten me to it.

Stolen by the thief . . . the blue.

While I was busy fretting over the blue, the green was also compromised.  The thief saw that I was busy with the blue, and he had a great amount of time to steal the green, which he did so in huge portions.  Like an exhausted firefighter, I’ve run from one area to another putting out fires, and while I’ve been gone, the area I just paid attention to has gotten raided once again by the thief.

You won’t find him, no matter how hard you try, and believe me, I’ve tried.  You could set up a camera to watch all night, and you’ll never see a thing.  Yet in the morning, you will find that the thief has struck once again.  Yet again, he has stolen more of the blue and green in the night.  Once again, he has violated a sacred trust.

But there is another side to it.  The thief tells a different story.  He says that he is not a thief.  He says that he made a bargain with the hydrangeas, and they did not keep their side of the bargain.  He says that the deal was for a certain amount of energy, although he will not tell me how much, and he says that for a while the hydrangeas kept to their part of the deal.  But then they became lazy, he says.  They stopped fulfilling their part of the bargain.  Each day they gave less and less until he could let it slip no longer.  The thief says he is only taking what is rightfully his.

He has not told me what his part of the bargain was.  He has not said what he bartered in return for the energy.  I asked the hydrangeas, and they turned their tired heads to the sun but said nothing.  That is not an answer, although I suspect that the hydrangeas were not the only ones to welsh on the deal.  It doesn’t matter now.  It’s too late, and the blue is dripping everywhere.  Tomorrow the rain will wash the last few drops away that the thief has left behind, and then the debt will be repaid.  Whatever it was, it will be done and over, and there’s no turning back now.