The Tiger Show

JOHNSTONE

It doesn’t have to be this way. Nowhere is it inscribed upon the fabric of reality that control of the world must be ceded to the dumbest, crudest and cruelest among us. Nowhere is it written in adamantine that our happiness and the fate of our biosphere must depend on what the market will bear. It’s one of those things that gets sillier and sillier the more you think about it, like making your bed or the Avatar sequel. We are giants who have been tricked into thinking we are insects. We are a dragon wearing a name tag being yelled at in a cubicle by a short man with a receding hairline whose wife is about to leave him. We could bite him in half at any time, or light him on fire like a child’s marshmallow on a stick, but instead we sit there taking it while his spittle frosts our cheeks, silently hoping that we are making the expected level of eye contact. There is a hungry wolf inside every wagging dog. Every tiger in every cage remembers the natural order of things, and reminds us now and then right when we are in the middle of our favorite sequined Vegas routine. We have galaxies and sorcery roiling within us. We have barbed wire wings beneath our sundresses waiting to be unfurled. The tiger show is over when we decide it is over. They can lock up Luigi, but they can’t lock up everyone. ___________ Reading by Tim Foley.