The Lost (last) thoughts of Christopher Rabbit

In his last interview, Christopher Rabbit handed me a notebook. He said it was the only personal possession he valued and he entrusted it to my care to do with it what I will, for he had no Will to leave a will for the other more mundane things that marked his existence. I noticed, though, that it was with some hesitancy that he removed a pen from that notebook and laid it on the small table next to where he sat.

He told me that in all his years, and they had been many, he had never been out front but never been behind, and always found himself hopelessly lost somewhere in the middle, a nameless face in an often unruly crowd motivated by greed or fear to run this way or that, and that since his cries could never rise above those of the others, he began to pen his thoughts, his daily musings, on the pages of the notebook that he handed to me, which he likened to messages placed into a bottle by a lone lost survivor on some unknown island who had no one to talk to but himself and who was forced to amuse himself daily with the conversation of his own thoughts which he would pen and then dispose of into the great sea of life, which swallowed them much like the great empty void between the ears of those he ran with swallowed his daily cries.

After so many years of thinking and writing, he found no answers, but he did find great comfort in losing himself in the daily pondering of the little things in life, which were many, and like a great garden kept him busy all his days. Thus, he entrusted those thoughts to me, his only friend, not because it offered me any answers, but because it captured the many riddles of life with which he found so much daily pleasure working to solve each morning like a endless crossword puzzle over his morning tea.

Tea? I asked. Yes he said. Are you an English Rabbit I asked? No he said, but I’ve often thought about England.

He did hand me the pen and asked me to write something down on the last page, somewhat as a post script. I tried to hand the pen back.  He kindly deferred and asked me to write the following: “The language of love is best expressed through the intimacy of personal idioms that cause your lover to smile but no one else.”   I asked if this puzzle was for me, and he smiled and said, if it was for you, you would be smiling right now and not asking questions, but no offence dear friend, I love you too.