Road Remedies

SHADOW STORY
SEATTLE, Washington: A year ago, Hatboy – then known as the Inappropriate Beau – was scrabbling for an Australian visa. I worried that flatpack furniture had compromised my ideals.

More importantly, I wondered how to balance my life: the expedition – the dive into self and situation – then the retreat to home comforts. Catch and release. Or is that just a Catch-22?

A mere 12 months and 227 posts later, the blog Road Remedies is no closer to clarity. Except for the odd, sidelong glimpses of – could it be? – calm.

No, no, no. Don't look at it straight on. Calm's like a unicorn. Sidle up on the d@mn thing in your best car-wreck underwear ... Or just have one of your best friends draw a map.

You see, for Christmas, I received the Best Present Ever: my very own fairy tale. Edward Readicker-Henderson wrote – and Thurberly illustrated – The Bunny King: Shadow Story, first told when my momentum faltered after six weeks abroad.

A half dozen friends helped polish and prettify this slim volume, most notably Lisa Payne with her cover photograph of my Velveteen Rabbit. But the plot unfurls the same as the original's: all the bunnies seek the trajectory of their true shadow.

"Some, of course, never learned to see their shadows, and they went nowhere...

"Some found great danger along the way...

"And some stopped from exhaustion...

"And some found where their shadows stopped and they curled into that place and knew they were home."

I won't spoil the ending, because Edward could and should publish this, Sharpie Vonnegut-art and all. I'm a big enough kid to share my story.

Maybe it'll help others pull up their socks and push through a bleak patch.

I hear calm's out there, somewhere on the other side.

But shhhhhh. Don't scare it away...