After the Carnival
After the carnival the gutters are filled with leftovers. Bit-o-Honeys and questionable waxed paper-wrapped “taffy,” the plastic gold and silver coins flung from floats. The garish paper flowers lie there with the mashed cigarette butts and discarded souvenir cups.
After the carnival the floats and the art cars rest empty. No one knows what to do with them. They wonder why it mattered so much, all the tissue paper and foil and paper mache and glue. All the effort and expense. Or they remember what they hoped for and how far reality fell.
After the carnival ends what was grand is now garbage, is what I’m trying to say.
We wanted so much for ourselves, and we got it, I suppose. But it never really feels like enough, does it? It never really feels like anything that matters as much as we hoped it would.
Rivka Jacobs
Wow, short but sweet! Fine use of language to convey the sense of loss and altered context. You picked just a few images, examples, as evidence for your case. It’s almost like you are an archaeologist studying some archaic rite of the distant past. It also rings true for me, too. The “Bit-o-Honey and “taffy” wrappers really evokes memories for me.
The message is spot-on, also. And it’s a very simple observation that I think passes through everybody’s brain after an event like this.
Do you think that one of the reasons people start immediately to build new floats and prepare for next year’s parade or carnival is because when the current show is over, the emptiness, the uselessness of it all is disturbing, and people want to get involved in next year’s extravaganza to give themselves some meaning?
(Again, my comment is longer than the story. :)
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Beautiful turn of phrase, Cyn, and a powerful – if morbid – sentiment. Lovely, as always, and as always, lovely.
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