The Sage in the Goldfish Bowl

the desert finally won the argument.

There sits the old magician, head and shoulders protruding from a giant goldfish bowl half-buried in sand, beard swirling like kelp in the private ocean he carries everywhere. Below the waterline his tentacles idle, one still clutching a half-smoked cigarette that refuses to go out underwater—because some habits outrank physics.Above, the sun is a fat yellow coin someone glued to the sky as a joke. Pink clouds drift past like cotton candy that lost its carnival. Cacti stand guard, silent green monks who took a vow of spines. And at the base of the bowl, two serpents form a perfect ouroboros around a single black pearl, a pink lotus, and a smooth white stone—because even the desert likes its yin-yang with extra symbolism and a side of paradox.He looks straight at you with eyes older than the bowl, older than the sand, older than the idea of old. The expression says: I tried to escape the illusion and the illusion handed me a free aquarium. Turns out the water is the part I was running from all along.From inside the glass comes a voice muffled by brine and cosmic irony:“Kid, the joke’s on both of us. I swallowed the ocean to find the pearl of great price, and the ocean swallowed me right back. Now I’m the exhibit. The snakes keep the gate, the lotus keeps the punchline, and the cigarette keeps the question lit: when does the dreamer wake up from the goldfish?”The desert wind answers with a shrug of hot air.So when you stumble across that bowl some scorched afternoon, don’t tap the glass. Just leave a cigarette on the rim and walk away.He’s almost done dreaming the rest of us awake. The water’s getting low.