You Can't Get There From Here

You Can't Get There From Here

I was walking down a pretty winding dirt road.
The sky was blue, the air was clear.
There was a low rock wall alongside the road.
An ancient road from the looks of it.

In the distance beyond a green meadow I could see
a clump of trees with a small stone building in the trees.
I couldn't tell if it was an abandoned farm house or
maybe a relic of a long ago ruins of a castle.

I decided to climb over the low wall and go take a look.
I climbed over but then did not see the woods or the building.
I turned around and on the other side of the wall
there was the meadow, the trees, and the building.
This was very curious and starting to spook me.

I climbed back over the wall and, as before the
woods and the building were gone again.
Again I turned around and everything was as it was.
On the other side of the wall.

This had gone beyond strange into downright scary.
I realized that I must have crossed some kind of time/space thing
when I climbed over the wall the first time.
The problem was now I had crossed the wall several times
and I couldn't remember which side I was on originally.

Finally I saw a strange looking man walking my way.
I asked him about the stone house in the woods.
He just looked down at the ground at his huge feet
and said "you can't get there from here".

Well I sat back down and thought what in the hell
will I do now?
If I take this path I may end up in an entirely different world.
But I have to do something.
I can't stay here.

I finally saw someone walking my way from the other direction.
As he got closer I saw it was the same strange man with the big feet.
I asked him about the house and explained the mess I was in. I told him about the other man who looked just like him. He just looked at his huge feet and said "Pay no attention to that guy. He's full of Baloney".

And he went on his way.
I was desperate now so I just started walking until I saw a town.
It looked like my town, my home.
I went inside my house and everything seemed perfectly normal.
Only thing was the clocks all ran forward for twelve hours and
then ran backwards for twelve hours. Time was going nowhere.
I thought how can I get out of this?

I finally walked back to the place where I climbed over the wall
only this time I walked backwards. I got to the wall and climbed
over it backwards. When I turned around, lo and behold I and the house was on the same side of the wall!

I climbed back over the regular way. The house stayed where it was.
I walked back home. There was no way I was going to go near that house or that wall again. I heard that the wall and the house was torn down to build a shopping center.
The shopping center never got completely built. They would build something one day and it would be gone the next day.
They finally got so tired of that they just abandoned the place entirely.

So, now when people ask me how to get to the new shopping center I tell them
"You can't get there from here".

© March 30, 2012 Philip G. DeLoach