Tower of Babel

Wandering through this maze of broken down buildings, cracking asphalt and cement, stepping over people lying in the street, smelling the ashes of the burning remains of a once prosperous society, I rounded a corner and there it stood. The Ivory Tower, so beautiful and majestic, reaching up through the clouds, so tall the top is barely visible. I had heard it was the place to be. Many a man had spent his entire lifetime laying the foundation and stones for this tower and never got to see the top. Many a pilgrim had traveled to his holy hill in search of this tower and here I stood now at its base. What lies before me is stairs, lots of stairs. They wind upwards in a spiral to the top. Me, being a man that always reaches for what is beyond his grasp began to climb. I climbed and climbed stopping to catch my breath from time to time, highly anticipating what awaited me at the top. Finally, weeks later, I am hungry tired and thirsty, I reach the top floor. As I step off the last stair, a hallway lies before me with a huge chandelier hanging from the ceiling. I walk down the hall and open a door. I walk into the room, dimly lit, a ray of light pouring in from a window. I walk to the window and as I look down at the ghetto I had left and realized that it wasn’t all that far down. Here I was looming high above it all. It looked different but somehow the same.

I turned my head just in time to see a cork flying past me, attached to a line with a lead and a hook baited with a plump night-crawler, squirming in the air. I looked to see where the line came from. Then I noticed I was standing in a bathroom with an old man sitting on the commode fishing out of the bathtub. He stared blankly ahead, mouth slightly ajar. I walked over to the bathtub, full of water with nothing but a few bubbles and a rubber ducky floating around aimlessly; the worm squirms and writhes on the end of the hook, its body secreting an oily residue into the water. I turn my gaze to the old man and ask, “What are you doing?” He seemed puzzled by the question and turned his gaze toward me for just a moment. “I’m fishing.” He said with a shrug and continued to stare ahead blankly.