What you see, what you believe.

Day 1,151, 18:28 • Published in Canada Canada • by William Duncan

What you see : What you believe : A MYSTERY.


Clap !
Clap !
Clap !

...Goes three applauding, in perfect unanimity : Spiced so softly with a wonderfully comforting diversity.

Come then thirty ; half of whom, halft-heartedly, clapping ; the remaining, half-boo'ing, with one excessively cheering ; one, ominously warning. Trust me you that thirty millions following will with precise certainty prefer the sound of three harmoniously clapping ! it being to them the signal of so many sweet things by and by, now becoming ! 'Yes, yes!' But, oh, how that warning, still chyming, disturbs my belly like weird motions or strange rumblings... oh, nevermind ! it is but the stomach whining ! Surely my consent to the three wise men's clapping - and with me my whole country - cannot be mistaken ! "Take this," says my sad self, "Take this, one more poor piece of pleasing-thinking-pie, that - at least briefly (if memory's repetition serves me correctly) - does give a short taste of peace to your lonely, weary, busy beating little heart." And, strangely, as that very thought was whirling through my head, I swore I heard a tapping - yet (and to my pleasant surprise) t'was not tapping, but instead those same three men once more clapping ! My spirit now so fastly being lifted (so far from earth's roots, up to such heavenly, frightening heights) still - and I must report - though my spirits were thus fast rising (at the sound of the wise men's clapping), there was yet this quiet, inward motion moving - but oddly outward calling - soundless voice issuing some sense of... warning ? Oh, nevermind ! Now where was I ? Oh, yes : the clapping, the clapping !


... but what happens if the clapping stops ? I find myself as quickly falling, my lonely, weary little heart - busy with its unceasing beating - poorly equipped to catch me. The silence - like a cloud - surrounds me... it is a cold, dark and deathly kind of deafening. Once those three stopped their clapping, the crowds at once seemed to cease cheering, and suddenly everyone has left me... here, alone, to pray to thee to beware the sound of men's clapping ! And listen well to warnings, lest you (not heeding, nor listening) become an easy slave - a prey - to men's hands, which all too easily can begin or end their flapping.