Fool's Gold

He stepped into the ground. Off the verge of the unknown. With a knapsack full of nothing, turning his back on the Universe, The Fool thought he had reversed what was once pushed forward: Time. But the roses were rooted back to the grass. The golden sky and the sun came down, and the moon moved up into a dark night. The engravings were emptied, the money turned into dust, and the little black book closed back.

The Fool took a few steps back into what he had done. A few hours before, The Fool was fooled, perhaps, by the idea that the Universe created time to push life forward, for the day and night to be consumed one after the other. The Fool felt tempted to cheat fate and offer a trade to the Universe. To trade this irreversible succession of minutes for something with more value: for time to be consumed in the night, and the day to become a continued source of gold. Indeed, to turn the sun and the daylight into an endless golden sky, reversing time into a discontinued progression, pushing the hours forward to be consumed into the darkness of night.

Madman or genius, The Fool addressed the Universe with the trade and She did not say much about it. Instead, She delivered a little black book to The Fool. A black, leather book that contained engravings in every page. “The day and the night” is all the Universe said when presenting the black book, before going back to her solemn chambers. The Fool studied the book, trying to retrieve information from the engravings, attempting to decode the Universe’s most intricate force of nature. The sun had barely started to rise as the daylight reached the notebook pages and filled the engravings with golden light, filling them with meaning, power, direction, and solidifying into real gold. The Fool started to solve the crossword of time while he let his amazement trace the gold building up from the pages. The shining gold that was becoming a source of continuity. The Fool thought he knew what to do then. He pulled out the gold engravings one by one. Once all the gold was out, The Fool gathered the pieces and put them in a sack.

The Fool approached the local traders and traded off the pieces of gold for what seemed to be an unlimited amount of cash. The traders counted every golden piece as The Fool counted every bill in the $20,000 he had just received. The Fool left the premises with a knapsack full of money. The Fool was chasing every ray of sunshine as the brightness of the sun overshadowed the land, because time seemed to no longer be pushing him forward. He even picked a few roses off the ground for the sake of it. The Fool quickly approached the cliff of the land and opened up the little black book to let the daylight fill up the engravings again. And just when he was about to reach the sun, everything felt in reverse. The day decayed into the night, the roses returned to the floor, the money disappeared, and the notebook was emptied again.

The Fool felt cheated, but his ambition made him take a few steps forward into what he had to do now. The Fool waited by the cliff for the sun to come back out again, although time seemed to be quickly narrowing into the night sky. He waited for a couple of minutes and a new, orange sun came out the horizon. The Fool felt the weight of the gold back in his knapsack, the roses bloomed from his palms, and he approached the golden sky once again, further off the ground. The black book opened up and the engravings were filled up again. The Fool continued to walk towards the golden sky, looking into the eyes of the Universe, further away into the unknown. He finally stepped into

the moon and the dark sky of another night, where time reversed what was once pushed forward.