I like elephants: their soft trunk, wrinkled skin, and calming steps. Elephant's eyes are about the same size as humans. If you look closely, their gaze is quite forbidding, as if they are observing, examining, questioning. But most of the time, they are hidden tenderly beneath the long lashes or wrinkled skin. 

 

One day, an elephant goes falling behind and wanders into a mountain. This mountain is a bit different from the others. It's an imaginary mountain of mine. About what? My life, I guess.

 

The mountain is covered with ladders like a tea garden. Starting from the bottom, the longest floors mark my slow childhood years. With each year grown, the floor gets higher but slightly shorter. The seasons work differently here, too. Instead of four seasons a year, each year is entitled to a season. And it stays despite the passing of time. Flower seas will always cover the floor of spring, with a few forgotten picnic trash and the wild geese flying back from the south. The floor of summer is dull during the day: green grass, green tree, green everything. It's the dawn and night where magical things happen: fresh breeze, neon rain, and the empty street before sunrise. The floor of autumn is covered in all kinds of leaves: golden, orange, brown, etc. Everything comes more gently in autumn; people can chat while holding an umbrella on a rainy day; the wind is strong enough to send kites into the sky yet kind to the kite watchers. The floor of winter is a complicated one, I hate the brutal wind and gloomy sky, yet that's what makes the hazy sunlight even more lovely. Plus, there are beautiful yet bizarrely shaped bare trees.

 

The seasons don't go in order. Fall doesn't necessarily follow summer, and spring doesn't have to end winter. There could be flower seas after flower seas, or miles of bare trees and hazy sunlight. 

 

The elephant wanders in-between seasons as he climbs up or down this interconnected mountain. And here is something he sees. Always looking for meaning could be exhausting, but looking for metaphors in the meaningless could be fun.