The Fifth Element

Everywhere I look in this town I see one beautiful porch after another. Every walk I take I want to capture at least a dozen images of these porches. This is a fairy land here with rows of cottages. My friend Cindy introduced me to the Fifth Element today, and I believe that's what McKinney is. Cindy pointed out to me in the book, B is for Beer by Tom Robbins, exactly what the beer fairy calls the fifth element.

"...That's right, another basic component of reality, one that's as nourishing as Earth, as shifty as Water, as invisible as Air, and as dangerous as Fire."

The beer fairy continues with: "I'm only labeling it an 'element,' understand, because it doesn't fall into the category of animal or vegetable or mineral. It disobeys the laws of physics and it moons the rules of logic, just as the two of us have been doing today, actually, although you seem to have taken it completely in stride. What is it? Some people call it transcendence, some used to call it magic...before that word got used up.

"It's a mixture of pure love, unlimited freedom, and total, spontaneous, instantaneous knowledge of everything past, present, and future--all rolled up in a kind of invisible ghost-sheet enchilada that can be periodically smelled and occasionally tasted, but rarely chewed and never, never digested..."

"There are those who regard it as a blast of divine energy, originating in Heaven, maybe, or in Another World. There're also people who are content to refer to it simply as the Mystery, and that's as good a term as any, I guess, although I'm rather fond of the jazz musician who, in a different context, once called it hi de ho."

"...they (people) are unconsciously pulled toward it, they hunger for it, they yearn to connect with it, to get next to it, even to merge with it."

"...adults still thirst for that connection, that alternative to the unsatisfying reality men have constructed for themselves, and which they feel locked into like a dungeon.

So, they resort to all sorts of things--a few enlightened, many destructive, most ineffective, some just plain silly--that might allow them even a breath or two outside the prison walls. To a certain extent, that explains the appeal of beer.

"Beer, if it's just the right amount--not too little and definitely not too much--may on occasion transport one through that crack and carry one close enough to the gates of the Mystery that one's granted a quick but entirely rapturous peek inside.

'"What's it look like?'

"The fairy smiled and rotated her wings. 'Everything. And nothing. Both at the same time. What does the electricity inside your atoms look like? What do forever and laughter and liberty look like? It's the face everybody shared before they were born and the joke they'll finally get after they're dead. It's the meaning of meaning, the other that has no further, and the which of which there is no whicher.'

"Be warned. When considering beer as a vehicle, one had better bear in mind that it's hardly reliable transportation. It's a very old cart, in fact; a wagon pushed and pulled by forgotten forces, by agricultural spirits, the ancient spirits of grain and the land. It's a wagon, my dear, that can easily swerve and run off the road."

So, therefore, dear readers, I am in the Fifth Element here in McKinney, Texas. It's the epitome of transcendence and magic! And especially at this time of the year when all the flowers are in bloom, including the magnificent magnolias. Fairies abound. I'm house sitting for some friends on vacation and while watering their hydrangeas this morning, I noticed a new subdivision of fairy condos. They are everywhere, my friends. Ah, relax and enjoy the magic that surrounds us all!