An Ascension Message from Max

I was minding my own business, searching for my tennis ball, when I realized that the stream I’d just crossed was new. As the self-appointed cartographer of Sparkadia, I charted its headwaters to a spring in the Fields of Lost Memories—that’s a place outside of town where lost memories from all the dimensions grow on flowers. They are beautiful little treasures that bloom and pollinate every so often. However, it can create the most frustrating of all emotions: nostalgia. What’s even weirder is that you can get “infected” with someone else’s nostalgia! Nothing’s stranger than suffering from someone else’s nostalgia for times you’ve never lived. I do not remember “boy bands,” or “the halcyon days of the great bard,” but I’ve spent countless hours sniffing them out to scratch that nostalgic itch, only to find myself wondering what the fuss was all about. Guess some things require the context of the lived life.

Luckily, this new stream fueled up my own nostalgia for all my old animal chums back on my Earth. I don’t know where that is, but as I looked at my reflection, I saw my old pal Ginger looking back at me. She was quite the drama queen, but she had the most beautiful, sweetest little soul… for a cat. I dipped my nose to the water, to see if it smelled like her—she smelled like a pleasant blend of tortillas and mushroom soup. The water smelled like her! I got so excited I dipped my schnozz into the stream, inhaled the water, and then kinda choked in that infuriating way one chokes on water. When I regained my composure, I saw bubbles rising off the surface of the stream. In each one was a memory of my old animal buddies! How I miss them all… I watched a gust of wind carry the bubbles across the sky (which was a soft cyan color today) and scatter them across Sparkadia.

My own nostalgia, now deeply activated, must be scratched! If you have an image of an old animal friend of mine, be a pal and share it with me, Max, will you?