Prophets, Poets or Comedians: who gets to Exit...

Sartre's drawing room?

My husband just walked in, looked me intently in the face, held up a glaringly orange box with bugs drawn on it, pointed to it sharply, and with fervor said, "There will be a piece of paper on the ground out there. Don't pick it up. It's not trash." I presumed said paper related to this box. Such is the secret-bait he hopes will rid our house of ants. (One man's treasure is another man's...) He made his point carefully, knowing well my tendency to scoop up and scrap various-and-sundry-things long before he is finished with them.

Tell me, (speak even though tonight, an existential bogle whines in my ear) somewhere out there...might it be...that a sheep resides in the wolf's clothing for a change? And in these days of Sartre's drawing room--the one that doesn't wait for death to be like hell, tell me: who will be judged fit to exit, when that exit be found?

• Is it the comedian I heard off-handedly claiming his obesity is a lot like global warming, "Sure it's a bad thing, but what can I do about it?" Is there a door for him?
• "Suffering sometimes serves as a moat and sometimes as a bridge," Yancey intuits as he describe a retreat he attended designed to mingle peoples: Muslim, Christian and Jew. They found little commonality in the abstract: but in the context of shared suffering, found much more. He should have a door, but will his new friends go through it, too?
• "One foot in Eden still, I stand/And look across the other land./The world's great day is going late,/Yet strange these fields that we have planted/So long with crops of love and hate," said Edwin Muir. But he stopped rattling around the apartment half a century ago. And his words, though lovely, were a long echo.
• "The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,/the fly her spleen, the little spark his heat:/The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small/And bees have stings, although they be not great;/Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs;/And love is love, in beggars and in kings," said Sir Edward Dyer. I certainly think he at least found a window to look through in his day.
• And as for the prophet-poet, read and see, the song of Jotham, the Parable of the Trees:

8 "The trees once went forth to anoint a king over them.
And they said to the olive tree,
'Reign over us!'
9 But the olive tree said to them,
'Should I cease giving my oil,
With which they honor God and men,
And go to sway over trees?'
10 "Then the trees said to the fig tree,
'You come and reign over us!'
11 But the fig tree said to them,
'Should I cease my sweetness and my good fruit,
And go to sway over trees?'
12 "Then the trees said to the vine,
'You come and reign over us!'
13 But the vine said to them,
'Should I cease my new wine,
Which cheers both God and men,
And go to sway over trees?'
14 "Then all the trees said to the bramble,
'You come and reign over us!'
15 And the bramble said to the trees,
'If in truth you anoint me as king over you,
Then come and take shelter in my shade;
But if not, let fire come out of the bramble
And devour the cedars of Lebanon!'

• And even now, my husband and son cry out from the doorway, standing just at its thresh hold. "Holy Cow! Look at the ants!" The creatures who would invade come in droves for that drop of sweet poison given, impatient because they have no leader, dying because we, too, refuse to sway over them, as trees they be.

So finally I draw a conclusion about this elusive exit from the anguished drawing room. A higher purpose--higher than a life spent swaying over trees--this is the pixie dust, the magic carpet, the talisman of transport. I stay here long enough now for this epilogue, but now that I've found the door, well...