Prologue 

THE REALEST KIND OF FOLK!

“Hear ye! Hear ye!” the Town Crier cried.
“Time to wake up, and all is well!”

And thus it was
that morning gathered early in the heart of Real Town
(down at the corner where the depot’s full of books,
by the tick-tock clock like a toy we once knew):

runners pausing for a depot cup,
students and commuters
rushing to their nearby student desks and to their city work-spots
(like the classical musician about to hop the Symphony Express,
while the rock musician on the building’s other side
is searching—first of all—for shelter),
the shopkeepers, the market owners,
the hair-cutters, the healers,
the bakers, the bankers,
the dentists, the druggists,
and all the cast of human help it takes to keep them going,
and those who come to trade with them,
and those who come to meet and gather…

and, of course, our storyteller,
winding through this very town
in search of this very story,
which
(with all its infinite possible number of varieties)
now exists
(as it always has and always will)
in every village, hamlet, town,
and neighborhood-township-valley community
everywhere,
for:
this was an integrated town,
all possibilities blending in a colorful swirl
of practically indistinguishableness—
a fabric of the tightly woven ability to spontaneitize,
woofed across the warp of ever-transversing self-discipline,
the time and place being what they always were.

And quite a town it was!
Stacked like a fairy tale!
A wisp of all eternity!
Yesterday’s tomorrow
and best of days’ today!

And—once again like all towns everywhere and anytime—
peopled with the realest kind of folk!
And for this reason,
and for the many aspects of it we have yet to travel on,
the town in time
came to call itself Real Town.

And thus it was possible
for the Soothsayer to live next door to the Town Crier,
for the Lion Tamer to live on the circus training grounds
only a stone’s throw away from the Mad Scientist,
for Adam and Eve to live on the outskirts of Real Town,
and for the twin sisters Promise and Perfection
to live upon the ridge next door to Delia Urchin Fair.