The Fall Of Pinocchio

     Pinocchio touches his nose, tells himself a lie, and laughs.
Pinocchio is happy to look like a human, to have a heartbeat,  be
warm,  and  to  live  a normal life.  But, Gepeto  was  old,  and
animals don't live long, soon Pinocchio will be alone.  Time will
pass and Pinocchio will become an old man.  He never has any  new
adventures; he has no need, having been assured by others of  his
identity.   Maybe he gets married, maybe he has kids, but  he  is
always alone for he has no soul.
      Sitting as an old man at a window, looking out and back  to
his  tree days, perhaps he realizes how much has been taken  from
him.   He  was a puppet before a man, and a tree before a puppet,
what kind of soul should he have?  A tree's? a man's? the soul of
the puppet he has always been?
      Does he remember his tree times?  Does he remember being  a
sapling, growing, striving towards the sun, being cut down in his
prime?   Can  he recall his lack of rushing blood,  his  lack  of
heart, heat, and human form?
      He  was  a  boy of wood, and because of that kidnapped  and
exploited, led on an adventure resulting in being swallowed by  a
whale.   This could never have happened to a human boy!  Only  an
inhuman  one could have survived, yet Pinocchio never feels  less
alive because of it.  In the end he dies, sacrificing himself  to
correct  the  results  of his mistakes.   At  this  moment,  when
Pinocchio is laying down his life for his actions, that  is  when
he  becomes a human.  When the fairy resurrects him, she does  so
at the cost of his soul.
      What conclusion can he bring from his return but that he is
not  responsible for his actions, that he is being  rewarded  for
his good deeds, regardless of the fact that he caused their need?
He  also  loses his wooden body for a human one, for  becoming  a
wooden  boy with a wooden conscience.  In this instant, he  loses
his  greatest  possessions, and his souled humanity  is  bubbling
away  from him, like the sea water evaporating off his  hot,  new
skin.   For  Pinocchio  has found a wooden  soul,  and  a  wooden
conscience,  neither  suitable for  men,  neither  surviving  the
transformation.
      As  an old man, he sits on a chair, looking at the sea  and
thinking of his rebirth.  Slowly, a sense of loss comes  to  him.
Like  a  cartoon character who realizes he ran off the cliff,  in
search  of  a  goal he believed was ahead, but was truly  on  the
ledge, he falls, screaming and scared, the whole way down.
      He  realizes he was not destined to be a human; he  had  no
human  morals nor human conscience.  Right was a shrinking  nose,
wrong  was  a  growing one; but human noses  do  not  give  moral
advice.   He has no internal measures, and his rebirth has  taken
the ability to form them away from him.
      His  rebirth was a push off a lifelong cliff; he has fallen
almost  the  entire  way.  Still laughing  an  old  man  shivers,
sliding out of his chair, looking in terror through the layers he
has  fallen,  layers that did not seem as long, as important,  on
the  way down.  He hits bottom, and wood again encases his  body,
and a great tree grows over his grave.