After venturing long through scars over the land left by imperial ambition, I have returned. I walked into work this morning for the first time in almost two years; the sunlight reflected the dust, gleaming like floating silver pollutants of joy, before settling on the finely stacked and displayed rows of fine haberdashery. Top hats to trilbies, fedora's to fez's, each one waiting as a wife at the depot, waiting for the right man to carry it to never ending hours of blissful intimacy. An astute observer of the human condition, Chuck Jones brilliantly conveyed the way the correct headwear not only enhances but transforms the man.

Oh, the things I did! I volunteered to nurse meerkats, learned how to convince children to hide grenades, and went on a very special 'Pretzel bender' in Germany. My, my wit is almost as delicious as my confectionery indulgences!

Most of all, I got to travel with Gumptha before she returned to India. Although she will always remain a most special woman to me, we both knew it was time to part when she refused to recognize the inherently vain nature of elephants. I love their majesty, but why do they insist on painting themselves?

I am indeed pleased to be back. My good friend Spurlock still performs his Cirque Du Jazz, though his debut television performance on the Craig Kilborn show was an unmitigated disaster as his blowing smoke through his trumpet set off the smoke alarms in the studio and angered the painting elephant. That's the thing with elephant painting-they fail to see the beauty in the abstractions of natural happenstance.

I'm already excited to explore my home town again. Apparently Rove Jambers opened a new house of sparrows! Oh, how I love to suckle from the peapod of life. And though I must clean the dust from the rows of fine gentlemen's hats, I am still enjoying the rays created by their somnambulant floating through the glare of light. I am a table top and the rays of sunlight are my legs.