Frank sat at his desk pondering the Theory of Diminishing Joy. By “his desk” he meant the one he found in his newly acquired office. Its current state was “acquired” by dictionary terms, if the dictionary involved doesn’t mention anything about real estate agents or paperwork. He was at downtown Boulder’s newest vacant property and he was waiting for a good time to call Mrs Simpson, his first client, to tell her the good news.
He assured her that discussing it over the phone should be fine but he wouldn’t do it while she was at work. He’d wait until she got home since her husband was probably working late. “Really? She asked. “Really,” he said. She would be happy to hear her husband was just a workaholic and not a philanderer.
The Theory of Diminishing Joy was the most promising supposition about the “magic tunnel mural” that he had read about from the internet links Sticks had given him. The magic tunnel mural was the name he gave to the underpass painting. It wasn’t really a good name, as far as he knew the tunnel was not magic but the mural seemed to be a different story. He wasn’t married to the name. He was hoping inspiration would come to him through the eddies of time that existed in Boulder. That eddies speech had set up shop in his brain and when you’ve lived in Boulder for a while it starts to get some credence.
He had spent quite a bit of time losing himself down the various internet rabbit holes of musings, pondering and conspiracy theories about the mural from locals and non locals alike. The best idea that he had come across was the theory of diminishing joy. Joy was a fairly large umbrella but for many in Boulder the main component was creativity and the theory states that as creativity diminishes so does joy. Creativity takes many forms and as it leaks away the mural gains another character, symbol or some representation of that creative force according to the theory.
The shadow man appeared fairly recently on the mural and there were few ideas as to what he represented. There were also no known incidences of any figure from the mural materializing and appearing before the public at least not without the help of psychedelics. Frank was positive he had not taken any psychedelics on purpose. It was Boulder and he supposed anything could happen but he hadn’t licked any stamps lately and he was pretty sure the water source was safe. Sure he could have accidentally ate an edible but they didn’t tend to give him, um people, hallucinations or so he had heard.
He thought about shadow man for a while and nurtured any embers of a thought that could explain what he represented but the weather had been dry lately and apparently his embers were stunted by fire safety. He was going to have to ask the shadow himself. It was getting dark and jovial sounds from the street beckoned to him so he called it a day and went to investigate. He was in need of joy these days and took the opportunity to grab some when ever he could.
Emerging from his building he found himself along the route for the annual parade of lights. Vehicles and people festooned with holiday lights were cruising down Pearl Street. There seemed to be more people than vehicles sporting various forms of light but this was Boulder and it could be a part of their daily ensemble. The sight briefly brought a smile to his face until across the way he spied a moving shadow obscuring some Christmas lights. He saw an opportunity to get some questions answered and ran after it.