In the winter of his life, Nathaniel, a fruit rat, is bored, angry and depressed. Even his longsuffering wife, Birgit is becoming impatient with his litany of complaints and ailments. He has grown increasingly self-focused possessing little interest in his colorless world. Sometimes he wistfully recalls his adventures as a young rat in search of life’s meaning. But then again, he thinks that what seemed profound then, now feels banal and mundane.
Life changes for Nathaniel when he encounters an old friend, the eccentric old possum, Mr. Leach who blames Nathaniel’s “wretched state” on his attempts to claim others’ epiphanies as his own. “One creature’s epiphany is another creature’s folly. To discover your own truth, you must engage and extract. The lessons your life wants to teach you must be extracted, mined, extricated, yanked, torn, and even ripped from your experience”.
Nathaniel learns the art of engagement and discovers a world brimming with intriguing complexities; joy and sorrow, victories and setbacks, justice and injustice. But engagement without extraction is nothing more than sensation without interpretation. What does it mean? And what is that worth? Nathaniel is challenged by Mr. Leach to extract the meaning from his experience where he learns more about himself than those whom he engages. Along the way, his learnings are accompanied by Blues tunes he spontaneously composes that clarify the relationship between his melancholy and the lessons life wants to teach you and he wants to know.
Went down to see my old friend’s house,
best friend I ever had.
Now he’s gone away and left this world,
and oh, I feel so sad.
I’ve got my-friends-are-dyin’ blues.
That’s right, my-friends-are-dyin’ blues.
In time you’ll learn the truth, that everything you love,
you will lose.