It’s like if you’re a knight and your Yoda comes to you and says, ‘Today’s the day, kid. You’re going to fight the dragon. Best of luck, it sounds like a bloody big one.’ He pauses so that you can hear the dragon’s roar, distant but getting closer. ‘Come on, let’s go down to the armoury and you can pick your weapon.’
So down you go, glowing with courage because even though you’re bricking it this was what you were born to do, the fight you’ve been waiting your whole life for even though you sometimes managed to distract yourself, sometimes forgot for a little while.
And now here you are in the armoury, and you look around at the weapons you can choose from and it’s an easy decision to make.
‘I’ll have the Uzi, please,’ you say, and the armoury guards nod approvingly like you’ve made a good choice, the same choice they’d have made, but Yoda shakes his head and says no, that’s not the right weapon for this job. Look over here, there’s a handful of glitter right here, why don’t you pick that?
You’re used to this sort of mysterious guff because yodas gonna yoda, but it does seem a bit insensitive when you’re trying to make such a momentous life-and-death decision. But you don’t want to fall out with him today, a day when you might actually be burned to a small grey smudge by a dragon, so you smile and say, ‘Okay, I guess bullets aren’t going to pierce the dragon’s hide anyway, I’ll take that massive broadsword and try to get to the vulnerable spot beneath his breastbone with it.’
And the guards make approving noises because this seems like a reasonable strategy, but the Yoda sadly shakes his head again and nods towards the handful of glitter.
And you wonder what he’s playing at but you go and inspect the handful of glitter anyway, and it just looks like a handful of glitter. It’s very pretty, and twinkles nicely in the candlelight but the point is, how the fuck are you supposed to face a dragon armed only with a handful of glitter?
You’re losing patience now. ‘What is this?’ you demand. ‘You want to send me out to fight a dragon with a handful of glitter?’
And Yoda shakes his head and says, ‘I have no choice. I have to send you out. And because I love you I want to arm you as best I can for the fight you have ahead.’
‘But don’t you think an Uzi would be more effective against a dragon?’
‘How many dragons have you heard of being slain with an Uzi, my child?’
‘Well, none.’
‘And what about a broadsword?’
‘Well, none, obviously. But maybe I’ll be the first, I can only try, right?’
But even as you say it you begin to understand what he’s telling you, that this is a fight you cannot win. You’re going to die. You’re going to go out there and get killed and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it whether you’re wielding an Uzi or a broadsword or anything else. And you’ve known it all along, even though you’ve sometimes managed to distract yourself and forget about it. And you want to curl up into a ball and sob because suddenly you’re really scared, scared of pain, of death, of never seeing your beloved Yoda again, but when you look at his face you see that he is in as much pain as you are. You bow to him and he kisses your forehead and then slowly trundles out of the armoury.
You pick up the handful of glitter and look at it. It twinkles and sparkles.
‘But what is this stuff?’ you shout after him and a single word echoes down the corridor back to you: ‘Love.’
And then you know that he’s given you the best he had to give. Because what are you going to reach for as the gunman opens fire, as the tower goes down? You reach for your phone, to tell your friend or your mother or your lover or your child: ‘I love you.’
Because like Amis said, when the world turns upside down and the screens go black, love is the only thing left that’s solid, the thing we reach for.
Still, it seems a pitiful weapon, not nearly enough and certainly not something you can use to defeat a dragon but there are only two possibilities left anyway, die on your feet or die on your knees, so you grip your ridiculous handful of glitter and even as you do you can hear the roar of the dragon drawing closer to the castle, so you summon every bit of courage you ever had and suddenly it’s easy, there are no choices left to make. You’re shit outta options. You know what you have to do, what you were born having to do.
So you hold your head up high and march towards the castle gates and they swing open to let you out and you’re about to jump on your horse, but he’s a good horse, has served you well in your knighting, so instead you give him a carrot with your spare hand and march off towards the nearby hill, from behind which are emanating the most unearthly roars.
And as you reach the brow of the hill you look down and see an enormous creature writhing like a serpent, its breath a furnace, claws the size of dump trucks, its scaly hide vast and impenetrable, and you realise that you’d have had no chance with an Uzi or a broadsword anyway, no one ever killed a creature like this with such a weapon and you look down at your handful of glitter, which seems to be twinkling and shining brighter than before and you hold it up to the sky. As the dragon turns its monstrous head towards you and begins to open its flaming maw you hurl your handful of glitter and its mouth opens and out comes a great burst of flame right spiralling towards you and everything goes blac