My grandfather took a strip of paper
"Do you want to see something magic?"
He asked
I nodded
"Look," he said
"One side, two sides
But if I give it twist before I glue it, it only has one side"
I knew that was imposible
I took a pen and traced along it and wound up
Somehow
Back where I began
"Only one side!" he said
"What do you think will happen if I cut it? Into two? Along the middle of the strip?"
"Two loops?" I said
He showed me how to cut, and I cut along the strip
It opened into one enormous loop
Then he made anothеr strip, this time he twisted it twicе before he glued it
I cut
Now there was two loops, alright
But they were linked, connected, one through the other one
"Magic." I said
"That's right," he said, "magic!
It's all in the twist. It's the twist that brings you back where you started."
And I'm walking along along the strip now
Thinknig that there are two sides to every question, two sides to every coin
That the world is what I think it is
And that memory plays you straight
And nothing is tricky
And I'm walking on
I build a place, and I plan my life
And every time I plan the world twists
Not much! Just a half turn from where I thought I'd be
And the plans are somehow on the other side of where I wanted to turn up
And when I try to cut someone out of my life, I discover we're still linked
There's back and there's forward, when I start out
But the further forward I go, I'm no further away from back!
I'm a child, and I'm an adult, and I'm a parent, and I'm a grandfather
And in the end I'm returning to a place I remember
When we forget:
When we forget everything
Forget the past as we forget the future
Then the last twist takes us back
And so I'm showing a small child how to make a mobius strip, take the paper, and I give it half a twist before I glue it down
I'm old now, and I'm young
I'm somewhere on the strip
We all are, walking the sign of infinity into the darkness
And I'm looking for signs of a life, in a memory
Reflected in the mirror, I'm a mobius strip
We all are
We only ever see one face, it's the twist that brings you back where you started