I looked up into the sky, and suddenly everything was clear.  

The answers to the questions.  The questions to the answers.  The irrelevance of the entire line of speculation.

I received this knowledge from a cloud that was shaped like a sort of leperous duck.  It sounds silly, I know.  But I'm not crazy.  I didn't hear an all powerful voice booming from the heavens; I didn't receive the information through the fillings in my teeth.  If either of those things had happened, I would've immediately disregarded any conclusions I came to after that point and smartly admitted myself to a mental institution.

But that's not how it happened.

It was a day like any other day, which is usually unlike any other day at all.  After dragging myself out of bed for at least the 7,300th time and jump starting my system by antagonizing my adenosine receptors, I decided to go check the mail, it being past noon and all.  As I was meandering from my door to the top of the driveway, I was struck with the most powerful sensation to look up.

So I did.

At first I saw nothing of interest, and merely gazed lazily at the streaks of jet exhaust that cut the sky to ribbons.  After following one particularly impressive cloud of fuel waste for what seemed like seconds, I happened to come upon a severely abstract cumulonimbus.  It appeared that the cloud was trying its hardest to resemble a duck with one eye, clipped wings, and half a leg.

Now the first thought that came into my head was that the cloud really had no reason for wanting to imitate such an absurd looking mallard.  For one thing, hardly anybody would know just what it was trying to do.  Only those with severely abstract imaginations would stop to try to figure out the severely abstract image.  Others would pass by without a second glance, writing it off as any other rain cloud, looming and threatening to ruin your plans for an afternoon picnic with a sweetie.

The second thought that popped into my head was that, as far as I knew, ducks couldn't contract leprosy.  Or if they could, that it hadn't happened yet beause ducks were smarter than to hang out with people with rotting or missing limbs.  The more I pondered the situation, the less sense I could make of it.  Here was this severely abstract person, looking at a severely abstract cloud, which was trying to take the shape of a severely abstract creature.  It all seemed so severely abstract, to say the least.

That's when it hit me.

The acorn, that is.

Some feisty squirrel had chucked it at me from a tree.  And by doing so, he completely answered the query that had been running through my head endlessly.

What it told me was this:

Stop standing around with your head in the clouds trying to solve the unsolvable, or I'll smack you with my nuts.