Saturday, October 16, 2004
Sipped Notes
~
"What about the edge of the universe?" he asked, I didn't know the answer but it was still a good one to tinker with, over tea. I'd been in a drought of mental sorts, literarily too I suppose, but watching the machines act and react, I had no choice but to follow the flow of the rivers I once knew. Sure there were sandier and dusty times behind -- and surely more ahead -- but I'd come to figure that it was all part of the grand creator's design, loaded into the master hardware and set to stir, ages once before.
And in the perpetual meantime, I liked spending my minutes and hours with the cat -- purring, rolling, giving him fresh water. It was humane and warming and bore the hallmarks of nurturing both senses of sincerity and calm. It was the warm afternoons that I never ventured out: spoiled by the whipping tentacles of a nearby fan, I'd drop some pressed plastic and fill the airwaves with the sounds and sultry syllables sung softly swinging from mangrove to mangrove. Mangroves are beautiful, by the way, twisting in their randomness -- their path set ablaze, ages ago, in the grand template -- similar in chaos to a perfectly-knotted necktie, steadfast and uncompromosing in commitment to its particular master's early morning whim.
So we got to thinking about this universe's edge thing and while the thought stretched our imaginations, the cat purred sweetly against my calf. The moment held and for that suspended, serendipitous juncture, I thought, then knew, then finally came to understand that it had always been alright to stare at the sun. The understanding materialized in the same vein as do dreams hussling their stories across the back of our eyes, unable to be ignored (in the same way that streetfights or the smell of picnics never, truly, exit our concious and revert to pure invisibility).
It was just the right kind of afternoon and so I peeked upward, gave a wink, a nudge, a fleeting, flirting glance and, for the first time, held nothing back. In return, it unflichingly stared back with a fiery and holy sainthood. It was warm and felt good. Yes, and it was then that it dawned on me that this primordial oracle had been here since the beginning: before oxygen and carbon, before Tut or Alexander or Hammurabi or Christ -- a full-circle affair and it stood, looming, in our sights, the whole while. Gazing, peering, staring, waiting for us to return the favour.
There it was: the edge of the universe: the smiling of every child and the naming of every species and unknown. The universe was itself the very instantaneous collective of knowledge that we would all automatically and painlessly absorb after every blade of grass was mowed and each sidewalk bombed clean of its playtime chalk. It would be then -- and only then -- that the human contradiction would crystallize. Until that hour, we seemed condemned to sit in our own murky waters, staring at our toes, agitated, waiting to push up daisies.
S*
2004.10.15-16
"What about the edge of the universe?" he asked, I didn't know the answer but it was still a good one to tinker with, over tea. I'd been in a drought of mental sorts, literarily too I suppose, but watching the machines act and react, I had no choice but to follow the flow of the rivers I once knew. Sure there were sandier and dusty times behind -- and surely more ahead -- but I'd come to figure that it was all part of the grand creator's design, loaded into the master hardware and set to stir, ages once before.
And in the perpetual meantime, I liked spending my minutes and hours with the cat -- purring, rolling, giving him fresh water. It was humane and warming and bore the hallmarks of nurturing both senses of sincerity and calm. It was the warm afternoons that I never ventured out: spoiled by the whipping tentacles of a nearby fan, I'd drop some pressed plastic and fill the airwaves with the sounds and sultry syllables sung softly swinging from mangrove to mangrove. Mangroves are beautiful, by the way, twisting in their randomness -- their path set ablaze, ages ago, in the grand template -- similar in chaos to a perfectly-knotted necktie, steadfast and uncompromosing in commitment to its particular master's early morning whim.
So we got to thinking about this universe's edge thing and while the thought stretched our imaginations, the cat purred sweetly against my calf. The moment held and for that suspended, serendipitous juncture, I thought, then knew, then finally came to understand that it had always been alright to stare at the sun. The understanding materialized in the same vein as do dreams hussling their stories across the back of our eyes, unable to be ignored (in the same way that streetfights or the smell of picnics never, truly, exit our concious and revert to pure invisibility).
It was just the right kind of afternoon and so I peeked upward, gave a wink, a nudge, a fleeting, flirting glance and, for the first time, held nothing back. In return, it unflichingly stared back with a fiery and holy sainthood. It was warm and felt good. Yes, and it was then that it dawned on me that this primordial oracle had been here since the beginning: before oxygen and carbon, before Tut or Alexander or Hammurabi or Christ -- a full-circle affair and it stood, looming, in our sights, the whole while. Gazing, peering, staring, waiting for us to return the favour.
There it was: the edge of the universe: the smiling of every child and the naming of every species and unknown. The universe was itself the very instantaneous collective of knowledge that we would all automatically and painlessly absorb after every blade of grass was mowed and each sidewalk bombed clean of its playtime chalk. It would be then -- and only then -- that the human contradiction would crystallize. Until that hour, we seemed condemned to sit in our own murky waters, staring at our toes, agitated, waiting to push up daisies.
S*
2004.10.15-16
