physical science is not all
A journey not going anywhere is best for getting everywhere. It might start in a vast plantation of sunflowers, in amongst the seeds. Or reflect off the surface of a pond, mosquitoes dancing in their dimpled surface tension.
It's the ka-ching! of a cash register in China, overtones of the silk road, chariots of those brightly flaming sand mandalas, owing nothing to bankers. It grows in cascades of grapes over strictured arbors, dusting purple skins. The cat on a hot tin roof, hind legs dancing, meows at the front door to be let in. Kibbles in her bowl. And bull dozers, skyscrapers and bi-wing crop dusters making fools of Fleet Week as the concrete truck at the corner idles, churning its cud over and over. The entire process of a caravan everyone forgot at the moment of truth by the gas pump. Pale sunsets. Blue moons. A Venus highball with Mars on its toothpick. Idling out there, belching fossil farts, people on their way to Caffino Hut not really noticing, and the bright fall leaves coming down anyhow. Poetic as ever.
Chrome yellow, blast furnace red no painter ever mixed. Smell of fresh roasted coffee, bright, lengthening shadows, a brace of noses trying not to forget footsteps on the sidewalk fading out to forest dells where no one else goes.
Grapes in a revelation of past visions, a certain silence glanced in the clangor of turning gravel over which a crow flies due east, cracking jokes, and a line of children dancing under kites that will be launched one day.
six
What's to appreciate about gravel? What does it do? People, dogs, cats, even birds walk on it. Not looking. No need to glorify. Anyone reading this might join my mind, just as directly I share the mind of some authors I read, and the thought's the thing. No need to belabor it.
Spotted spurge, the bane of well kept lawns, is a filigreed favorite aunt, out for a stroll in the park. It's a colony of miniature mouse ears parked in a platitude of sun, sufficient for any number of sandwiches. But literal plumb bob danglers, pinky fingers splayed out for balance, do not see the point. Of course thus missing the whole thing.
This discussion will probably be compared, if anyone takes the trouble, with bringing coals to Newcastle, or planting tulips in the rain. On knees out in the cold and damp, how uncomfortable gravel can be. An imaginary segment of the audience will have sequestered itself, leading the radiance of mind away. And here is a comfortable fit with sun drenched eves, a house overflowing, glittering on the way down to innumerable small gullies.
Isn't it delightful? Let us prey. It's very plain, this Jew’s harp of light thrumming along. So after all, nothing's hidden.
Now we remember how at the beginning of the story someone said there was an elegant carriage, and just beyond, “I don' need no stinkin' bodge!” Cats, dogs, birds, chimney sweeps. All on the same page. Little gravel bits that, to the inattentive eye, all looked pretty much the same.
five
No plan is the best preparation. Universe opens up and spills out whatever is on its mind. Then snaps right back: MY mind!
And who else would it be? That's the A, B, and C of it. Previous incarnations of potato diggers have lined up by the side of the road, a crowd waving happily. Those ones that come out on a Sunday afternoon, looking like bunches of purple grapes in their lazy arbors, trying on shoes and sending telegrams (not tweets). If there is no God, She would have to reinvent Herself, galaxy by galaxy, stone by stone, bit by bit.
The purple grape diggers take a vote, and the result comes back a tie. How can She be democratic if there is no union shop? After all, isn't that the real question? Otherwise She'd be less than One. It ties Facebook up in knots, making faces at itself.
These are questions. As far as I can tell, it is supposed that entire populations come out to argue them. Huge rallies. Tear gas. Molotov cocktails. And for the frivolous, bulls are let loose in the streets to chase people for sport. Or it hangs looser where they gather to throw tomatoes at each other, possibly mocking blood.
In the shade of a walled square are some gentlemen who play Go. Can that game end in a tie?
The tradition of logic and writing needs an answer. The better that it may be pregnant with possibilities. I plead lack of preparation.
four
Having wrung the ads out to dry, I leave them on the fence. There remains the question of colored chalk. ? Well, a sidewalk is the ideal medium. No matter how bizarre. The red and purple door frames overlooking all, and Virginia creeper creeping over will get scuffled to dust. How appropriate.
True art drifts into the breeze, and every sunset worth its salt is carried away.
I had toyed with the idea of a Jakarta slum lord wheezing his drug, terribly and too busy. Well then, next came the quantum tweakers adjusting their cooling coils. Then hypothetical First Burst technicians annoying poor devils in fly-over states, out sorting their options and clearly annoyed with art fart fly-in whatever. Glee. The coastal states are due for rising seas.
I imagined an eye peering out a port on the International Space Station, and it blinked – down below native Canadians were beating tribal drums, heard as far away as Africa. They were roasting a pig at the University of (name redacted out an abundance of caution). And yet again the endless discussion of abstract versus literal.
Academic stew. My research project devolved to playing the DVR fast forward, watching a succession of wars, genocides, political charades pushed off by cheery mothers with talcum babies and mortgage broker relatives, “tell your doctor if . . .”
No one, it seemed, intended any serious colored chalk presentation.
So, rather modestly I averred, it would be better for a consideration of fading echoes in the drain pipe 'neath Chelsea Bridge.
three
