FRAMES

In simpler times, I might have told a story. One could choose between fact or fiction -- and from there on out into the brambles. “please Brier fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch.”

Fast forward to Fake News.

There's worldly stuff, worldly things if speaking in religious terms. Stories abound, bringing the good news of numerous traditions.

One becomes a scientist or a technical writer, maybe with less arguing, until inevitably it boils down to what is reality?

Right here in our backyard, while watering the lawn, a rogue breeze blew in, a real scuffler. Uncharacteristic. And in just the right direction, with relation to the sun, that a spray of droplets spawned a rainbow. Remember the pot of gold at the end, like Valhalla maybe? It was winning the weather lottery.

Whoa! Get the camera!

Got it. What a conglomeration of unlikely . . .

Until some recent experiments, rogue waves were the stuff of legends, but now no longer called a farce. Consultations with myself confirm the dream has not yet quite vanished. So I think my decision that the rainbow was sheer good fortune might be a good story. Am I alone in this? The choice of how to take it is a matter of milieu.

So the water is flying around and Frankie chooses to lurk unseen beneath the bird feeder, hoping. The sunflower over his head got it's start from seeds kicked out over the edge. He's not moving, not napping. He sits like a sphinx.

As I write, it comes out sounding like a ball on a tennis court, a bocce ball in a tuba. Seems like it's time for a cup of Sleepy Time Tea. His inscrutable thoughts will not dwell upon the sunflower.

A sunflower seed becomes an embryo. It knew how to do this before it saw the sun, the basis of time as we use it. It is embryonic time. (The plot thickens.) Its time, theoretically, is a result of falling through space that is warped by gravity. Perhaps you may recall a drive-in theater under a starry sky, popcorn, a window speaker without which the story is hard to follow? This has nothing to do with it. A sunflower, it is not absurd to say, knows time.

Another cup of tea is in order.

Or compare Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, lava churning. A cup of tea has no purpose of its own. Water molecules, incessant motion, are too small to see, though technology has extended our range of vision. The far depths of the universe, incessant motion, cannot be seen without a telescope. And the “yellow” sunflower?

It's a quality that a crow or a dolphin would not assign, or a robin. Some creatures do not concern themselves with prisms. And what makes a rainbow? Some people are color blind, yet probably just about anyone reading this can visualize a yellow sunflower.

So we hike the Piedmont, looking to see what was taken for granted, until setting out a sprinkler in a squall. And Frankie? I'll bring him in and put some kibbles in his bowl. In my cup music is playing, but not the sort that might drift in through a window. I hear galaxies.