There are times when I am so blank that my senses change. My skin feels like it’s been dipped in ice for a nanosecond. And I can see in my peripheral vision the striations in the fabric that holds the universe together. Like a shirt too-tightly stretched across an ample chest, with the feeble but brave button – my focus – the only thing keeping the whole thing from bursting out.
Universe bursting out all over. Holsteins, atoms, skyscrapers, butterflies, polyquaternium-11, pomeranians, and yes, even ample chests. All over. Chaos and disarray and entropy just the way it wants to be. All in an instant, if I blink and lose my focus.
When my brother was a young boy, we all sat to eat at the dinner table one particular night. But like any other, we talked about everything and there were no forbidden gross-out topics. Except bell peppers. Those were strictly taboo.
He was then as he is now, but shorter, well cushioned by a short-lived layer of baby fat, and blonde as snow. He sat on two phone books to adjust his height upward toward the table. And at some point, he announced that he could make the world fuzzy. Puzzled and curious we asked him what he meant, and so he showed us. And as we looked on, he crossed his eyes.
My parents laughed politely and explained that crossing his eyes didn’t make the world fuzzy, it just made it appear fuzzy to him. I don’t know if he understood then, but of course the story is laughable now.
Funny that we’re all so sure that the world isn’t fuzzy. Or that something simple and fragile isn’t holding the whole thing together.
1 comment:
Wonderful story, and you told it on my birthday too!
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