Okay, @Michel. You’re up.
Oh, and some context… this was just a clip from my failed blog. So that felt good. 
1 Like
Very, very good 
Now I have to write something… It may take me a few days but I will!
1 Like
OK, here is mine. I thought you might fear I would chicken out if I waited too long, so I whipped out a quick one for you.
Patterns
Swings left and right it swings, the arm. Left then right, then left again. And it beats, on the left and the right, it beats the same always the same, the sound a distinct jungle drum, my clicking heart, strike followed by strike, sharp and clean, the same always the same. Carved in the silence of the room, left, then right, a sharp break in the unsound of silence, an edge.
A ruler, iron black, grain is fine. Every length a notch, etched deep in metal, precise, the shape a vee, just the same all of them, just the same. As I range through the arm with my eyes, up and down, down and up, notch after notch all the same, etched in a vee, same and same all of them. Left and right it swings, the arm. Eyes left, then eyes right. A tick to the left, a tock to the right. Does my head tilt left and right as well? My balance uncertain, I doubt. I listen in to myself, as if I could hear the tilt inside my brain. But no—I can’t hear, I can’t feel, just the tock as it comes.
Each notch a vee. A quarter inch up, a quarter inch down. Each swing the same, left then right, then left. Each silence break the sound of a pearl that strikes the ground, a water drop that shatters on contact, then the next. Yet the pattern is not perfect. Inverted trapeze, the weight hangs, not quite centered. I must move it, down a bit—now too low, up a notch—now too high: could they not have cast a ruler more precise? No notch on center, no way to symmetry. Anger, I rage.
The outer shape a polygon, oddly satisfying when closed, why? The perfection of irregularity of a rough Japanese sake cup: it must match the pattern of my brain, no ice crystal—a pattern irregular. The tick and the tock a pattern perfect, the sound of symmetry. Movement and sound I need. All my focus in my ear, face frozen, eyes open, pupils up: I can almost hear the faint whish of the arm cutting the air. It is there. In my mind I hear it. I see the arm in slow motion, pushing through oil, pushing atoms aside to break its path, hesitant at the top, then down, a scythe cutting through necks before it embeds into the wood.
Like the scythe that locks down the thin wood door over a minute metal neck. Do they match, the scythes? A message from the maker? No, he does not know: a man of no secrets, and long gone. The secret is all mine, the beholder: in me only the pattern. Slowly I perceive the meaning of Schrödinger, the observer, and the experiment. Not physics, no—life: in the beholder the meaning, in the phenomenon—nothing. Surprise: I was wrong all along. Not the particle the subject, of the experiment: the observer it is. In the beholder the meaning: that is the secret. But already the tick and the tock draw me back. The iron arm swings left, then right, then left again. It clicks, and clicks, and clicks again. My eyes swing left, then right. My soul awaits the click, right on the beat, as it should be, right on the beat. All my senses acute, tendrils that float, across the air, captive to the tick, and the tock, of the metronome’s dance.
1 Like