which came first?

I once heard about a philosophy professor at MSU who started a chicken-and-egg business.

TP, ?

a gesture

"What's that language that everyone understands but one one speaks?" he muttered in frustration.

There she was, in front of him, the most perfect woman he'd ever seen. Her hair was a mess, her jeans artfully torn, her nose slightly crooked on her bare suntanned face, but the smile in her eyes cast a spell.

He had tried every way he could imagine to tell her he wanted her in his arms, his mind, his hands, his life, but she only smiled. First a simple "hello," then "hola," "bonjour," "konichiwa." She had nodded, waved tentatively in response. So he had gone further: "Ud. es una diosa," "tres jolie," "God, you're fantastic." She had blushed, turned away coyly, winked with both eyes, but still not uttered a response.

Encouraged by the joyful wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, he had asked her to join him at his table. She shook her head, shrugging.

"I get it," he said. Hurriedly pushing aside books and papers, nearly tipping his coffee onto his long-forgotten notes, he made space for her at his table. She watched, at first bewildered at the flurry and then eagerly comprehending. When he gestured to the empty chair, she sat, and when he offered his hand, she held it.

Evolution

"It will be all of us, and we will farm, and it will be what we do," they pledged, some plunging hands gleefully into soil, others tentatively digging a toe into long-unturned earth.  They turned their backs on a system that had uprooted them from family and community, and turned their faces to the sun, and all felt the same rays.

But before that, they had declared themselves individuals, each claiming his own role or defining her own title, compartmentalizing and specializing themselves, stretching the fragile connections between themselves and the earth until they snapped.

And before that, they had fought against each other along lines drawn by color or topography, conquering and claiming manifest destiny over lands and cultures, declaring the end of evolution.

Even before that, they had flocked from the fertile valleys to build cities on hills, glistening with the jewels extracted from the abandoned countryside, as they shifted their devotion from the earth to its men.

But before it all... "It will be us, and we will farm, and it will be what we do..." was the one truth that never needed to be spoken, because it was what had first made them human. 

LL 3/8/09

Perspective

"I just never see that side of you," he said to the moon.  

And the moon shone, and the Earth turned, and it all revolved around the sun.  But as long as he stayed where he was, no matter how much he coaxed and romanced, he couldn't make the moon show him the rest of herself.  

Patience

"Plans are generally good," she said, "but it's the follow-through that counts." 

She was kneading dough on the counter below the window, watching the snow melt.  Her motions were deliberate, shifting between tender caresses and urgent shoves, punctuating her sentences.  Generally good... a soft stroke... follow-through... she punched her fist into the dough.  A jar on the counter rattled with the motion.  

"I mean, you can have an idea, and it seems simple and easy, like it'll fit right in with everything else you're doing, and even if it's long-term, it's just a set of steps you have to follow, and you..."  

Her hands interrupted her.  The dough was sticky, and it clung between her fingers and in the creases of her palms.  The gluten needed more working.  She rubbed her hands together, showering the counter in shards of dough, and reached into the flour bin for a handful.  Scraping the dough from the counter, she kneaded again.  

"But then you start, and you realize the steps don't follow as easily as you thought they would.  And if you skip one it sets you back further than you were when you started and you have to figure out how to get back on track.  And sometimes you forget what you were doing in the first place, because you're stuck at some step that's so tedious you want to stop right there..." She trailed off, watching a squirrel in the yard contemplate a leap from one branch to another.  Her hands kept moving the dough, turning it and stretching it and folding it in on itself with a steady determined rhythm.  The squirrel jumped.  She sighed, and picked up the dough.  It was smooth, elastic, soft and warm like bare skin.  "But you just do it, you know? You keep going, and eventually it's done, and maybe one day if you're lucky, you find out you did something good."  She set the dough in a bowl and covered it with a towel, and she waited.

EC 3/2/09

First words

"You should start a blog," she said, and I laughed.  I'd thought about it, but I didn't know what I could say that hadn't been said before, and better, by someone else.  

But then I realized that I don't have to start with my own words... sometimes I hear things that seem ordinary in passing, but lifted from their conversational context they are universally true, or uniquely beautiful, or deliciously ironic.  So I decided to scavenge these words, things other people say, and use them as starting points for stories, tucking them into different settings and situations just to see if they still work.  Creative reuse.

I'll credit the source by initials and date at the end of each post... if you talk to me, you'll probably inspire me at some point.  Or you already have... thanks.

EP 2/24/09