Today was the perihelion, so I brought the sun a glass of water and it settled down low for a long chat. We talked about secrets for a while, about hearts and flowers and bones and magic and Tolstoy. About that old photo of Nabokov and Vera and their butterfly nets, about how they were both the same flavor of synesthete reading the world in color and catching butterflies together.
I told the sun about how I was reading recently about a garden in Japan that's arranged so that you can't see all of it from any vantage point--that when you're in it you can only see sections of it so that the entire garden exists complete only in your imagination. About the feeling of rain soaking through my boots and hands in my hair, about how they keep finding new ways for under the water to surprise us, just as frequently as outer space does. The sun nodded knowingly, familiar with how what is in front of its own eyes changes each time it looks.We talked about how you could cheat the garden by going above it, but how that's probably not the way to enlightenment, unless that's where we already are anyway. We talked about airplanes and acts of courage and gravity, and I gave it a couple of promises to keep tucked up somewhere safe.
And then we hugged and the sun turned away, already farther away than I could reasonably imagine. We promised to meet back here in a year.
I told the sun about how I was reading recently about a garden in Japan that's arranged so that you can't see all of it from any vantage point--that when you're in it you can only see sections of it so that the entire garden exists complete only in your imagination. About the feeling of rain soaking through my boots and hands in my hair, about how they keep finding new ways for under the water to surprise us, just as frequently as outer space does. The sun nodded knowingly, familiar with how what is in front of its own eyes changes each time it looks.We talked about how you could cheat the garden by going above it, but how that's probably not the way to enlightenment, unless that's where we already are anyway. We talked about airplanes and acts of courage and gravity, and I gave it a couple of promises to keep tucked up somewhere safe.
And then we hugged and the sun turned away, already farther away than I could reasonably imagine. We promised to meet back here in a year.
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