Deux ex Machina

The number was 17, the view unmistakeably graphic.

Wind rippled the the waist high grass, producing a sheen of light that flowed south to north like an ocean wave.

I stood on my pedestal, dressed impeccably for the occasion. Cufflinks new and polished caught and released the sun in honed brilliance; starched collar and precisely knotted bow tie at the ready for the performance. And dear god, what a performance.

I raised the baton to eye level and gestured just so - and all motion stopped. Clouds up above paused; birds hung in mid flight, at ground level rodents, ground worms, insects and microscopic dust mottles simply waited.

I tested

A quarter circle clockwise, lower left to upper right, and a watchful 180 degree eye as the audience - creation - moved again, then

Pause (at the top)

And they stopped again.

All good, it was set and settled, procurement had, for once, given me everything on the waybill, and I smiled in satisfaction. So many disappointments lined the cobble stone path from past to present, from desire to fufillment. To be clear, fufillment had not manifested yet, but this was the penultimate of aggregate penultimate moments. The tension between planning and production, want and manifestation, everything had led here.

Then why did it feel ... incomplete?

At the most obvious, it was because it wasn't complete. But that wasn't it, not entirely. It was just a feeling that something had not yet been drawn for this final scene. Or maybe it had been drawn, but it was not what was expected.

Tension within the tension.

Hoosah!

Sudden revelation that the release was not in creation, but that from which creation came from and dissolved into. And that the way there was not for the feinged-of heart.

I brought both hands down, commanding the grass to fall.

First surprise: It didn't so much fall as recede vertically into the ground, like it was being pulled from beneath by a million hands. And this was not so far from the truth.

Second surprise - what was revealed. 6 Billion heads, just the top of them at first, a sheet into the horizon of humanity. Or part of humanity. They were detached but not separated from their bodies, supported I supposed by the torsos that connected to the hands that pulled the grass down on my command.

Time was quickening now; the sun sped across the sky, pulling a circular quilt of stars and moon and itself in a dizzying cycle of mouth eats tail. The heads turned as one to look up at the display, awestruck as I was and then

The scene stopped again, moon, quilting spilling silver milk over the heads; mouths agape at the beauty, eyes as doubled pearls lit from without and within, light joining light, and then the awful groan of despair as the light faded and the heads forgot themselves

Need

6 billion heads needing succling, but not for nutrition or power, just hungry ghosts wanting more of the milk they didn't realize came from within in the first place and then

Hoosah!

grass up

insects - queue!

Bright sky, deux ex machina powered off

pen down ,

writer back,

forgetfullness forgotten

alone, in the net of pearls.