Washing rice is surprisingly hypnotic, like so many other common tasks.
I pounded rubber into walls again today. The subway ride in the morning was gentle and forgiving, as to apologize for Friday.
There's this instant air-blown rice-cake machine next to the bus stop. From what I've seen, it dispenses a small portion of washed rice into a very small container, both heats it and compresses it at the same time, and after a few seconds ejects this 1cm-thick, eight-inch circle of crackly rice. Think of it as marshmallow Rice Krispies without the marshmallow.
Sometimes the rice wafers eject as Bernoulli curves, and every time I stand in line, I can't help but watch to see if the wafer will fly and escape the prison of its fellow brethren. The wafers are collected in a plastic container. Since the heated compresser/container opens at an angle, it directs the hot rice wafer outwards. Directs, as in gently helps this thing get ejected into the sheet of plastic with a large "Pffp? PHOOOM-thwack" that, by some trick of coincidence, seems to be a metronomical signal for some nearby passerby to test the solidity of nearby objects by gently shoving me into walls and trucks.
And then the thirty-minute bus drive. Some of the most pleasant moments in my life, no sarcasm intended.
Being in transit. What else could you want? Alone in a shell with only your thoughts to yourself, looking out the window at night and seeing yourself from outside, watching into the window at yourself from outside. Floating above this moving bus, watching the yellow-gray shadows inside the bus sliding away into different shapes speckled with oval raindrops like the peppered wall of a firing squad's execution spot.
A giant spiral. I'm not sure what the graph of the spiral will be in parametric equations, or what the derivative of the graph will be, I still don't know what color it is or what it tastes like or whether it feels like wet soggy cotton candy or soft and stringy like his best girlfriend's hair. I know its a spiral, though. A spiral, that starts with It and ends with It. (My 'It's have to be capitalized, the way a devout Catholic would capitalize Him when talking about God. Its my religion. Both metaphorically and realistically.)
A single point. A single point smaller than the armpit hairs of the plankton in the sea, a single point shorter than the time it takes light to travel between your eyes and your screen. Its a point so small that we do not talk about length or depth or weight-- it is simply a point, the way a line is to a plane. a point. one. point.
A single sphere. Not a sphere, however, but everything. Everything. Imagine every single object in every single place in every single country, and more. Not everything as a whole, but each individual thing. That is everything.
Inside this single point, this one, this ONE thing, this one thing contains everything. Imagine a Polaroid photograph of everything in the world. Its a photograph of everything, it contains everything, yet it is still one photograph. You can look at this thing and see everything, everything, everything.
Inside everything, inside every single object you can see the polaroid photograph. When you see a single object, you are able to understand where exactly that object is in relation to other objects in the photograph.
Back to It. 'It' is in the center. It isn't the single point, nor the photograph, but the those two at the same time. 'It' is the object you see in the photograph and the photograph you see in everything.
Back to the spiral. Its a giant spiral. There's a single point in the center. 'It' is in the center. From that spiral, everything veers away and returns. Its not a spiral but more like multiple circles nested within each other, each meeting at one single point, which is the 'It'. You start there, and you wander off in search of It. Soon you walk a perfect circle and you come back with a perception of 'It'. You walk again, and you walk an even larger, a more tiring circle full of confusion, and back you return and again you meet 'It'. It seems to become a series of circles within each other. Each circle leading to a more deep understanding of the single point at which every circle intersects.
Small babies are beautiful. Reason: They are cute. Walk one circle, and we come to the newfound (sortof) conclusion that babies are beautiful. Reason: They have smooth skin and perfect smiles. Walk another circle, perhaps polka-dotted by doubt and change of mind, and we come back, believing that babies are beautiful. Reason: They have perfect smiles, and they are still infinitely young. Yet another circle, and we come again; babies are beautiful. Reason: They are infinitely innocent. Another circle. Another. Another. Babies are beautiful. Reason: Babies are beautiful, simply because they are who they are.
For each circle, for each time, the conclusion is the same: babies are beautiful. For each circle, for each time, the conclusion is the same: every circle leads back to the single point that is It. The conclusions are always the same, yet the understanding behind it isn't.
I feel as if I'm embarking on another circle. Each circle being very much larger than the one before, I feel as if this circle is going to be a hard, long one. As of right now, I'm somewhere around that point, that single dot of preferable equilibrium. As of now, I'm still here, pounding rubber into walls above red lines, watching rice wafers fly like primitive machines of flight. Feeling the industrial feces of this pleasantly polluted home. Watching these shadows slip by as transculent sharp red carlights and mellow orange streetlamps leave trailing glares.
Not anything like the peak of a rollercoaster. There is no acceleration. I'll miss this dearly. I would throw so much away to stay here on this dot. So much. Too much.
I'm still waiting for that day when the circle loops upon itself.
i'm still waiting for that day when someone will tell me her thoughts in perfect understanding.