Enoch’s Thoughts

May 17, 2010

Frozen in time

Filed under: Uncategorized — etblog @ 11:31 am

Sunday morning was a moment frozen in time (OK, it was actually frozen in the notes I took on a completed newspaper crossword – one of my favorite places to jot transient thoughts and reminders.)

I was sitting at a picnic table overlooking a small vegetable garden. Day had broken, but the sun was still struggling to get free of the horizon and over the tree line. The slight breeze made the temperature perfect. At hand were a book, an unfinished crossword, and an electronic game.

The electronic game, so clearly a manufactured object, at first seemed out of place. Then I realized that nearly everything I saw, the picnic table, the garden, the neatly trimmed grass, the fence, the book, the cell phone in the table, the crossword, the pen, the porch roof, all bore the human touch. If I could see air at a molecular level, I could detect human effects on it – organic esters, oxides, tiny airborne rubber compounds from all the tires that are wearing out, other things only chemists understand. Or if I could see electromagnetic waves, the scene would be awash in radio, television, phone, and GPS signals, perhaps over a faint background of cosmic communications. (That could be a pretty confusing superpower. I’ll think twice before picking that one.)

I sat there for an hour, alternately entertained by the objects I had brought, and by other creatures. There were birds singing to encourage the sun, including a distant, patient owl. There was an ant on the picnic table. He struggled long and hard to move a winged insect twice his size, ultimately succeeding in removing both it and himself from my view. For a few minutes, a small, wire-haired dog scratched the dirt with her paw, carefully smelling where she had dug, then she retreated to lie in a cooler, darker spot.

The moment finally un-froze when the cell phone blinked to life, its gentle vibratory buzz announcing the call I had been anticipating. I turned from the world of ant, owl, and breeze, and stepped into another world, through the electronic portal of telecommunications, happy, indeed, to do so, yet simultaneously saddened to leave the rare, frozen moment.

I wish for you, patient reader, a sensitivity to gentle moments, frozen in time, and the enjoyment thereof.

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