This is 6 of 9 pages
11.
First, their heads appeared as tiny dark specks behind the sand dune. Time seemed metronomically slow but their blurry shoulders gradually appeared in the distortion of rolling heat waves. Finally, they topped the pale surface of the dune and stopped. Even from this distance, I could see that in their hands, they held bundles of red sticks. In unison and almost mechanically, they swiveled their heads to the left, right, and surveyed what lay before them. Coming back to the center point they stopped and stared directly at me. I sat, perhaps a mile away, in a straight lattice backed white kitchen chair.
She stepped forward first and bent to place a single stick in the sand. He followed doing the same. Then together they walked toward me placing a stick into the sand every three feet. Miraculously, as she placed the sticks new ones seemed to take their place in her hands. When they reached me there were two long rows of red sticks set in a perfect row, evenly spaced, and all pushed into the sand to the same height.
They did not touch me but each put out both their hands to me and said nothing. Moments of consideration passed. Then I stood, turned, and walked around behind the chair. I walked away following the scattered rows of six inch diameter black and white checkered spheres that ran off into the wet sand and on into the water perhaps a quarter of a mile away. The man and the woman did not move and I did not look back to see that they were frozen with their hands outstretched.
Thunder broke as I went into the still water. Far out to sea a container ship slowly made its way to some unknown destination. The smoke from its stack lay flat down against the water. Judas screamed for mercy as the sea turned red and then violet.
Moths flew to the candle flame and the contrails of launched missiles looped in the darkening sky. They spelled out a word. It was love.
12.
Progressions
We have made progressions essential to our nature. With them, we measure and mark in order to make sense of things that otherwise make no sense. Progressions suggest meaningful intent in an otherwise chaotic milieu of cosmic soup.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a deity in a start up position. I think I would use the notion of progressions like we use Easter egg hunts. I’d hide goodies all around the lot and watch what the silly children did. All would be, of course, in the name of good fun and the original intent completely misunderstood.
The financial analysts love progressions and so do armies, mathematicians, mothers in labor and cooks. But there are those who don’t like progressions. Religious people don’t like them usually, people with maladies and addictions, and pilots spiraling uncontrollably toward the ground.
Most things don’t give a damn about progressions: the cosmos, our dog, water flowing to the sea, and meditating monks.
I have spent a long time thinking about and working with progressions. I have made a procession of progressions by using numbers to find a new way of predicting prime numbers. I have painted little black and white squares for days at a time to trick my eyes and yours, into seeing something that really isn’t there. I once worked for eighteen months to feed a progressively ordered and varied offering to brine shrimp so they would breed in a predictable and artificial environment. In all these efforts and others, I measured and marked.
I believe a predictor of artistic behavior is compulsive organization that creates a deceptive field of sensibility and then puts one small thing almost unnoticed out of order. It is the rude moment of exploration and not following the rules. Reliance on progressive certainty is boring and terrible for the soul. Orderliness dulls the mind and lulls us into a love affair with efficiency all in the name of winning a race with time which is yet another progression that in the end doesn’t matter to what I do not know.