Zeno’s moon

notes from where the tortoise wins

Moon, don’t go. I have been too much in the sun with the golden people smiling fun. Listen, moon. I know what I am and I consent to this distance. If it connects me to you, let me trace the pads of my fingers along its lines. For nearly as long as I can remember, I have been reminded by the golden summer titans that my movement, whatever it was, failed to count as well as Time’s. The jolly clock-faced father-god. Time, they told me, bowing as they shushed my complaint against their rush, was fast and I had to keep up.  I did, blaspheming. 

Zeno had point about the arrow. If at any moment it was at rest in one position, in a time made of moments, how can it ever move? No, Achilles does not catch the tortoise. To do this he would have to reach where the tortoise began, by which time the tortoise would have moved on.

Fortunately, after this pause, the golden people have all gone to chase the sun, and it’s just us again, with the tortoise, stitching moments with no roundly sure clock face in sight.  I’m glad you’re here, moon. I know you won’t be, always. But I won’t go chasing all those not-yets, not while I’m drunk on the wave of your fragmentary diamond lights, winking into seas to kiss the shore, and me.

Minor Challenges

Interrogations at terminal velocity.

First, a threshold. Questions about the roots of things tend to call common sense from the jury box to the witness stand. Being may be what knowing apprehends, but answer: can you point to an essence outside knowing? Yes or no.

No further questions, Your Honor. 

Recess. Outside, cellophane angels drop into boxes. Here are the signs. We’ll attach them like armor, with the same duct tape used to silence those objecting to being objects of study. 

Bells again, wait. We were at a threshold, trying to begin––what, though? And were we calling it? I’ve lost––the engine’s speed has thrown me back again, and as for the thread I meant to follow, before the angels and the tape, where now?

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