one sixty-sixth of a second

i close myself off in an austere and sterile room so that i might tell you a story. i want nothing to distract from the image in my mind. i paint the picture here, for you, to explain this, all this, you and me and us. i am at the bottom of a waterfall. it is sixty-six feet; i measure the collapse of hydrogen and oxygen molecules with my shutter-speed eyes and in one sixty-sixth of a second the whole grand spectacle, the flying leap of life crashes with infinitesimal sound. i cannot move that fast, but i know that's how quick the current kicks and who am i to fight it? i trace it with my senses, soak in the text of the world. i am talking of course about a waterfall. i am at it's base, i am the deep pool, i am the swirling eddies of blue sky and my white foam are the aquatic clouds. i am a deep pool looking up and out from the bottom. i watch the stupendously swift spitting and spewing life-saturated force stampeding in perfect speed over an edge then falling off, gracefully, violently, passionately in sacred prisms of liquid light that can only be described as miraculous. continuous fall, forever. i watch the sky grow foul and grey. a large bird struggles against the wind putting up just enough resistance to remain still. leaves pour down from the sky like ash from burning buildings. i watch them pirouette with a carelessness and glee given to those who are departing in their proper time. in a sixty-sixth of a second i know a storm is coming. i let the movement of water drum in my body, the vibrations chilling my skin. the smell of change is so strong i can scarcely focus. i keep my eyes locked on the bird. he glides left and it begins to rain.

i get the notion that everything is a waterfall to some degree. all is given a moment of miraculous flight that is, at the same time, the descent as well as the re-collection of parts. from whole to part to whole. i think about people, naturally, and i think about you and me. are we waterfalls? are we falling water? little hydrogen's clinging to our oxygen, trying desperately to keep it together, moving fast, so fast, so very fast. and you are one sixty-sixth of a second and i am one sixty-sixth of a second and together we are one sixty-sixth of the same second, flowing continuously in and out of one another. i am a deep pool and i am a waterfall, you are a bird in a ominous sky. you veer right and i cry. how quickly everything changes, how very far the distance of one sixty-sixth of a second.