Michael Scott Hand

Once I was finished, I put the pen-scribbled pages away. I arranged my pens in a cracked mug that I don’t want to throw away. I collected up the cables that seemed to have bred around my computer like snakes.

Clean space.

I pushed things back and forth and placed loose objects in boxes and loose boxes in yet larger boxes. I pushed the boxes flush against one another, or stacked them where needs be. I dusted and I polished everything until it gleamed.

Clean place.

I placed a mascot on one side of me and a God upon the other. The faces of necessity watching over me. But otherwise this place is clean, the space is clean just like tabula rasa.

Clean grace.

In the death throes of its freedom an old project slips away from me. But henceforth I am unchained without needing a lobotomy. And the blankness is appealing, in its way.

I think… I’ll stay. I’m sure I’ll find a way to fill more pages with the things I have to say. And as shadows shrink away from me I’m content in my own way.

But there is no place that’s truly clean: except where astronauts float between the stars. My thoughts like liquid filtered through a cheesecloth into old, repurposed jars.

Already things encroach upon this space: a phone, sunglasses, a steaming cup of joe. And already things encroach upon my mind: string-puppets lurch and dance as they perform an old, familiar show. And as the earth turns round the sun, those shrunken shadows loom and grow.

The cursor blinks: the blank page is a garden waiting for the seeds I’m yet to sow.

And so, this is a beginning–not the first and not the last. A beginning captured through a pane of deeply-polished glass. So brilliant is the window that you yet can’t see inside.

Instead, you see your own face staring back at you and from yourself you cannot hide. Believe me… I have tried. The oceans ebb and flow with the tears that I have cried.

A fish inhales molecules rejected by my eyes. And upon a distant ocean a sea-captain surveys the skies. What day is this? What ocean? What fish?

A hope, a wish, a spinning reel. When the machine announces JACKPOT tell me then: how will you feel?

Is this about you, or me, or the fish? I cannot tell.

Oh well.

A well: a bucket on a rope descends into the darkness. For the bucket life is nothing more than un-ending katabasis. But each time it is dragged up familiar reflections yet return, a face upon the water. Is it mine, or is it yours?

No matter; the water from the bucket feeds the garden and the seeds that we have sown.

Let’s return to this place later to see what plants have grown.

It’s all about perspective.

Consider: a cookie jar left unattended on top of a bench. A stool is dragged over. A small figure climbs atop it and reaches for the jar. They grapple with the lid, they open the lid, they steal a cookie.

Hurrah for the child who stole the cookie, we might say. Hurrah.

But to the parent who enters the room to behold their eldest teetering precipitously on the edge of a stool and reaching for a cookie–a cookie–the situation may appear different.

It’s all about perspective.

Snatch the cookie and run, little one. And of course that’s what happens. Dextrous as a monkey the child steals the cookie, leaps away before the stool falls and scampers away from the yelling parent.

Hurrah, we say. Hurrah. Nobody was hurt and a cookie was obtained.

But what if the cookie jar had fallen? Shattered glass and crumbled biscuits. Now there is no cookies for anyone.

It’s all about perspective.

What if the child had fallen? A sob, an embrace a lesson learned?

What if the child had fallen badly? A young bone snaps. The parent does not just see it happen but they hear it. Now we’re in a horror. The parent bundles up the wailing child and takes them to the hospital; the cookie jar is forgotten.

It’s all about perspective.

When the child who stole the cookie sits outside to eat it and sneers at the kid next door who doesn’t get to eat cookies much. Villain! We cry. Oh, villainous child.

But what if the cookie was shared? Broken into two at least roughly equal pieces and eaten together in secret? What a bond these children have, we’d say. What purity of spirit.

It’s all about perspective.

An ant navigates a maze of broken glass and cookie crumbs; a parent enters into a room; a kitchen stool teeters against gravity, frozen suddenly in time and used as an example in a physics textbook.

The students mull it over: how heavy is the child? How heavy is the stool? What level of surface tension does the linoleum provide? The cookie jar is forgotten. The cookie jar is not important. Is the cookie jar important?

It’s all about perspective.

He seeks allegory in every twisting shape and form. A ballerina becomes a tightrope walker; a tightrope walker becomes a dark silhouette against the circus lights; a dark silhouette becomes a gigantic shadow on the wall of the circus tent.

He can smell popcorn and sawdust and melting ice-cream. He can smell manure. He can smell the terror that the crowd feels as they watch the ballerina on the rope: will she fall?

Terror and popcorn and melted ice-cream and a net that doesn’t look strong enough to catch a person but probably is. Probably.

Steadily she crosses, her sequins sparkle. She is hope and she is finely balanced on a rope stretched taught. And the crowd below eat popcorn. They eat popcorn and hope she doesn’t fall. Maybe, somewhere in the crowd, there is a person who hopes that she does.

One foot slips off the string and it vibrates. The tent gasps, collectively. A kernel of popcorn gets stuck in somebody’s throat.

Heimlich, Heimlich. The popcorn is dislodged and the ballerina does not fall. Perhaps, we ponder, it was all part of the show. She smiles and the entire crowd can see it. They smile back because she is safe.

A coin on one side has a picture of a King.

A coin on one side has a picture of a Beast.

A coin when flipped might show either side: man or beast or beast or man.

Given time, that great mill wheel that grinds all to grain, a beast may evolve into a man. Meanwhile, a man who turns away from the Irrefutable Cascade may devolve into a beast.

Beast or man? Man or beast? Perhaps they are not so different and yet–they are different enough.

A coin when flipped enough times might land on its edge, but this is highly unlikely because of angular momentum. A coin when flipped enough times might fall through the earth; yet this is even less likely.

A coin when flipped enough times is still a coin. A coin is a currency. Currency might buy a bag of grain crushed by a mill wheel. We do not see it then: man-or-beast. We see only the grain. We bake bread. We break bread.

Examine this clock: lovingly crafted by an expert clock-maker. A finely tuned system of cogs and weights, ornate hands and numbers and polished glossy wood and shining glass.

The pendulum rocks back and forth, assuming a perfect harmony, marking time with each swing. The clock goes tick; the clock goes tock; imagine the clock. Imagine the clock.

The hands tell time, but not only time–for each number corresponds with not only a moment, but a feeling. Time to wake up; morning time; time to go to work; time to water the garden; time to sleep; midnight.

Every number tells a story as every hour passes. Tick tock. Tick tock.

Imagine the clock.

When did that hour pass so quickly? When did 1 become 2 become 3? What is 3 o’clock? What is 4 o’clock? A 5 o’clock shadow falls upon the clock’s face.

And the pendulum, swinging behind a polished window of glass, back and forth in hypnotic motion, rising and falling like Sisyphus, like Atlas, it bears the world upon itself, all time is contingent on its motion.

From left to right it swings, from right to left. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

Imagine the clock. Imagine the clock.

Is the pendulum swinging faster? Or is it your imagination? Like a clock in a waiting room, the hands move through treacle. Or like fun, devouring time in its elation, what happened to the day? What happened to the year?

Fast and slow. Left and right. Tick and tock. Imagine the clock.

Time moves faster now, and faster. The pendulum begins to hit the edges of the wood-lined box. Like a blade it scratches the wood, then it plummets, then it rises. The clock is beginning to shake. Tick-clunk-tock-clunk.

Faster and faster the pendulum swings, almost violent in its urges; which of course is a foolish thing to say for a machine has no urge except that with which we have engineered it to have.

The clock is broken and the wood begins to splinter. The glass window before the pendulum cracks but does not shatter. Behind it, the pendulum swings wildly: left-right, left-right, left-right. The wood is splintering and the clock is beginning to shake.

With a pop the numbers begin to fall off. The minute hand moves backwards. Numbers collect at the bottom of the clock face in a jumble: 3 and 5 and 10. Now 6 and 11. Now 12.

One final violent thud embeds the pendulum in the wood and the clock falls silent. No tick: no tock. Imagine the broken clock. Mysterious hands come to remove it from the wall. There is a clock-shaped mark on the wallpaper where it used to hang.

The clock no longer serves its purpose and so it is useless. But something about its nature makes it impossible to throw away. So, instead, cracked glass and fallen numbers, it is packed away into a box, placed in the attic.

There: shrouded by darkness, spiders weave their cobwebs around it.

Tick tock.