Wednesday, September 29, 2010

I know it's...

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There's something to be said for flowing along a landscape of endless blue. Flapping about like the tassels on a child's bike, erratic and twitching every so often, but once up to speed flowing smoothly back on the currents of the air.

But it makes its own currents with its long flowing body, smoothly skipping about with small twitches undetectable by inferior eyes. A rocky, rust riddled landscape rolls underneath as it moves further on, to where everything becomes less clear. It shuttles off into the haze of the unknown, waving goodbye as it goes.

It slips and slides into crevices, finding the edges of rock that have always sheltered this corner of earth from the sun. It squeezes in, making a frigid home for itself, tucking every fold and curve and muscle neatly inside. It seems impossible for something to be as if it were liquid. To have no ascertainable mass, nothing that can be measured by visual and logical standards. To understand the possibility is to believe in magic and miracles.

Yet through no magic and through no miracle is it able to accommodate its own body. Through sheer will and ages of genetic engineering it has become almost perfect, possibly sentient, and thoroughly beautiful. With its nerves hardwired for grace it has almost reached its peak. To be gentle enough to lift up the smallest pebble, yet strong enough to wrest away someone's hard earned possessions, that is a truly balanced thing.

I think of putty when I see it work; smashed out, spreading across the surface, rolling back up into a single, unified piece yet again. I trace the contours of its fleshy skin, the ever changing curves that always sway to and fro. My mind sees its muscles contract, pulling itself along, much like an inch worm, only more compressed motions than languid reaching.

True hydraulics.
Flesh and blood, not metal and fluid.

It masks itself against prying eyes, filtering in against the landscape like some social outcast hidden behind the cheap wooden doors of his cheap wooden apartment. It watches as everything passes by, barely winking as their movement stirs up against its eyelids. To have such concentration, such resolve. I imagine it to be like holding one's breath underwater for too long, when you start to get panicky, but you know you can't let those bubbles go just yet. I wonder if that's how it feels, deep within its shapeless skull.

And then it moves, extravagant and flamboyant, knowing full well how easily it is seen, how easily it attracts people, and just how awestruck the gathering crowd is. Full and strong arms whip through the haze and back into the clarity, pale palms touching on whatever it pleases, and whatever it pleases not being able to fight back....or perhaps wanting to. It's a jaw dropping display of power and curiosity.

Exploration is a key ingredient to any developing being's mind.

And then it begins to change, the colors once so well hidden among the landscape, so desperately needing to blend and mimic. Flashes cover its body, like an old television on the fritz, with wide white waves cycling down across the picture, changing hue, tint, contrast with fluorescent Technicolor brightness. It shifts in front of the eyes against a background of haze and depth. Colors unthought of cycle through its face and down its arms, yet its palms still show the true nature of the being. Deep purples to bright tye-die to speckled browns.

Color wheels have no grasp on its beauty.

And it flashes for a moment, parading around, dancing as effortlessly as a weightless being can dance.

And then with the precision and speed of a sprinter, it shoots off again into the haze, a small aura of light and wonderment surrounding it until even that too fades from sight.

So quick and so intelligent that it leaves trails along the center of your vision, able to still trace its path with a finger. That's how memorable of an impression it makes, that instantly you've already charted where its been, what it's done, the wonderment it's shown you. To know such a fearful creature exists is a wonderful thing, to keep you guessing when your bubbles start telling you it's time to be let out.

But another glance out past the haze is hard to resist, in hopes of seeing its trailing arms waving a final, brilliant goodbye to you.

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