A Matter of Degrees
Imagine a society of star-gazers
who know only that the lights in the sky are round
and that year after year and generation after generation
those spheres pull the seasons into place behind them
while grain grows in rows that reach up toward them;
they would see these as spherical as opposed
to that which is linear and finite
and dies;
and the wise among them say
it is the edges of these spheres that are important
because it is the edges that always come back upon themselves
and the seasons change greatly in their progression
but the edges change little through age;
it is those little changes that change all things.
And the wise then study the edges of the spheres,
and they stand with their backs to each other
scanning the horizon in areas where there is no grain,
finding that each step gives them a different unit to view,
and pivoting slowly three hundred sixty steps
inch by inch circuitously to find degrees of perception.
These star-gazers in their sheepskin coats
will grab at anything to remember. They will hammer rocks into pillars.
They will dig holes in the earth to melt down metal.
They will rip the skin of wild animals.
All to note down a system of 360 degrees that reaches out
toward those distant lights that control the warm spring rain.
Perhaps they will give degrees to each other.
They will study units until it is time to pass those units to another generation.
It too will go around in carefully measured steps.
Each unit will become a sphere
and each unit around that sphere will be another sphere.
The counting of 360s will be the counting of one.
Imagine that they build so many towers to reach out toward that one
that the earth becomes blanketed with metal walls and plate glass views of clouds.
Imagine then that they begin to hurl those towers themselves upward
forgetting that there is no upward in a sphere within a sphere
and that the stars are not indeed above them
but are in their very bones
back beyond time.
--Jared Smith, from Where Images Become Imbued With Time, 2007
