Even though all this data is wrapped up, from moment to moment, in little labeled packages that say “thank you! here you are! look at this!” on the bow, I am going to sort them out.
Basically, there are six things: Stories, Instructions (which are just pointy stories), Energy (heat), Space, Time, and Stuff (stuff is anything that isn’t space.) (There’s also Bugs, which are a kind of Story. A lot of stuff is Stuff, but most of it is Space. Also Stuff is the same thing as Energy, and Energy is just fancy water, and Bugs are just bacteria that got too hot.) Anyway, here’s what I saw.
Stuff:
Where I went through there was a lot of water and moss and rocks under the moss. There was also dirt and trees, which accounted for most of the stuff. There was a plant with bright red berries that my instruction book screamed “no heck no!” at. There was a porous rock that looked like it belonged on the moon, or on someone else’s moon. There was a time-eaten leaf devoured probably by mites—a silky ghost that proves everything is alive in its own way. There was an island congregation of tallish, falling down plants built with blonde wavy hair and pink-green leaves. They waved in the empty space.
Space:
Mostly I didn’t pay attention to space.
Instructions:
Instructions are data, which are like myths or stories, but tricky to catch and hold, like poems. Here are some of them: My body tells me that my feet hurt from stepping on pointy rocks, and that my body is sore and just a little too hot, and that my hair is wet from being dunked earlier. There are other instructions running on a higher order on up in my body that told me there was a bird nearby, and that this was Important. The bird had its own packet of directions that were telling it to sing like human laughter.
Time:
Time is actually the same thing as Stuff now that I think about it. Also, Time is busted. Time stopped working probably seventy years ago when some schmuck chucked it off a cliff. Time is all dingy now and the dials don’t work. But it’s still a special enough kind of stuff to merit having its own category. There are some other things I found that are a lot like Time. I saw: about a thousand colored bottles, half a cinder block, a rusted tool box and a tire, a door knob, a medicine bottle, a chunk of marble, a pile of melted silver slag, and a road runner, who may or may not have been Time.
Energy:
Time is pushing the river forward, and all the little bugs are running on borrowed calories.
Stories:
After Time stopped working and got tossed over the cliff, she started paying attention to the galactic dance again, the one that moves the sun on its merry-go-round around the milky way. She’s also been noticing some of the things I saw too—the porous rock, the berries, the ghost leaf. There was a piece of lichen twisting over the edge of the river like a little raft for a Pixar rodent. Why are our rats always getting washed down storm pipes? What does that say about us? I am continually intrigued by beings small and lucky enough to be sent into the maze of unseen ruts beneath the human world. I wish I could love other little things, but some of them are just Rude. Flies, for instance think that my bare feet sticking up off the rocks are a new sort of sanctified pink hill that God made just for them.
Some bugs are bugs, but all bugs are Bugs. When a tiny tiny boy Bug landed on my index finger he told me he was a delicate machine and I said “yes, you are,” and Time, who was also listening, said “yes you are as well.” His wings were vertical Roman shields, those square ones, but he was not attuned to light or motion like you would expect from someone whose wings were ready to form a phalanx given the instruction. He was likely attuned, instead, to violent intent, unlike the skittish flies. His body was a sandstone triptych: thorax, abdomen, etc. painted like geographic strata. Iridescent wings, but those were a dime-a-dozen on IBay (Insectronic Bay.) He had as much of a snout as his perfect face merited. The most startling thing about him were those compound eyes: green in the shadows, red-glowed in the sun. I brought him back and forth, and he licked my fingernail and cuticle like a neurotic Jack Russell Terrier.
Back on the hill, Time was listening to the radio signals bouncing off the mountains. One of them was the show where atoms hit Saturn all day for a year, and she listened to that for a long while, maybe forever. I missed that broadcast, because I was dunking my head under the dizzying creek water once more for the drama, and walking back home under the ponderosas and that perfect sun.