the perfect moment

Suddenly, a coffee mug comes true...
Suddenly, a single facet of chandelier glass lets loose...
Suddenly, a kiss, unlike the hundreds that have preceded it, becomes a kiss...
Suddenly, the grubby bubble gum on a summer sidewalk fills up...
Suddenly, the pine tree along some glassy pond at dawn becomes, inexplicably, a pine tree...
Suddenly ....

Perrrfect.

Who has not felt that nanosecond of wonder in which things become complete ... complete beyond complete? When doubt is simply irrelevant. And who would not sell his soul to return to that moment that made perfect sense and had nothing to do with "making sense" or "wonder?" Again and again and again, anyone might try to replicate the action and conditions that, in that nanosecond, opened out into a perfection that left "perfection" in the dust.

But the replication never works. Trying has nothing to do with the "suddenly" moments, the moments which seem to arrive unbidden and leave all else in the shadows. And so the experience that was unbidden recedes into beckoning memory and the inadequate ministries of poets and spiritual salesmen... another bit of Tupperware to be attained.

What was incomparable sinks back into comparisons and contrasts, a merchandizing effort that found no footing in that single nanosecond that was a coffee mug or a kiss. Heaven is left to rely on hell and hell, of course, on heaven. Religion flourishes, but only on the basis of relief. Relief and wonder and bliss ... and it never works. If god, by whatever name, were as true as a coffee cup or a kiss, who in his right mind would trouble himself with religion and its bartering? When things come true, what miracle could that possibly be?

None of this matters much ... except that there is that nanosecond of the past, the time so assured that no man could claim it. Settling for wonders is such a dreary business. But it is a good pointer, I think. If the longing is somehow other than a coffee mug or a pine tree, then it has strayed from the nanosecond that inspired it, the one in which trying became strangely irrelevant ... just like "completeness".

The one nanosecond anyone might sell their soul for ... the one in which "wondrous" and "hellish" find no footing ... utterly personal and yet having nothing to do with preference or wonder or relief. The nanosecond that seems to point out that I have been making a mistake. It's not really a big deal, making mistakes, but that doesn't mean mistakes cannot be corrected. Asking a coffee cup to change its mind is an insane man's pastime. Sort of like yearning for heaven at the expense of hell.

It's a pity to forswear the nanoseconds that beckon. But if forswearing -- as through wonder or relief -- is the only game in town, go ahead and forswear, go ahead and try, go ahead and, while standing under a blue sky, proclaim it blue. Forswear and forswear and forswear until the energy runs out and at last ... it's just a coffee mug, right?

What nanosecond was ever alone ... or conjoined either?