The Signal Arrives, While Echoes Grow Cold
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| Abel Hoffman, 2022 |
The Signal Arrives, While Echoes Grow Cold
An idea can journey from Tokyo after breakfast, hitch a ride through hair-thin strands of glass, flirt with a satellite, outrun the sunrise, and land in Boston before someone remembers where they left their reading glasses. We have taught lightning to carry gossip. We have bullied distance into irrelevance. Billions of tiny binary pilgrims march in perfect formation, never stopping for coffee, never arguing politics, never wondering if they're being misunderstood.
Then they arrive at the final obstacle: roughly a quarter-inch of human skull.
Remarkable, really. An idea that crossed an ocean in less time than it takes to sneeze can spend ten years looking for a crack in one stubborn mind. Granite eventually yields to water. Mountains surrender to glaciers. Even rust wins every argument with steel. But certainty? Certainty can make a paper-thin skull thicker than a castle wall.
One thin skull can delay truth
For another year.
An interesting haibun, Chris. I think the phase ‘We have taught lightning to carry gossip’ is spot on and agree that an ‘idea that crossed an ocean in less time than it takes to sneeze can spend ten years looking for a crack in one stubborn mind’. How wonderful life could be if humans weren’t so stubborn.
ReplyDeleteDeep Stuff. Salute
ReplyDeleteV well-written, introspective, interesting, real...and thought-inducing.
ReplyDeleteAn amazing poem. Originally stated. Impossible to pick a favorite line. they are all stunningly true and thought-provoking.
ReplyDelete"Even rust wins every argument with steel. "
ReplyDeleteLuv how you promote the mundane in this haibun
Much love
I love it, there are ideas that spread like virus and immediately settlles in that stubborn mind... but there are those that never get a true hold.
ReplyDeleteThought-provoking. Our mutual friend, Jonathan Caswell, suggested I visit your post and I'm glad I did.
ReplyDelete