Eternal Grains of Sand

Subbed on 10/3/09 to Smokelong Quarterly

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Eternal Grains of Sand

Grainy red twilight streamed through the billowing kitchen curtains of an Ohio farmhouse.

Standing in front of the sideboard, a young housewife blotted her palms on her apron. She then reached out and wrapped her fingers around an egg-timer. She flipped the egg-timer over and watched with awe as fine yellow grains trickled through the egg-timer's cinched center.

On a secluded beach in the Indian Ocean a team of artists gathered at the base of a mound of yellow sand that had drizzled down from the heavens. Working together, the determined artists molded the sand into a huge block. Once their huge block of sand had been moistened with frothy seawater, the artists began to painstakingly sculpt. Armed with bottomless buckets, high pillars were formed. Crafting additional blocks of sand in the same manner, the artists erected the four ornate walls of an ancient temple.

The temple was shaded by wide-canopied, fruit-bearing trees. Then colorful birds and screaming monkeys and creeping mammals were brought in to fill the sky above the trees and the crotches of the trees themselves and the earth beneath the trees and the hollows beneath the earth. Metallic-armored insects were released to provide glint and buzz to the silent nights. Stars and a moon were tossed into the air to sparkle the black sky.

Satisfied with the world they'd put together, the artists stepped into the temple they'd created and began to etch a smaller block of sand into a low round table.

Once finished, the artists departed the temple and disappeared like vapor into the misty forest.

For a long time, time stood still. Vines tangled the walls and the pillars of the temple. Gnarled roots of the trees the artists had planted grew up out of the earth around the temple. The insects and animals multiplied, evolved into different creatures.

Then one night a monk robed in orange appeared from a gap between the trees that surrounded the temple. The shadows of the leaves of the trees shivered on the monk's pale and solemn face.

Slowly, he made his way over the earth and entered the temple. Stooping over the low table that the artists had built, the monk began to chant. He removed his chakpu from inside his robe and tapped it over the low table, releasing a flow of red sand. The sand dripping from the chakpu changed colors. Orange and blue and yellow. Working throughout the night, the monk tapped out a brilliant rainbow; circle encircling circle encircling circle.

His work complete, the monk departed the temple and disappeared into the same surrounding forest in which the artists had gone.

Inside the temple, on top of the low table, in the rainbow's vibrant red center – its eye -- a young Ohio housewife stood in the glow of the grainy red twilight streaming in through the billowing curtains of her kitchen window and blotted her palms on her apron. She then reached out and wrapped her fingers around an egg-timer.