The Rock & the Hard Place
The rock is an act of nature. “You want rocks?” says nature, and flings pebbles in your face. Then she spins boulders around your head like planets and goes sailing off thru the universe trailing comets and conjuring galaxies. Nature is high strung.
After she’s gone, things grow silent and dark–the danger zone where you become aware of the hard place. The hard place exists in rigid repose and is unaffected by nature.
Nature provides a diversion from the hard place, keeps us toying with the notion of rocks, occasionally staggering our imagination with rocks so huge they’re light years across. But such spectacles, if they happen to slip off into the hard place, vanish. Even black holes vanish in the hard place.
We’ve reduced the hard place to the mundane. “I’m caught between a rock and a hard place,” we say, and shake our heads sadly.
We busy ourselves playing games with nature, and nature rains rocks down upon us.
We dare not stand still.
We dare not turn away lest we vanish.
