Mood: We all know that magic is not real. The Rambo bamboo boom boom guy on KBC had us convinced for a while, but as soon as we figured out you can tie handkerchiefs together, we were done. Still we kept watching. Not because we thought it was true – because we know it isn’t. But because the things we don’t know manifest in unexpected ways. And that’s exciting. Because we just want to chant Rambo, bambo boom and watch the impossible possible.
Take a sample group. Any group will do. The group I happened to find involved three geese, a professor of marine botany, two pencils, a bucket of water and oil extract of the milky way (125 ml, I hear it’s really cheap if you know where to look). Gather them around the idle wounds of history. Watch as they stew around where they are placed in the larger scheme of things. As the scars open their own scars. As the coal burns fires into their soul, further into themselves. Watch as they react differently to the same stimuli. Watch where they look, what they look for, how they find it and where they find it.
This, you think, means knowing more than the sample group. Perhaps a warning, as I came to learn, you will not be the least knowledgeable – but you won’t be the most either. But, being the gatherer, you will have spent more time around fire. As science has shown, one cannot observe without changing the experiment in certain ways. And even as we gather around the embers, we stoke them. And even as we gather around the embers we stoke them.
(who wins in the game of depth? The Marriana trench is 10,994 metres deep – many still call it home.)
After an adequate amount of time send the sample into the world. Watch as the excesses of their open histories burn those around them. Watch this burning stabilize the flame.
(brightest wicks burn fastest they always say – but surely everyone is just trying to make it to the end)
Watch as those they burn open their own wounds.
Watch as they wander in search of a good gathering.
Take a sample group.