The Crack in the Hourglass

Let’s say, once upon a time, in a place Neither Here Nor There, in a moment of cheerful neglect, the rock of smiling Sisyphus, rolling down that mountain and every mountain and no mountain at all, were to bump against the Cosmic Hourglass in its descent, and there’s a tiny crack in the hourglass now, and in their panic the grains of sand within look to its eternally unaffected Grand Arbiter, Horus, for direction.

Horus directs them to see to the repair, and in an all-too-familiar and unremarkable manner, these grains of sand get to work about rebuilding their own coffin, but it’ll take awhile, because, being sand, they work at a tediously slow pace at the best of times.

And let’s say that, of this army of lackadaisical sedimentary crumbles, there is a single grain who figures he’d like to take a break from it all. We’ll call him Hector.

Hector never gave much thought to the world beyond the glass, and led a fairly straightforward existence. It couldn’t have been easier – swirl around the funnel, fall, repeat, repeat, repeat, while Interested Parties mark the cycles in books they use to feed a fire elsewhere, and why? That’s not Hector’s problem – but now that the opportunity presents itself, in the grip of a hunger he’s never known before (because he’s sand), Hector slips through the crack.

Not forever, he tells himself, only for a stitch, a quick little tour to see what he can see, and he’ll be back before anyone notices he’s gone.

Off he goes, into the world we know, the here and there, the now and then, and in an aeon, in a lifetime, in a moment, in the laughter of a child and the lines around the eyes of the man who’s seen it all a lifetime ago, he sees the story, all the laughter and the tears and the toils and the bliss and the hope and the tragedy and beginnings and ends, the great and the poor, triumphs and failures and folly, as far as the mind can see (I don’t need to tell you what he actually saw – you already know).

And at a crossroad at the navel of it all, punctuated by a taco stand and an overpriced, over-polished international coffee franchise, Hector asks the taco hawker what it’s all about.

The taco hawker looks at him and asks, sincerely, will that be chicken, beef, or pork?

Hector tries again at the coffee shop, where the smiling Coffee Sprites tell him that he’s speaking the wrong language, but not in so many words, and charge him five times more than he could’ve paid for coffee-themed sludge at any transit or transport hub or refuge along the way. Have a lovely day, they call to him as he leaves, but it’s much too warm outside for coffee.

At the end of his whirlwind tour, he returns to the hourglass, and how long has he been gone? Does it really matter? He slips back through the crack and falls into rank, and the crack is repaired and Horus shrugs and Sisyphus whistles that old tune – that one you’re thinking of right now - as he rolls his stone back up the mountain.

And what will Hector do with all he’s seen and tasted? Will he tell them all the truth, and would they hear it if he did? As the hours slide serenely through the funnel below, he wonders if there’s even anything to tell at all. It all seemed magical at the moment, and now, in the Neither Here Nor There, does any of it even matter?

Still, he’d seen it.

It was real, and the longer he keeps his silence, the larger the chasm it builds in his soul, and if you don’t think sand has a soul, Love, you haven’t been paying attention.

So he whispers it out as a story that rhymes, Once upon a time…, a tale to amuse the littler ones, and they, in time, tell it to others. And some of them wonder how true these songs could possibly be, wonder if they should be sung at all, if they’re not true, then they’re lies, and lies are always wrong.
Right?
It’s a remarkable level of philosophical proclivity for sand.

But some of them believe, and some others that don’t still let themselves hear the stories, and smile, and dream, all the same.

And for all of those who believe, or hope, or dream, Hector smirks and catches the scar in the crack in the hourglass every now and then. He holds on to the ridges in the cosmic glass with all his strength, not forever, but just for a moment, before falling again through the funnel, buying the dreamers just a beat or two more.