world on a string

Three small globes hang above my drafting desk. They are round and perfect, each one suspended by fishing line from a fishing pole I found under the stairs. One is identical to a globe I gave a boy who told me he wanted a house with a library full of only books and a big globe. The expensive kind that sit snugly in wooden stands. The kind that belong in a Universe of books, and when you close your eyes and run your hands along as the world madly spins, mountain ranges and dips in the ocean floor rise up to meet your fingers. One of the globes is teeny tiny. It's coming apart at the seams, creating longitudes between the longitudes. The other doesn't have much meaning but it seems to round out the other two. It's the biggest of the bunch and tonight I hung a tiny silver star along side it, facing north. At night, when the lamplight is dim, three shadows appear on the wall, lunar eclipses big enough to swallow each earth whole.
* * *
I've been thinking about creation -- the creation of the earth. Of man. Of ideas. About how, in the beginning, we looked down upon a temporal earth with an eternal perspective and agreed to come to spots on the globe. To longitude and latitude lines. We agreed to come to an earth created by an infinite Creator. And here, on this temporary earth, this secular sphere, we could use the creations of the Creator and create things for ourselves. Ideals. Thoughts. Things of beauty. Coming downward was the only way we could move forward. We knew and understood this. We rejoiced in the promise of brilliant colors, and rippling waves, and terrestrial soil under our feet. And shouted for joy.
* * *
I get fixated on certain spots on each globe, longitudes and latitudes I have yet to straddle. I put figurative dots on the places I've been in one color and dots in another color for the places I'd like to go. There are many days when I wish there were more dots of the other color, that I'd been more places. Sometimes the world seems so big, the dots so far apart. The shadow of the moon seems large and looming. On those days, I like to look up at my worlds on a string, spin them slowly and remember to take it one day at a time.