“Should one wonder about wondering, or more precisely questioning wondering about a wonder, one questions the course as the wonder of the wondrous or the wonder of the wonderer. Either is an event of course so long as some action is taken upon the wonder and the event is not lost to idol wonder.”
“I do beg your pardon. I believe you lost me about the second wonder.” He was polite in asking.
He was always so very polite when we would sit by the river, and wine with Ritz. Always two bottles of one or the other Cabernet or Pinot Noir, Sauvignon not Franc. Oh, how very clever! Should I ever manage a winery I shall be sure to produce a “Sauvig-non-Franc”. I sat for a moment, trying to be clever with Pinot Noir, but one never says one without the other even though the alliteration is not much fun for the tongue.
“The second wonder?” I asked to be sure.
“I was wondering if you would expound.” He offered as answer.
“Expound or expand?” I asked in search of time as I reviewed my words.
“I wish you would expound on wonder, the second wonder if you would.” He gesticulated to the field and sky around us. “Expanse we have of abundance.”
We did indeed and the sky had not yet recovered, if “recovered” was the correct way to view it. There were just enough flat grey clouds to cool the day and gauge the distance of the mind. One cannot truly gauge the expanse without some knowledge of measure, and neither of us knew how wide the river, or long the space between peaks.
“Well, in this case an event or a feature confirming Eris, and in this particular case it is Eris that I failed to wonder about.” I answered.
“You failed to wonder about Eris.” He confirmed.
I picked up a Ritz and with a glance determined on which side the salt was. I always lay the salted side upon my tongue. In doing so for the thousandth time I wondered if all the crackers had the same number of perforations, and how precisely they were made. In the same instant I had placed the cracker and crunched it against the roof of my mouth.
“I did fail to wonder.” I offered without the use of articulation.
“And what, exactly, is the wonder of which you wondered about wondering about?” He asked so properly.
I swallowed the cracker with two sips of wine. “It was the evening before last. You may remember it was raining.”
“I do recall it was.” He replied. “I had wanted to look through the telescope, but telescopes and rain seldom fare well together.”
“Looking through and clouds are never fair together either.” I offered as condolence.
“And so it is, and so you were saying?” He prodded.
“I was passing a field of barley, wet by the rain and a long, elevated pipe of sprinklers. I wondered about the volume of water upon the crop. I wondered about the trajectory of the droplets and the effect Eris mixed in with the rain. I wondered about the aquifer, and the future of beer. I failed to wonder about, and I have now wondered if I should have wondered about the fact that they were on, the sprinklers, in the rain.”
Beautiful