The Planet or the Shoe

        This is a thought experiment.

        It teaches a lesson. What lesson? That you'll have to figure out for yourself. There's a doctrine which says you can only teach someone something that they know already. So ... maybe you know this or maybe you don't. Let's see.

        Step one.

        Write ten words about the planet Earth. (No, you don't have to really write them. It's a thought experiment.) Look at your ten words. How original are they? Do they take you anywhere?

        Step two.

        Write ten words about a woman. Done? (No, of course not. It's a thought experiment. Really writing the words is not what it's all about.)

        Step three.

        Write ten words about the woman's shoe.

        Step four.

        Write ten words comparing and contrasting the woman's shoe with the surface it is resting on.

        Maybe the shoe and the surface are the same. Shiny and shiny. Or maybe it's shiny leather, a very bright blue, on coarse gravel. The gravel is bright in the sunlight. There are tufts of coarse grass growing out of the gravel, and on one tuft of grass there is a splotch of red stuff ... and now a reflection shifts in the woman's shiny blue shoe, bulk shifting, and a man speaks, and he says | |
        
        Let's repeat the thought experiment.

        Step one.

        Write ten words about a city.

        Step two.

        Write ten words about a street in a city.

        Step three.

        Write ten words about a bus going along the street.

        Step four.

        Write ten words about a bag that a woman is holding as she sits on the bus.

        Maybe the bag is black and has a silky shine, and the woman's hand, resting on the bag, is very clean, clean and small, the fingernails cut short ... the odd thing is, there's a pattern of scabs on her left wrist ... a whitish scab in the middle of a bit of healing purple, not far from a bumpy bit of purple which looks a bit like a bruise ... not the kind of injury you'd get from being hit ... more as if she'd come off a bicycle, breaking her fall with her wrist ... only, when she scratches at her face, there's some flaking skin there ... it's not really clear whether the injuries on the wrist are from a fall or from the predatory attacks of the right hand ... the habits of the right hand can't be guessed at because right now it's manipulating the keypad of a cell phone ....

        End of thought experiment.

        So what was the lesson? Well, you work it out.