Monday Mimisms ~ The Globe

It was perfectly imperfect.

Complete with cracks and tears, ripped from ocean to equator. The tip of South Africa torn from the Ivory Coast to the Cape of Good Hope which tumbled into the South Atlantic Ocean. Ethiopia looked a mess and just west of Algeria lay a stain.
In the land of the Soviet Socialist Republic not a flaw existed save one missing piece directly above Krasnoyarsk. The oceans had faded, land terrains sank into scratches and creases. I couldn't tell where one city ended and the other began. Krasnoyarsk was positively in shambles. No one could live there.
I wonder if they've had dinner yet? Will the family make it back home in time to share dessert? Will they make it back home at all?

"How much do you want for this globe?" I asked.

The store owner laughed. "You can have it," she said. "It's not worth much. You're welcome to it." Have you ever been so delighted you wanted to squeal and jump in a stranger's arms?

Don't answer that.

Restrained and humbled, she touched the world, wondering how it would be to peer through mountain ranges like some pencil skirted Clark Kent, flying above and beyond the ravages and skirmishes below. How would it feel to sit high in the universe, moving with troops of evil commandos and mercenaries, soldiers of rescue and soldiers of doomed flights, bombs of suicide and prayers of victims unaware that momentarily their world would tumble into seas unknown......Would I be able to watch and say nothing? Who would notice if I listened through the keyhole at the United Nations while all the world's leaders sat side-by-side... divided....so close.....yet unable to reach across a mahogany table while children scrambled for food in the Sudan heat?

She wondered how holding the world might change her life.

How can we all live on the same ball made of war and peace? What stops it from toppling through the galaxy out of sheer frustration? Why does Mother Earth continue to wage her birthing pains on the likes of us?

Isn't there anyone who still thinks our differences are cause for celebration? Our perceived flaws matters of choice? Our collective autonomy made of courage?

Just across the aisle in the store of antique marvels, perched on a tilted spinning axis made of rusty copper and a compass surrounding the North Pole, sat another world. Intact. Beautifully colored. Raised mountains. Polished. Blue blue oceans and no squeaks when it turned. But how could something so mesmerizing be so mundane?
It was too....too....something.

I fumbled with Ireland and found myself paying a visit to friends in the United Kingdom. Wonder what Akelamalu is doing today...Jean-Luc? Bazza....Are they thinking of me? Do they know I am thinking of them? Do my thoughts count? Can they hear them?

Oh that's just silly, Mimi. They're not here. Just you and your vivid imagination in a store with the world at your fingertips and a salesclerk wondering why you can't stop taking pictures of something you're never going to buy.

I wish she could see what I see.

So I looked at the cohesive ball of longitudes and latitudes, glad that Algeria had repaired her region and all was well in the Sudan. Australia positively glowed with new found courage, not to be outdone by my own American soil.







But still.....something didn't seem right. All this perfection. It wasn't my world.

I turned and picked up the tattered globe.
I think I'll take this one home. Only this one.
We have some patching up to do, but look how it's still standing in all its faded and broken glory.
Don't you see the potential?

The lady looked at me with an okay-kooky-lady curiosity and nodded.
"Enjoy!" she beamed, truly joyous to have given something away of such little value to her that made the inquisitive woman with the camera so happy. If she only knew how much I value the authentic more than the aesthetic, the potential more than the prize, the person more than the spit polished shine of political populace.
The real world is more full of broken than beautiful.
And if we have a snowball's chance I'd better learn to look into the torn places.

We don't have to be perfect.
We just have to be willing to patch up the parts that need fixing.

Got any ideas?

*Photography Mimi Lenox*

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