As if in anticipation, the grass swayed before the wind. There seemed to be a consensus among the individual blades, conferring in a muted murmur: “It is our custom to bow to the breeze, to weather it, rather than fight.” Such a policy of appeasement had prevailed among the grass, a docile body politic, for generations.
As such things have always gone, blade after blade sprouted and rose, reaching toward the expanse of sky just above the huddled mass. Destined to stand and fold among the mass, there was little more for a blade than the reaching itself. Some speculated that reaching was the purpose of the body –– to finally reach the sky would mark the end of appeasement. Others maintained, however, that the region above the mass meant certain death to those blades, intrepid and foolhardy, who breached its expanse.
It was quite an expanse: even extended contemplation of the sky could induce madness. There were stories, the sort told to children, of blades whisked away by the wind, gazes fixed upon the sky. A blade about its wits, the stories concluded, never failed to bow. The prospect of an unbounded realm was nauseating, inimical to a blade’s natural disposition, an existence rooted in unity. The body politic existed as it should; the blade grew to join the body as it should; the body bowed to the wind –– all as it should.
No, there was not quite discontentment and certainly no dissensus. This, of course, could never be. All was as it should. Only that, when a blade alone contemplated the vertiginous aspect of the realm-above, a decided lack of nausea belied the unquestioned wisdom of the body. Not only the absence of nausea, but a profound clarity: this stirred the contemplator. In the aspect of open sky, a blade recognized itself. Mirrorlike clarity. And so, a blade saw itself as blade, not body; an awareness was born of the void hanging overhead.
The grass swayed before the wind, as it should. The blade saw itself as body, the blade bowed. Blades reaching and blades bowing. Some blades, few, kept reaching; a blade may not have bowed. The sight was not uncommon: a single blade whisked away, drifting across the sun-soaked sky.