One day i had a detailed look
at a 24 inch machine scale and
pondered some new ways to
relate to the sizes of things
some "inch" scales are in gradients of
decimals and i see them divided into
tens, those tens in turn divided to
even smaller tens, thus~
1.00 = 1 inch
0.10 = 1/10 th inch
0.01 = 1/100th inch
1/100th of an inch is very small but i see
certain things that my mind can measure,
like the size of the Earth— a little less than
eight thousand miles in diameter.
i can see a mile, but not thousands,
so my magic scale says:
1" = 1,000 mi, thus
Earth = about 8"
i imagine holding Earth in my hand
like a small beach ball, then i figure
that the moon is about 2 1/4" big.
how far away is it, i wonder ?
let me grab a tape measure :)
given what i have on hand, now there
is a basketball and a tennis ball lying
some 20 feet apart from each other
in the back yard
i look upon all this and fathom it in—
but this vision now zooms upon my "Earth" ball
with the scale situated conveniently next to it.
detailing the texture of its surface, my eyes
become disproportionately larger than my brain—
observing the Space Station
cruising about 0.15 above it,
the clouds hovering at 0.01,
and further still through the winds of upper distances,
descending between the smallest of lines to my
mere figment of a presence at
1/100th the size
of this tiny
period
dot
.
— leaving me to wonder how
i could possibly have even
glimpsed all of this—
from way down
Here...
"Scale"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved
originally written
March 2008
