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the mystery and the foam

a few weeks ago i was lying in bed and i kept hearing this awful noise. i mean, i really had no idea what it was, but it sounded like some kind of hissing. somewhere in the realm between dream and reality, i stumbled out of bed to try and see what was causing the ruckus. after walking back and forth around the upstairs of the house, like a cat on the prowl, or a slightly confused diviner of water, i finally honed in on the kids' bathroom, where i opened up the medicine cabinet and found this:

it is a kind of foam soap designed for children that we use at bathtime, but the key words in that phrase are "we" and "use." by that i mean that the foam soap is supposed to come out of the can whenever a human being manipulates the can with opposable thumbs or another of the various digits. but not this time. this time it decided to spew soup all over the bathroom of its own accord. my utter shock at this phenomenon stirred me out of sleepiness enough to cause me to get the camera and take some pictures.

i actually took some amazing video of it, too, so you could actually see the foam just rising out of it like some posessed soapy snake, but i accidently taped over it, so you'll have to just trust me on this one. i don't know what causes a can of condensed soap to suddenly erupt in a sudsy volcano one night, but it reminds me that we live in a world of mystery. yes, we can probably scientifically explain what causes pressurized soap to figure its way out of a plastic valve, but can science alone explain why it chose that night, of all nights? can science alone and all its answers satisfy all my questions? or does science, in the end, just leave us with more questions? i tend to lean towards the latter, that science doesn't answer so much as it leads us to deeper and bigger questions. ultimately, it points toward mystery. and on this one weird night at my house, i looked through my lens at mystery and weirdness and simply remembered that there is more to life than what i understand. and that's probably a good thing. enjoy the mystery today.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Only you could find a way to make a
defective can of soap sound like a mystery of the universe!!! LOL great stuff man and so eloquently put!

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