The Rubix Cube: Gone in Ninety Three Seconds

I just bought a Rubix Cube. When I opened up the box it came in,  I marveled at how elegant a simple piece of plastic could be.  Elegant, yet surprisingly loud, as all six colors shouted for individual attention.

And fragile.

The untouched Cube is a very Zen object.  It reflects all six senses, forever entangled, but never as pure as this.  A newborn, a child, a virgin.

I'm 36, and I had one of these Cubes when I was 5 years old.  As I examine this identical Cube three decades later, I try to consider the Cube from the perspective of a child who finds one sitting anonymously on a shelf surrounded by other toys, toys that shout and rattle and beckon for attention.  What could possibly attract the child to the Cube?

Boredom clears a path to this cube.  Boredom destroys this inertia.

"What does it do?  What is it for?  What just happened?"

In less than sixty seconds, the singularity of the Cube will dissolve at the hands of the child, its Zen-like purity hopelessly lost into one of the 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different permutations.  That's "quintillion".

The child will never bring the Cube back to the way it was.  Decades later, the child may never believe that it was ever possible to begin with.

Buy a Rubix Cube today, and see how long it takes before you fuck it up.  Before you are completely and utterly LOST.  Without cheating, without reading a book of directions, and without watching a video on YouTube, try to bring all six sides back to that original star, that one in a quintillion singularity.  Siriusly, find your way back.  To your Home.

But at least you know this time.  You know for certain that somewhere in the endlessly mutating pattern is that solid state six colored cube, that singularity, that newborn that you started with at the beginning.  How could you forget?  You just fucking had it right there, just a god damn minute ago.  Where did it go?

Ask yourself, "Am I up to it?"

 Can you meet the challenge of restoring the Cube?  Because what you have here is a Sword in a Stone.  This, this is the challenge of Isis, and the wound of Amfortas.  This is the mystery of Resurrection.

If you let it, this $8.99 Cube can be a mirror for your mind, and for what the human mind is capable of.  It can be a mirror for the Robot mind, and for what the Robot mind is capable of.  It can be a canvas for the Artist, and an instrument of deception.

What do you see?  What can you see? Who do you see?

What are you going to do?