He starts off with a slow swoon back and forth like a lazy pendulum on an old grandfather clock to give himself motion. To eliminate the possibility of quick, unpredictable, possibly rash actions. He watches you as you study him, trying to imagine what you're thinking when you look at him. He's concerned because he doesn't want to scare you, as is the usual scenario when any human is approached by a giant. It's as if he is consistently outcast from everything. Excluded from nearly all inter-species activity. This occurs between men often to a certain degree, but imagine how much more intensely a giant must feel this.
Carefully, lost in his swings of back and forth he decides that you're comfortable enough with him to not run away as you're approached and takes his first step forward. The first step, despite how quiet and gentle he intended it to be, shakes the foundations of all the buildings around you. You can't help but be worried. A car alarm goes off behind you as you stand on the corner of an intersection at the edge of town. It's dusty outside, as the wind is free to blow in this clearing in the concrete forest of the city. If you look hard enough through the dust, you can see the hill that the road follows out of town standing still behind the giant. No matter how hard you try though, the giant still remains the center of your attention. An extreme concern, but not quite a threat just yet...
He notices you didn't move after he took the first step. He smiles an awkward smile that borders innocence and insanity at the same time. At this point you can't help but worry.
He takes a second step.
"Don't move," you tell yourself. "Maybe he's like one of those dinosaurs in that movie and if I don't move he can't see me."
He sees you.
But he means well.
A third step.
Now even more car alarms begin to sound. Why there is no one else to witness this giant coming into town is still a mystery to you. Are you the last one? Did he already get to the rest of them? The tempo of your heart begins to steadily increase as his sixth step is approaching. Still you think, "No. He is not here to harm me. If he wanted me dead, he would have crushed me like a twig already."
And you're right.
Finally you stand face to face (so to speak) with the giant. He's fifteen feet in front of you, staring straight down into your eyes. You, fifteen feet in front of him, staring straight up directly into his. Two creatures fascinated at the other's existence. His face sort of winces and you can see he's struggling to get some sort of expression out. He opens his mouth slightly and takes in a deep breath. He holds it in for a second as he thinks and uses just a little bit of the breath to start a word, then pauses again, holding his breath once more only to expend the rest of it with a sigh and a simultaneous furrow of his brow. It's at this point that he's no longer just a golem. Not just a lifeless machine. He has intentions and desires. He just wants to communicate, but he doesn't know how. Empathetically, you decide to act first while the giant shakes his head in confusion and disappointment in himself.
"My name is _________!" you yell at him, hoping to initiate the interaction.
But you yelling so suddenly startles him and he motions his head backwards in surprise, keeping the rest of his body where it is. His sudden movement startles you just the same and causes you to motion your head backwards, eyes wide with suspense. Copies of each other.
Imagine, just for a second, what it would be like if you looked into the mirror one day and the thing in the reflection was doing exactly the same things you were, making the same expressions, breathing in the same rhythm, blinking at the same time, and moving just as you did, but looking nothing like you. A reflection you could not agree upon.
Seeing you back away as he did amuses the giant. He smiles a no longer awkward smile and lets out a thunderous laugh.
More car alarms.
You can't help but smile at the joy of this monstrous creature and the inadvertent catastrophes he's potentially capable of creating. You look at his face once again, twisting and forming wrinkles where before there were not any wrinkles. He's deep in thought. He wishes desperately he could say something that you would understand... Finally after an extensive thought process, his wrinkles disappear. His eyes open wider and a smile returns to his new expression. One of conviction. Certainty. Triumph. The words had come.
He opened his mouth and began to speak. The words weren't important. Words to you are not the same as words to him. What you were expecting was a sentence. A statement. A greeting or some sort of foreign sound. What you were not expecting was music. There were words within the music that you could not understand, but that wasn't important. As he formed new syllables with his giant mouth, symphonies of sound emerged as he returned to his pendulous motions. He was singing. And it wasn't just a few measures of sound at a time, it was entire thoughts and philosophies and introductions expressed through this orchestration of sound.
Finally, as his statement entered a final decrescendo, you understand where he's coming from. And that not all communication is rooted in speaking the same language to each other. Certain things can transcend.
And with dust still blowing through the intersection, tumbleweeds crowding the entrances to these tall buildings at the edge of a town covered in a yellow haze, your solo applause echoes throughout the empty streets.
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