A Touch with Infinity
Can a mere mortal lifespan ever touch the infinite, The Forever, the perspective of an expanse of existence with no end? LIke a meteor that travels through endless space, mindless, in random direction, traveling anywhere until suddenly... sentience.
Can traveling through endless space, where speculation of past lives, souls and the Akashic record, all tauntingly hint at infinity be knowable to everyone? Some individuals come to experience this Michelangelo-finger-touch only once in their lifetimes, while others experience it multiple times a day.
There is no way to measure or define a journey of conscious thought. There is only a fleeting feeling of frustration as your awareness pops back in, like you were momentarily out of body.
Is going out of body, out of time the mortal’s path to touch infinity? The slightest moment we stop paying attention, it happens and there’s a nano second of awareness before it vanishes. You try to measure, try to grasp it, know it, but then you miss the importance of the experience and still mortal, you fall short of infinity.
When I was eight years old, on a late Saturday morning in February, I escaped our family house, the boredom, the parental fighting, by going outside to play. Chucking on and buckling my black rubber boots, then hastily shoving my arms into my winter coat –leaving the zipper undone– I ran headlong through the front door, breaking free of the stifling atmosphere of my mother and father’s angry inattention.
The snow reflected a clear sky and sparkling white sun. The sudden crisp air in my lungs spurred me, made me run tearing down the block. It was an old suburb, less than a mile outside of a small town. Houses were efficient in size and set with room between properties. The snow was plowed to form bunker-like walls along the street, half hiding the bungalows behind. I watched the air escape my mouth, forming lingering puffs of frozen mist in front of my face as I ran.
I wasn't running anywhere, just running, that free, wanton running that only wild stallions and day dreaming children can do.
During a race with my imagination I threw myself into a stealth fantasy, stalking unknown dangerous criminals, pre-historic mammals, or supernatural boogiemen. I raced across neighbors’ lawns and tore between easements, finally in pure exhaustion I flopped down on a random patch of grass breaking through a melted section of snow. I laid there, chest heaving, my throat and lungs burning. The rest of the world and time itself stood still. My very first experience, while staring at high, sparse clouds, when I imagined I could feel the earth rotating beneath me.
Yellow morning sunlight warmed me and for a brief moment, it was summer. The ragged patch of grass I rested on was dry and green and warm, so out of place with the winter season. I clung to that patch, my fingers dug in, catching and holding my breath. At that very moment, as if I were cocooned, captured in amber to be released from this private sanctuary at the very moment I'd start breathing again, I felt time stop.
I felt no discomfort from the cold. I looked at the surrounding mounds of crystal-blued snow covering the neighbor's yard I serendipitously chose to lay in. It didn't matter to me anymore that it was winter, a season cold and wet and denying the coming of spring. I was immune to it's frozen clutches. My clumsy boots felt heavy on my feet. My coat was wide open and dropped off my shoulders. Sweat soaked my knit hat. My face burned hot in the high, morning sunlight. This was the instant, my first moment I knew without fully understanding – a glorious knowing– my private out-of-time feeling was a touch with infinity. A child’s realization I'd take with me the rest of my life.
#moment #prose fiction #childhood #touching infinity #short story #memories #william calkins #roarke
The Moment
They all say to live in the moment.
There is no 'the moment'.
It's all moments.
Endless minutes rolling on, and on, to make an hour, then a day, a week... a month... a year... a decade...
It's all time.
It always, connects, never slowing down, or speeding up for anything.
How can I live in a moment, or describe a single moment when it rolls into the next with no warning and no pause, and even if there was, that pause is time wasted.
Time... time... time... life... time... death... time...time...
Time is always there. It never stops. Even when you die, time keeps moving.
A Brief Look at Regret
I noticed him shortly after we walked in the room. He stood out for some reason. He looked as if he didn't belong. He was a scrunny kid, wearing a mustard yellow sweater, rust colored jeans, and a fedora perched atop his mini fro. I thought him strange but docile. He sat away from the crowd but he watched intently. Had I known in that moment the devastation he would leave behind, I would've crushed him where he stood. That moment still holds regret. We were never the same.
Quiet Fury
At that moment, she knew exactly why some people bashed in other people’s heads. The very arrogance he exuded made her furious to the point of her wanting to make him realize in the worst way that he could not treat her in that manner and get away with it. If she were not a Christian, she would slap him upside his head before smashing it in with something nice and heavy. That would teach him not to fuck with her in such a disrespectful way. She asked God to forgive her for her thoughts.
Fateful Disaster
For a single perfect moment, time stops. The mind kicks into overdrive, and the situations becomes perfectly clear. The massive jigsaw puzzle of life suddenly fades, and is replaced by a single threat. The mind does not consider who to invite to dinner, or when the next deadline is; this is far more primal and raw. The terrible specter of pain, injury, death has broken all plans for the future. There is only now, and the next moment.
Now, the mind does not consider the list of events that lead to this place; it only begs to live another second. It plots and schemes. Desperate to cheat this fate, either by skill, or preparation, or just blind luck. The mind races as the milliseconds pass. It ransacks its own memories for a solution, and relies on any deeply engrained habits or training. Elegance does not matter, only results. The results must leave the body alive. Some minds will panic in a blubbering realization that they are wholly unprepared for this moment in time, and that they will die here. For without the body, there can be no mind.
An idea arrives - a possible salvation. The mind quickens the body, and does not consider it’s effects. The stress, jittery muscles, and increased breathing do not matter. Blood flows to the muscles in a faint hope to not bleed-out later.
The mind will be scarred by these actions tomorrow, for today it must live.