Short Story: The Side View

As soon as I found out time is not what they show us it to be, I stopped surging through life as if I had to be somewhere. Occasionally the old nature fights back, and I am sure it highjacks my mind to convince me that running is the only way to exist. So I rebel. I lay very still and see as the light plays a game of tag with the dark bits on the ceiling. Yet, like the future, present, and past, the game is a conundrum, falling to its maddening logic, which has nothing to do with seeing the world from the side view. And here I slip between the cracks—no more stuck in the present, in the confusion of what next and what had happened. All the possibilities stare me straight to my face, including the ugly truth. The one that had made me painfully aware of how ignorant I am. I barely experience the word as it is—my head, my senses, all lies. It is like the Plato’s cave metaphor. We, I included, are chained to the cave bearing a witness to the shadows painted on the walls, never swimming with the real things. But now, now when you are still stuck in the cave, and I outside time and space, I flow through it all without moving yet in constant vibration.

You might ask me how I did it. How I tricked the strains we have been born with to endure and obey? There I cannot help you. I’m not some great messiah or magician, nor am I wise. I just decided I had enough being a slave to time, time which isn’t real. Not in the way we think it is, with the little and big clock hand lifted to be complied. But my newly found freedom isn’t a superpower, far from it. Both of us know I can’t demolish all clocks and expect an order to stay, as I refuse to be the harbinger of chaos. Especially when half of the time I don’t have a clue where my socks are. Most likely, they have gone with those who appreciate little ducks on a blue background.

Where was I? Not a messiah. As clueless, but happier. I watch all the possibilities unfold and choose something I like, and when I am ready to continue, I step back in and let the light catch the shadows on the ceiling. The future is solved, and I can forever stay in now as those things are the same if we live in the boxed universe. All mutually in the now. But I don’t believe that. What if it is all about probabilities and the neatly confined reality is a perpetual calculating machine where the final equation comes from all the choices experienced and not experienced, and when there is finally a correct answer, everything will be gone. Eternity, universe, life, and all solved. You and me, a fleeting part of it.

Thank you for reading, and have a serendipitous day ❤