Collective
He stood in a corner of the land and breathed. Timeless miles of awe. Today, there would be nothing beyond the horizon. He would stare in this one direction, and the whole world would be plains of gold waves and a sheet of blue sky pulled up from the land’s curve. Today time starts where he is standing, and if it comes back around, it’ll just give him a push. Today, nothing will fall from the sky, and he is just the eyes that make it real.
There’s something greater than a smile. Wider, hugely more open and vast. You deliver it by raising your head to the sky and spreading your arms high, hands stretched. Your face can barely stand the muscles pulling at it, and you squint, and breathe gasps of laughter until you’re lightheaded. The land responds by blowing through you, and everything moves in time and reaches upward towards space at its broadest. Light starts everywhere, pours out of you fresh and hits you from years and years away. Everything goes white.
Why does everything have to be destroyed in order to come back clean again? How much would we lose if we paved the Earth in golden strands soaked with wind? What have we done?
Our vessels teem with vibrating, frustrated light. The art of living might be keeping all this life from spilling out. That’s terrible. If we could let it all out, if we could agree all at once to open wide, it would all fly and gyre up and white the planet blind again. If we could agree to do this, we’d all be saved.
He stood in a corner of the land and breathed. Everyone could be right here. There would be no existence, only presence, and the idea of alone would be old and useless. Only vessels are alone, and here we are glowing, pulsing presence and smiles wider than life. Here, time and light begin and speed onward and if they come back around again they’ll only give us another push.
He felt his shirt ruffle in a breeze.
At the opposite corner of the land, beyond the horizon, someone is breathing. Their sky is as blue and their field as golden. They see something ahead of them glimmer. They look in this one direction and wonder what would happen if time started again now.
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