Slice of Lifeforce

This is an ambitious attempt to capture something metaphysical. This won the Oblongata Award at Medulla Review. Later, the editor asked me to edit an issue of the magazine based on the genre I created

I, the energies moving through this body, in this multiverse, am standing out in the middle of the night, under stars, surrounded by the soft shapes of a tree line, in all directions. I move the body to the center of the circular clearing.

Circulating through the body, I wish for more dancing, more movement, and the body including the brain, listens. The body starts to stretch, then to cavort gracefully on the uneven surface, then freezes in the beginnings of a movement. The ears aim at the metallic sounds come from the house catty-cornered across the gravel road. Clanging, sporadic, in clusters, impossible for the ears to make out where it's coming from, or the brain to determine the source.

The eyes search the house and land that dreams it. It could be anything. The brain scans the sounds, unable to determine if people are throwing out large metal things into the yard, hitting other large metal things. Or if they've made some sort of musical metal randomly banging installation. No, that's only wishful thinking, on this rural Alabama road. Or if there is a fight. The sounds could be coming from outside the house, inside, from different angles, things being thrown out. Maybe they're leaving?

This is a portal for various parallel universes to interconnect, and make an avant-garde musical installation of their own. Maybe the horizon will never collapse during the observation of what it is.

In one universe, the folks have had a fight. In one of the others, they're doing construction on the house at night. There are more, all making sounds that echo and linger.

What would it collapsible into if caught on some recording instrument, which wouldn't be aware of all the different parallel realities?

Or would it? Its molecules vibrating, pulsing, the electrons moving into many different slits of openings, of portals, one electron, into more than one portal. It would be aware of them all. At the same time as only being aware of one.

I give a performance for the sky, to the industrial sounds. I open the arms out as I move slowly, dislodging memories, swooshing them with me, as I circulate.

In some parallel realities, I flow with ease, enjoying the sounds of metal thrown around while a new addition is being built in the middle of the night, suddenly In some, the wind is only high there, moving the flagpole around. Is there a flag pole? No, but now, those parallels exist, for while, a bit, and then, will collapse, will they not?

In some, I flow with discomfort, picking up the auric sparks from the fight across the road. I flow with empathy for their sleeplessness, in the reality in which the sounds come from the wind, banging, clanging. I shake my head in the reality in which there is uncertainty. Realities dream toward each other, changing slightly how each one feels, mysteriously, interacting in such subtle ways. The hive of parallel lives buzz.

I make the body stand straight, and hold out the arms, gesturing as if a tree with many branches, each branch a boundary of a different level of the self. I dance with those arms down, dance with those arms up, dance with those eyes up above the head looking up, as I swoosh up out through the center of the crown of the head.

All the different perceptions become a circle of confusion. Too many possibilities. So, I make the body spin, and I whirl, around the circle of parallels in the vortex of possibilities, and fly up through them to a higher level, let the confusion throw me above it. I fountain up, higher, and brighter, up, and around, down around the magnet of a body. Whoozh, and down below it, sliding back up into it, up, up, and around.

I spread out above the head, level after level. I spread out, large. I occupy the 99 percent of the self.

Author's Note

I never put up work online that hasn't been published in journals, anthologies, or books, so I'm not necessarily asking for you to take the time to offer revision suggestions specific to the stories.

If people here ask for that, I offer it in my reviews, however. That doesn't mean mine doesn't need ever it. But if it's online, it's not then available for being in magazines, so this is just my way of sharing with you in case you enjoy it.

Reviews

[roarke]

Strangely, this reminds me of autism. What it must feel like inside an autistic mind. I don't know why, just first impression impact.
Bold challenges, giving consciousness to intangibles.

This is a mesmerizing phrase:
The eyes search the house and land that dreams it"

I think Joseph Campbell could do a doctoral class on that alone. lol.

I think I'm a gonna have ta recharge my lifeforce's batteries soon....

[Tantra Bensko]

That's interesting. I hadn't thought of it as being inside anyone's mind at all, but the viewpoint of the energies moving through the body. I wonder if autistic people ever shift their identify in that direction.

Thank you, I'm glad you like that line.