As the door closed behind me, I was enveloped in an inordinate silence. I called `Hello’ once again, but my voice seemed to get lost somewhere between my lips and ears. Then the whirring started again.
I took a few steps forward and froze. As I approached it, a soft glow began emanating from the back room. I slowly walked toward it, my heart rate quadrupling with each footfall. I reached my hand forward and pushed the door open, my eyes opening widely at the spectacle that appeared before me.
In the center of the room, a glowing orb hovered a few feet above the floor. About the size of a beach ball, the orb was mostly blue with clouds wisping through it, as if it encompassed the sky within its circumference. It drew the light from the rest of the room, and I forgot for a moment where I was.
I took a few more steps toward it, mesmerized by its motion as swirling clouds began to take shape inside of it. As my consciousness was drawn into the globe, I experienced what can only be described as déjà vu; however, it was unlike any déjà vu that I’d experienced before.
The orb was a vision of my life, a circular cinema, a window to my world that left me slack jawed and dumbstruck as I watched my life unfold before me. I saw myself playing on the beach, bobbing in the warm surf of Siesta Key. I played hide and seek among the houses of my suburban neighborhood. I watched my father build our new
home before we moved in. I wandered through the palmettos behind it.
The images didn’t play out in chronological order, but overlapped one another in a moving collage rolling through the ball like a schizophrenic marble.
I saw myself in confirmation at Faith Lutheran Church, holding the collection plate as an acolyte, and walking forward at the altar call at Colonial Oaks Baptist Church. I saw myself in various schools and finally graduating and going to college. I saw myself in dozens of jobs and a myriad of relationships as the fabric of my life embroiled into an ever-changing tapestry.
Without even feeling my feet move, I was drawn closer to the circular vortex of my life’s history. The rest of the room and the memory of walking into it had faded from my mind. All that remained was the miraculous image of all that I was encompassed in a swirling mass of light and movement.
In a flash, I was an infant and an adult, a child and a teen. I was a Christian and an agnostic, a poet and an idiot. In the blink of an eye, I saw myself leave Sarasota with a pack on my back and arrive in Los Angeles with a motorcycle between my legs. I saw myself coming back to Sarasota with nothing but my tail between my legs.
As my life progressed, I saw the ripple of it proceed to others. My actions, my emotions, my thoughts, they echoed through the minds of those who shared in my journey. Whether they were aware of it or not, everything that I did affected everyone that I met. My highs lifted them. My lows dragged them down.
When I laughed, they smiled. When I frowned, they mourned. When I sang, they danced. When I cried, they fought. The law of cause and effect was lost on me, and I was unsure of whether I was causing their ups and downs or if I was the effect.
My spirit would spike when I felt love, when the harmony of nature and the joy of creation prevailed. But my consciousness would plummet when I felt that I was causing pain. Hopelessness overpowered me with the sense that we were all imperfect and subject to failure. Anger stirred within me and war broke out around. Fear overcame me as poverty stripped well-being. Guilt submerged me in selfishness as I gave way to my own desires and thought nothing of those who had need.
My shoulders drooped and my head lowered, though my eyes remained transfixed on the glowing orb of biography. My body grew heavy. The edges of my vision blurred until even the globe started to lose focus. Under the weight of my shame, my knees gave out as my vision faded to black, and my body fell to the floor.
This is an excerpt from How to Survive an Estralarian Mind Meld. Come back weekly for the next part or order your copy in ebook or paperback today!
