One Moment
by John Anstett
I lost touch with reality for a moment. Maybe it was the silence, maybe the honesty, but I never went back. I learn long ago, the measure of fiction was how real it was, so I figure, as long as it is real good fiction, it's close enough. I wasn't always like this, for as long as I know at least. There was at least a time before my life was as it is now, but then again change is a part of life, so maybe I'm wrong. But without a begining, then we are just floating and if I start at the end, then there it is. So rather then starting at the begining of the world, I should start at the begining of mine.
Anyone who could remember their own conceptions would be truly disturbed. From that point on, the first few months may contribute to their future self, but to call it a memory would be a bit much. Even those who believe or feel connect to previous lives rarly discuss their previous childhoods with much detail. Mine seemed normal, loving family, safe and nurturing enviroment. Even to the point where I started to explore the world arround me, I took it for what it appeared to be, and looking back, that was a necessary part of growing up and even to this day I am thankfull for it.
Any belief system needs a foundation, and the most basic beliefs require the most basic building blocks. Up and Down; left and right; Red, Yellow and Blue. These are things that we take as universal, unless your color blind. I was not color blind but I knew someone who was and it shook me for a while, maybe that was the first seed of doubt. How could it be blue for someone who could not distinguish it from red? What if you could not tell the diffrence from hot and cold? As a kid, it was almost funny. I remember my father saying "Don't make fun of things you don't understand". Maybe that is why I tried so hard to understand it. But as I was a child, I let it go for a while and moved on.
I believe I was ten, maybe twelve when I saw my first movie. Ok not my first movie, but my first science fiction movie. To watch it now, it was clearly not real, barley realistic. But the world was so much more vibrantthen my own, the story so clear and intense that I was pulled along as I was the one who just had to save the day, against all odds. It felt as I was in the movie for the days the story took place and when it was over, I felt the memory of the journey as if it was my own and when I walked out, my world was changed, I saw the possiblites of bright new futures, I was ready for any chalange and I knew it would all work out in the end. Then I discovered I had missed my ride. The details still do not seem to matter, I took it as a sign. There was a simple answer, I walked.
Standing on your own two feet and learing to walk is one of the first true accomplishments in a person's life, it changes them forever. It is such a fundmental part of our lives that those who can not walk, sometime even with assistance, are considered another class of people. We try not to think about it, as a society we have done more to help them fit in then some would say is logical, but there still is that line that seems cannot be crossed. I still remember to this day, amist my pride and enthusamum that while I walked, that I had been so thankful on the way to the movie that I did not have to walk and how ironic it was on how happy I was to be walking. I don't remember how far it was, but for my age it was long and it was not about my safety, it was diffrent times. I just rember the walk. At first the path was clear, I knew the way, I just had never walked before. Parts were paved and straight and felt sold under my feet. At time I choose, at least it felt like a choice, to take a shortcut though a field where the grass was high and the ground soft. It felt right; a change; a risk; still on the way to where I was going but like the movie playing in my head, it was so much more about what I could not see, did not know what was going to hapen along the way that made the journey so great. I actually regreated getting back on the sidewalk, back on the straight path. I felt it slow me down, confine me in ways that I could not comprehend. Like a scene from the movie, I treated it like the villian, the obsticle in my way, and I was going to defeat it. Even then I laughed at the pun I had made.
I was still on my movie high when entered the last untamed wildlife between me and my house. I thought I had known it well, a place I had seen many times, even searched for lost balls on the other side that had gone astray, but as I could never see across it, how would I have know what it contained. In my mind, this was the easy part. I was almost home, I had beaten the sidewalk and all I had to do was go through the the fianl streatch. Maybe if the movie would have had a surprise ending, I would have been more prepared for what happened.
I entered it like a door to a new home, a feeling of unfamarlity but the comfort that this was going to be my new life. There were more trees then I had thought, I had imagined the line of trees seperating the filed from the woods more defined. I expected to see the tops of the houses but as it turned out I was not yet to the top of the hill. I pressed forward, confident that while the path was not clear, non-existiant for the moment, that I was doing the right thing, going the right way. For a moment, I thought to go closer to the trees, even considered the fact that I could climb one if I had to. I was tired, maybe on the verge of exhaustion or maybe I was just starting to come down from my high, but at that moment my life started spinning, litteraly. I walked into a spider web, thinking I was ducking a branch, my face covered with the sticky sensation and the thouhgt of somthing crawling on me. I was extreemly concered for my eyes; whether I was bathing or swimming, it was impossible for me to open my eyes without wiping them clear. I had bumped into a tree, lost my balance and spun into another branch and I could not seem to stop and focus on one problem at a time. I had just about gotten my eyes open when I stepped into a hole and fell to the ground.
It took a moment, I took a moment, to understand what I saw in front of me. My spinning world was slowing to a stop and there was a tree in front of me. I knew it was like any other tree but it seemed to speak to me. With a branch, like any other, it pointed. It was an instant recogination of something compleatly impossible, I knew it to be true. Like a soldier being commanded, I went where it pointed, wothout question. Without thought or reason, I walked to another tree and knew this was where I was told to go. I looked up to this tree, as if I expected an answer or a new command. There, sitting in a knott, higher than I could reach, but low enought to see clearly was a baseball. As clear as could be the trees and the baseball, put me back on the path. No longer thinking about the movie, but with the same intesistivity that this was ment to be, I made the rest of the way home. There was the commotion of where I was and what had happened, but it all seemed to flutter by; I was home and everything was all right. All that went though my head was who had hit that baseball and when. Why did no one find it before? I left it where it was, it is hopefully still there now, as it is and as it was a comforting thought that the world had put it there just for me.
(end of chapter 1)
