The Jumper

No rest for the restless.

This particular piece of writing came about in half-sleep as I was waking up this morning. I dragged my ass from bed to desk and handwrote it on a piece of paper, then just typed it up later for Substack with only minimal edits.

My sense of self, it’s prone to wander. I’m here, sitting at my kitchen table, watching the steam rise off the tea, and whoosh — I’m now the wet leaf, stuck to the glass on the outside. I’m vaguely aware of the morning sun drying me to the point of physics of damp tissue not being able to hold me in place for much longer.

And truly, I feel being ripped off the smooth surface by an invisible force and then I’m the wind, lost in the tunnels of the city, looking for a way out. The speed is dizzying, but I don’t slow, bouncing off the tall buildings, gliding gracefully around smaller objects until I’m in the open, heading towards a looming forest.

As I hit the tree line, my mind is shaken loose. It’s in freefall until snatched by a hare on a run. A surge of adrenaline mixed with the toxic stench of fear is pounding me as I realize I’m fighting for my life, fleeing the chase of a predator.

That doesn’t last either, as I latch onto an old pinecone, mercifully oblivious to the unfolding drama.

A microscopic nudge snaps my attention to a probing leg and I’m now a tiny ant assessing the object but judging it too big to carry, scurrying off on the bed of last year’s yellowed needles, pushed forward by a pheromonal sense of directional duty.

The journey lasts a second or two, then I shrink even further to become a particle — an atom — and the world is finally in perfect order, vibrating in harmony, held together by the reassuring pull of my brethren.

Time seems to stop before exploding faster than the speed of light as I become the Universe itself. I feel myself breathing, first expanding, then contracting, for eons and eons, until I’m just a tiny dot in time and space — a perfect singularity — and there’s nowhere else for me to go.

For the first time in billions of years, I’m at peace.

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