by Randall Amster
I awaken every day knowing that one thing will be different—one item out of place, one song lyric changed, one person here or not, one event remembered differently by others, one part of myself altered in a way that only I would notice. I’ve named this experience temporal arrhythmia because it sounds cool and smart and sciency, but I have no idea what it all really means in any tangible sense.
But I do have a suspicion, and I might as well share it now rather than try and build suspense so that you keep reading until the end after wading through a hodgepodge of disjointed vignettes that convey a chic postmodernism in terms of storytelling motifs while mainly serving to cloud the fact that a compelling throughline is less important than stylized visuals over a gripping music montage (sorry, media moguls).
Essentially it’s this: I’m sliding inexorably one universe (dimension? paradigm?) over day by day. At this rate the changes are so subtle that it often takes me a whole day to perceive what it might be—but it’s always something. Usually the vagaries register more in the ripples than my direct experience, leaving me to sleuth out what’s going on, why it matters, what it tells me about reality, and where it’s heading.
On those last few notions, however, I’m still in the dark or at least a dimly lit space. Which means that although I’ve told you the premise straight away, the discovery of some purpose and/or any plausibility remains incomplete. Which then means that you all have something to do after all! To illustrate things:
“…and in other news, the Administration is doubling down on its ‘US First’ policies today by deploying 2500 more internal troops onto the frigid streets of North Minnetonka; demonstrators pelted the officers with ice balls in a symbolic gesture that organizers say was intended to draw attention to human rights and democratic values being trampled like snow beneath their feet… Back to you in the studio–”
I’ve been through so many of these scenarios across dozens of timelines, with events like this somehow becoming a focal point for many of the transitions where changes become evident. In some situations, armed agents massacre people trying to intervene on behalf of others; in a few realities, agents defect and refuse to participate in the brutality, dropping their weapons and joining the protests. In many cases though, it has become clear that this is a pivotal set of conditions and a fulcrum point across timelines.
I remember reading something about this, or hearing it, or maybe dreaming it? Namely that time has something like currents and eddies to it, places where points of reality converge, where there is fluidity in the unknown of what will follow and thus providing an opening for people to forge their own destiny. It’s these moments that have become my focus, the ones that transcend timelines—even uniting them—and forming new states of consciousness in the process. They are test cases for cosmic justice.
There was something from a few timelines ago that stood out for me; I think it was called “the arc of the moral universe” or something like that? It was unfamiliar to me, at least from my home timeline before the jumps began. I didn’t have time there to fully grasp it, but the gist was about how there is a sense of good in the universe and that we all can be part of its fulfillment IF we work together to bring it about. Basically things are going that way with or without us, but we’re invited to be part of the beauty and joy.
It never fails to amaze me how people everywhere, and everywhen, seem to know this on some level. I guess you might describe all of the many adjacent realities I’ve seen as exercises in trying to remember and manifest this sense of purpose, struggling against forgetting that long arc of time where most of our existence was spent in communion with the world. My aim is to keep going until I get back to that place.
© Randall Amster
Randall Amster is a full-time planter of seeds and a sometimes poet/author writing @Chaosmology for no one in particular. Previous work has appeared all over, like spilled wine on a picnic table, way back before memes were invented.
Share the love and wonder by making sure to respect the copyrights! Everything we publish belongs to the authors. You can share their texts via the official link. If you quote them, please credit them. Supporting creativity starts with respecting those who create, so we thank you in advance for doing your part!