Chapter 10.6 - Feeling the Lay Lines

Claire was awakened in the middle of the night by the scent of tree blossoms carried in the breeze. She had left the windows open before she went to sleep to let in the fresh air of spring.

Outside the window the ghostly shapes of the flowering trees, all shrouded in white, kept sentry to guard her peace. The spirit of the land was awake too.

Claire listened to its call and went outside, barefoot and dressed in a long nightgown, smiling to herself as she thought that if one of the neighbors happened to see her right now they would certainly believe she was some sort of apparition.

She pondered the fact that she might be dreaming all this, or that she might have been transported by her unseen kin to another time, and in this mansion that never changed, on this land that never changed, how would she even know if that were true. It didn’t seem that important anymore, this inherently human need to place oneself in time, time is just a measure of entropy for things fated to crumble away. It has no meaning in the perpetual cycles of nature, where one moves through stations, rather than advances in a straight line. She was walking into night, the essence of which all nights were made, essence which they all shared outside the tyranny of time. Whether it be today or a long time ago, or years into the future, it was exactly the same night.

Soon its darkness was going to be chased away by the sunrise and it would be morning, the essence of all mornings, infinitely reflected in the motions of the circular universe. And then afternoon, and then evening, and then it would be night again.

This was all life was, walking a circle between now and now again, giving birth to time in the process and measuring it by how many walks around the circle one had already undertaken. Time sped up the more one walked the circle, as if one’s motion snagged its flexible boundary, tightening it and pulling it closer to the center in the process.

Moving around in a circle is meaningless until you realize that the focus should not be on the next step of the path, but on the circle itself, which brings present, past and future together and reveals the inner logic of existence. You can then understand the connections between the stations of the circle, bound in an impeccable mathematical balance, and use them to navigate the waves and currents of reality instead of constantly being battered by them. 

Claire sat on the new grass, closed her eyes and held her hands out to feel the hidden strings of light that bound reality together run through her, connecting her to everything else, and she got instantly oriented in her world, in ways which ran deeper than thought, like birds and bats and whales and butterflies do, without doubt. She settled into this state of unquestioned peace, this state outside of time, and waited in there for the morning.