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The Gravity of Imagination

Arthur Sadrian

    Dust. It always starts with dust. Big, giant clouds of dust that lie dormant in a hanging black abyss. But they aren’t actually dormant, merely unhurried. Invisible forces are at work. Hands – no not hands – strings – no not strings either. A defining force permeates the... (landscape?) It slides between, mass, matter and even nothing at all. It sets the grounds, or, more accurately, it grounds, all that we know to be.
    Now the forces’ work begins to manifest. The dust is moving, forming smaller, thicker orbs that swirl around internally, becoming even smaller and thicker. It collides, faster and faster and faster. Closer and closer and closer. And now the particles intertwine, smashing through force fields and grasping one another tightly – inseparably. Heat. Thermodynamics. The grid sinks, biggest ball at the helm. It pulls, trying to reign in the smaller spheres that dance around its edges, but to no avail. They merely laugh, spinning merrily in joyus circles as it expels furious tongues of flame.
    Let me take you to a place in this circle. A very special place – a very special ring. It’s a ring that exists in every developed cloud of dust, wide in some sense, but fairly narrow in proportion to the cloud itself. And within that ring? Well... some extraordinary things have the potential to happen.
    They say that something can’t spring from nothing. That energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed. In a tangible sense perhaps, but, in this ring, physicality is merely one aspect of a far more intricate system. Things exist beyond the parameters of what we can imagine. Ironically, it is the fact that we can imagine that we cannot imagine. What causes souls to spawn from the cold certainty of elements? Why is it that, in this very special, very unique ring, the line between matter and non-existence blurs into consciousness?
    Remember those balls we talked about? Not the big hot one, one of the smaller, rockier ones. Want to discover where souls are made? Want to consult the heartbeat, the object of sustenance? You’ll have to look inside the ring very closely. Look for the ball.
    The ring is small, but the ball is smaller – miniscule and yet simultaneously humongous. Small and big, big and small – though ostensibly different concepts, consciousness does a weird thing where it sometimes merges the two. It’s called interpretivism, and it’s about as bizarre as the rest of what spawns in this ring. You’ll just have to get used to it if you want any of the following to make sense.
    Okay, back to the sphere. Have you found it?
    Vibrance. Allow yourself to be blinded in vibrance. It’s vibrance in a pinprick, so minute and intense, colorful and multilayered that even what you see cannot be summed up verbally. This globe is not stolid like its counterparts. Rather, it writhes as things – millions, billions, trillions of things – cling tightly to its surface. Now you must understand that, though both play a critical role, it’s not the balls within the rings, nor the rings themselves that bring this story to relevance. It’s those little pathetic scrambling things that, while physically insignificant, bridge the gap between thought and reality. They merge our universe with... something else – something bigger – and unlock a door that permits us to utilize creativity and address the hypothetical.
    Yes, us, for we are those things. And not just you, your species and your occupational planet. Step back for a moment. Note those globes, that ring – now note them against the backdrop of the universe: the millions of other throbbing spherical entities you share it with. You want to discover, document, utilize your special gift of curiosity. And yet, how does one encapsulate the abyss we live within, even when much of it remains shrouded in a veil of mystery?
    Embrace the hypothetical, my friend. You are the only entity that can perceive something for more than it is; do not waste your special talent. Tell yourself, what if I don’t want to be exact? How may I observe and alter this expansive playground to morph it into my own reality? And then, what will these new realities be?
    Now write. Write about a land of pulsing triangles, composed of colors we can neither visualize nor grasp – about a place where idiocy is rewarded over merit. Write about the time you broke your arm at age eight, but instead of your mother driving you to the hospital, it was superman that swept you up instead. Treat each story as one worth telling, no matter how bizarre, ethereal, or abstract.
    The universe is lonely. It compels us to follow the biological cycle not so we can reproduce, but to achieve a sustained connection with other universes – our universes. Perhaps, as the offspring of this greater body, it is our purpose to bring these universes to life – to make this dark cold place just a little warmer, a little brighter.
    We are not simply humans. We are universe builders and, by harnessing our power over the imaginative, we may fleck inky black with pinpricks of intricacy. Stories aren’t just stories: we are gatekeepers, capable of materializing entire microcosms should we opt to do so. You must fling those gates open. Invent genres, re-define concepts, conjure scenes so palpable that they overshadow even our own universe – all via the portal of your miniscule synapses.
    It’s all in our heads, I know, but isn’t that the beauty of it?

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