I'd stood up too quickly, was all, but what they said happened to me afterwards sounded impossible, and was nearly beyond my belief.

It was a day when I was sitting with some friends in a little forested area between neighborhoods, killing some time as young people tended to do back then with some illegal marihuana.

I Stood Up

I remember standing up, but don't remember passing out and falling back to the ground. When I stood up, the trees around me dissolved into a rolling landscape featuring lots of sky overhead. I immediately noticed movement in the sky, and saw what must have been thousands of flying horses above me, spread out as far as I could see.

As I watched them flying across the sky with great intent, an equal number of dark winged horses came in from another direction, and over my head in the sky, a great battle had begun. It seemed to go on forever, and I gave up trying to figure out who was winning as they darted around up there, but both sides were skilled warriors, serious about their craft.

So there were thousands of winged horses battling it out in the sky overhead, and these magnificent animals were stunning to watch in their aerial acrobatics. Tirelessly they fought, but when I began to wonder what they were fighting over, the sky became cloudy, and at once was gone.

I Stood Up (again)

When I blinked, I was laying on a forest floor, and nearby voices were wafting into my realm. I stood up. It was my friends, sitting in the same spot that they had been in, all of them looking at me. Afraid to blink again, I asked how long I'd been laying there.

"Just a couple of seconds."

According to my friends, I had stood quickly, turned, then collapsed back onto the ground. They said I did a little shudder, like a short convulsion, then I had stood back up. Maybe three seconds?

It was many years ago, but even as time has since crept steadily into those years, I'm still able to recall that feeling of shock, that moment of profound amazement, and indeed I can recall my exact words: "NO WAY." I insisted that there was no way I had only been 'gone' for three seconds. I excitedly described what I'd seen above, and they glanced at the sky as I described the tremendous battle that I'd seen. Still, three seconds. Maybe four.

Now, with a new year upon us, I wanted to share that example of time, and how, when it's happening, may not be as firm as our clocks attempt to make it, and the progression of time may not be as linear and straight as we may think.

Mine may also have been one of those 'you had to have been there' moments, when a colossal battle of flying horses fills the sky for like 10 or 15 minutes and I'm down there guessing who's going to win, only to be told by someone who wasn't even there that I'd imagined the whole thing, and had done it in about 3 seconds.

Is there a part of us that works beyond time, or outside of the linear progression of the clock, or is that just our imagination?

Happy new year!

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images above thanks to Wikimedia Commons

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