Change: short story

Change

     Today I spun in 5 circles, my eyes blurred, my head swam in only the way vertigo takes over. Then I spun in 5 circles more. And each revolution, each full circle renewal, the world changed.
The world, that big blue ball always spinning, always changing. Blink once and notice all the changes, this moment will never happen again. Did you miss it? Did you let it slip by or did you reach out your gnarled fingers and claw away at the fabric that holds together your space and time? What if you lied and didn’t blink at all, but kept your eyes wide with amazement or fear or indifference or arrogance? It doesn’t matter, everything already changed. And it just did it again, and again.

     That little nugget, niche, bubble where you curled the world around your finger, the little finger, the one most powerless to show the ease at which you control that little nugget, niche, bubble of your world, you don’t have control of anything. There are forces beyond your conception that shape the environment around you, from the movement of air due to changes in pressure inside your cozy house and the outside where a storm rages, the bacteria floating on that air current, the mouse lifting his nose to sniff your dinner as the air wafts by.

     You have no control. Not even of yourself. You are a bundle of chemicals that respond to other chemicals that are responding to the bacteria that just flitted into your nasal cavity, escaped the cilia that sweeps pathogens into mucus and down your throat. Your bundle can change with the release of one hormone, or the lack of another hormone. Maybe that’s just your physical body. We humans are sentient beings, our minds are above our mere chemical bodies. Ah, and what if you were injected with heroin or a thousand other chemicals, your mind is as lost as a mouse in a maze without the sense of smell.

     So you have no control, of yourself, of your environment, of the world. You are reactionary. And so you react. And you fall into the loops, positive and negative feedback, perpetuate the stimulus or shut it off. Eventually anticipatory, shut it off before the stimulus begins or starting before there is something to start with. This is chemical, this is responsive and yet revolutionary, you’ve changed something from that chemical self through reaction to make a significant difference. One revolution, one blink, one chemical, and the whole world changed from your one little nugget, niche, bubble. Butterfly flapping its wings, hurricanes rage, pressures change, air currents form, bacteria floats, internal chemicals recognize pathogens, you either live or you die.

     Maybe I should spin more often, or not. It doesn’t matter, everything will still change.