Out of the Blue

~ a short story

“So I am strolling around town, not a care in the world, and she just appears —out of the blue— walking on the other side of the street. At first, she doesn’t notice me. But then we make eye contact. The rest is history.”

~

“We were just friends, studying together, like we always did. Random Tuesday, I remember. There wasn’t anything especially special about the moment, about the day, about what was happening at that point in either of our lives. But it was then and there —out of the blue— he kissed me.”

~

He hadn’t heard from any of them in years. He was beginning to think they had forgotten about it, or that there wasn’t anything left to their story together. It seemed they each had moved on in their separate lives. But then —out of the blue— he received a letter. Once again, it was time. Time for all of them to return to finish the job.

~

He admitted it to her — it was out of the blue— perhaps out of a sense of guilt, maybe out of a fast dying hope of redemption. Now she knew. All that was left for them to do was to pick up the pieces of their once-promising life together.

~

None of them knew that anything was wrong, until one day —out of the blue— he committed suicide.

~

It was at that point, in one of her lowest moments, that she decided —out of the blue— to start creating something. Everything was about to change.

~ ~

Where do forgotten reveries go? Where are dreams residing after they cross over the horizon of one’s consciousness? Where are all the unused ideas? Where have the ideals expired from the prolonged exposure of an unforgiving world gone on to? Where is the idealized version of the self one can no longer muster the energy to pursue? Where is the ungathered stride, the jump never started, the leap unleapt? Where is the dream discarded for the sake of an undemanding destiny? Where in the world is the path of most resistance never approached? Where is the energy left within the unrequited love? Where are broken aspirations unmade unto? Where does desire go when it dies? What lies at the end of ambition?

Where is all of the potential?

It is certainly not nowhere. It cannot be. It is much too powerful. Truly, this is the most powerful stuff in the universe. It just happens to be non-stuff at the moment. Everything important, everything real, everything substantial enough to build upon and go forth with, spawns from within the specks of these dreams generated from inside this framework of the quiescent. The dream. The idea. The ambition. The mere vision of a world nearing the limits of one’s imagination. The wild path of a destiny as of yet uninitiated. We implicitly understand the difference between fire and darkness is a single spark, a slightly distinct moment of realization when the non-stuff becomes stuff.

And yet in all of the executory decision-making of the vast landscape of this bit of time we inhabit, of the multitudinous opportunities for one over the other, of the infinite coin flips making up the choices of entropy — there’s much left on the table. And the surface of the cosmic table is not quite forever. There is no forever. The moments which are past are past, but you might ask — where have they gone? Maybe something of them somehow remains — remnants of their force, their latent energy, their will.

Inexplicably, there is indeed a place for all of this unutilized potential. Believe it or not, it’s true.

Much like the cycles which produce the universe as we see it, there is some sort of order to all of this chaos. It’s unseen and unknowable; this place is purposefully undeciphered. For to decipher it would be to dispel its very real magic.

You see — all of this quiescent activity, these dormant dreams, the idle endeavors of the past — they are given a second chance, a third chance, a continuous opportunity to make their destined difference. These moments are given over to the blue.

‘The blue’ — a place of stored potential. It is all around us, in every possible corner where this kind of activity is being had — that of knowing actors taking actions and non-actions. Any being capable of making decisions is consistently contributing to its hold. It’s a place where the possible is kept on tap, ready to be released. The blue is a waiting line for the undying, the rest stop for the reemergent, purgatory for power. It’s important to note these types of passed up, momentous decisions, these burning glimpses of vivacious and chaotic change awaiting their eventual re-release into mattering once more —they cannot be held for long. They enter and exit here fastidiously and without much ado.

Any single unused path becomes part of the blue’s inevitably revealing roil.

Ah, but there is the rub. The blue’s mystifying mass of moments all packed together, shifting and shaping over time, causes some undue influence upon its many subjects. The blue changes the composition of everything within its purview. Or rather, the blue strips these dreams and aspirations and lovely returning reveries of all of their uniquely identifying features. All but the core energy within these things is left. Only the base components of their existent elements manage to survive to be reborn again in some other way, in some other place and time. The price for survival is this ultimate defacement.

Performed in the storing & storming spaces within the heart of blue’s mystery, the moments all make their unfathomable return back into reality, ad infinitum —out of the blue—and into the hearts and minds of those still out there, awaiting something to happen to them, for them, as them. It always comes unexpectedly, without warning or potential preparation, without any herald at all. Such moments affect their promised change once again, one way or another. ~