PIXEL MANGO
(To be read with an obscure Italianate accent)
“Almost every summers afternoon at approximately 6.30 PM I venture to the park across the road to partake in my favorite hobby of stick-twirling. Today I am trying to master a new trick I conjured up myself which I call the inverted three-step-taplathon...Whoops... As you may notice I am currently having a little trouble coordinating this particular trick today.”
(Narrators voice o be read with a David Attenboroughesque wildlife documentary voice-over accent)
After nearly one hour of continuos practice Flavio Mango is satisfied with his execution of the inverted three-step-taplathon and proceeds to pack his sticks into their appropriate cover bags. He then (as part of his usual routine) thoroughly stretches his calf, thigh and arm muscles before embarking on a homeward journey.
“After I have finished my stick-twirling I stop by at the little store on the corner to purchase a bottle of my favorite pulpy orange drink... Mmm... It truly is refreshing.”
Flavio Mango reaches his quaint but sparsely furnished one bedroom studio apartment.
“Ahh... It feels great to have a soothing hot shower after a little burst of exercise such as stick twirling. After the soothing hot shower I will prepare to head over to my good friend Marco’s place for a delicious pasta dinner. Marco is a wonderful cook and
generally feels compelled to share his hospitality with good company. I believe that Gloria and her fiancé Barney will be heading over to his place as well.”
At Marco’s there is a large bowl of steaming pasta, four plates and the usual cutlery arranged on a small coffee table surrounded by two green easy chairs and a faded orange divan.
“It was over Marco’s fine pasta dinner that I decided to share with my friends the story of what happened to me that peculiar evening while I was roller skating through the park.”
After a brief pause and a sip of fresh guava juice, Flavio Mango begins to tell his story.
“Everything was quiet and peaceful as the beautiful sunset colours appeared between the summery green leaves of the tall trees that lined the pathway. I was so busy taking in the tranquil scenery that I failed to notice a minor obstacle in the pathway before me, which as I discovered later happened to be a partially sucked boiled sweet, possibly pineapple flavoured, which had formed the perfect booby trap for an unsuspecting roller skater such as myself.”
Flavio Mango re enacts with animated excitement how due to a sudden loss of control, his body twisted into a strange position just before his head struck a hard patch of earth beneath a tree on the side of the concrete pathway.
“Almost as instantaneously as my head struck the ground did I realize that I was viewing my body lying under the tree from within the tree itself. I was looking at myself from outside my own body! I then proceeded to climb down from the tree, which was a rather tricky exercise as I was still wearing roller skates. As I approached myself lying on the ground I stood up and scratched my head which had received a small but nasty bruise from the fall. I then went with myself back to the pathway to investigate the cause of my accident. It was then that I saw myself spot the partially dislodged boiled sweet on the tarmac. I was bending down to get a closer look and possibly pick it up when the candy lozenge began to expand at an alarming rate. However, I soon realized that this was not an expansion as I became aware of myself descending, as if I were shrinking, although it was more like having magnified vision of the object I was investigating that was giving the illusion of an expanding fruit flavoured sweet or a physical shrinkage. This zooming in experience ended abruptly when the piece of candy appeared to be approximately the size of a twenty foot boulder. As if through a heightened sense of perception, I began to notice grooves, chasms and tunnels etched all over the surface of the sticky mass, which I deduced to have been caused by the combined effects of corrosive saliva being swirled around the vacuum suction environment of the human mouth for a few minutes and then after being discarded, the melting, expanding effect of the summer sun on the tarmac and ultimately the solidification to its stony base that resulted as the hot afternoon gave way to cooling evening breezes.
I then observed the cautious way in which I proceeded to inspect the area of connection between the stony pathway, which had now taken on the appearance of a rocky alien landscape, and the strongly artificial tropical fruit scented mountain of amber coloured pebble and dust encrusted sugar.
I started to moving around the vaguely oval shaped mass, and when I had reached the opposite side of the object as my other self, I proceeded to move to the side I knew I had already been to as I had seen myself observe the side which I had previously
reached. I could see, in intricate detail, the exact point of impact where the wheel of the roller skate had collided with the sweet and left a vertical gash along the side of it, causing almost a quarter of the base to dislodge from the ground and smash into a multitude of crystalline fragments which lay in a large radius around the point of impact. I then deduced that the wheel must have hit the boiled sweet at an unusually vulnerable angle to have caused such a devastating fall at such a low speed.”
Flavio Mango in his description of these events,
unconsciously arranges the spare cutlery on the table into geometric patterns as he talks aided by a variety of physical gestures.
“At this point I became aware that I was performing similar actions and experiencing approximately the same things at only a slightly different pace to what I was also experiencing at the same time. At no time was there ever doubting anything that was occurring because I was perceptive and aware of all this simultaneously to my other self at slightly different times within the same moment. There was no separation between my multiple selves although each one appeared to be existing independently and separately.
I gradually became aware that I had been viewing this whole microcosmic saga from the tree I had found myself in after the accident, as well as from the ground where I had fallen under the tree and from all the various intermediate positions I had assumed directly before and after my collision with the fruity sweet. I was observing and feeling every aspect of every millisecond and micro-movement that I had or possibly could have already experienced. I was beginning to perceive multiple experiences of myself as if I had continued on individual pathways of each possible experience simultaneously. Each individual dimensional variant of myself continuing to exist
from each individual fraction of active existence as if it were just beginning where it seemed to have ended. This expansion of reality continued on multiple levels, some I was familiar with in the realm of my human scale of existence and others were less familiar minuscule and macrocosmic dimensions. You must understand that it is difficult and limiting to explain the entirety of this experience in the confines of this singular reality, so I will give examples of a few realities I was experiencing at that time:
I was able to see the wheel of my roller skate at a scale where each indentation caused by pebbles on pathways and roads took on the size of large lunar craters.
I became aware of how my fall was resulting in the death of a tree dwelling possum due to a flying fragment of boiled sweet, the course of which I was able to follow from several different perspective’s as it travelled through the air towards the unsuspecting little creature who was precariously balancing on a flimsy branch in an attempt to reach a morsel of food until the jagged but tiny fragment hurtled directly into the poor animals eye, catching it off balance and unfortunately causing it to slip off the branch on a deadly fall. At exactly the same time in a parallel reality I was assisting in the birth of a bird by causing a particularly stubborn egg shell to crack due to the shock waves caused by the tremor of my head striking the ground and travelling up a tree trunk. All the time I was lucidly aware of all the events connected to each possibility as it occurred at every stage.
In a parallel reality I was spinning out of control in a different direction and striking a tree on the opposite side of the pathway while seeing and feeling every stage of that possibility.
Along the tangent of this possibility I perceived the movement of dust particles in the air around my flailing arms as I spun toward the tree and how that movement of dust
particles effected the leaves in the trees above, the movement of the leaves then caused further turbulence which coincided with a small breeze coming from the north, the combined force of which was able to create a breeze strong enough to initiate a small change in the direction of a passing sea bird.
In a simultaneous reality the same dust particles in the turbulent air movement caused by the flailing of my out of control arms continued to spiral upward on up draughts and air currents towards a rain cloud hovering over the park from the east, resulting in precipitation in multiple levels of intensity in the realities I was experiencing.
I naturally began to question within my selves how infinite this cycle of everything and its consequences could be and if I could truly be experiencing infinity at a finite moment in time? Each question remained unanswered as each process of formulation, from What ever form the question originated, multiplied from its own fragment of time to its infinite possibility of conclusions that were of a multitude of different points of view.
I was simultaneously experiencing the entire area of my accident and observing every facet related to it from an ever expanding amount of perspectives. It is as if during the course of a minor accident my solitary reality had been awakened to the experience of infinite parallel realities and the infinite parallel consequences connected to a single event. No single action or space of time could be isolated from my perception which had some how developed the ability to absorb the infinite consequences surrounding the infinite variations of the accident. Past, present and future converged onto a singular plane of existence.”
Flavio Mango pauses at this point and finishes off his glass of fresh guava juice as a somewhat quizzical expression forms on his face.
“As you may be aware by now, there is no logical conclusion to the singular most infinite event in my life which has become my ongoing reality and which has obviously brought me to this point in time and to this particular conversation in one possible reality.
I must stress, however, that this is only one possible outcome to an infinitely expanding amount of realities and explanations of those realities as they multiply in this and every moment that is occurring as I speak.”
Flavio Mango stops talking, smiles at his friends, picks up a shiny butter knife, spreads some butter onto a bread roll, takes a bite, chews, swallows and asks in a nonchalant fashion.
“So, tell me Marco, how was your week?”
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