“Childhood Spirituality”
“Skylar’s saunter to school took, then, an ever-so-slightly-indulgent path on which stones came to magical life, fallen leaves wheezed goodbye to the world, and gutter water sluiced in turbulent runnels. These observations of animate nature were interspersed with time-transcendent, frozen moments in which he experienced a tangible sense of stoppage, of everything: of people, pebbles, leaves, twigs, water, cars, and breathing. Stoppage of movement in space and progression in time—as if the world in which he found himself were a movie and someone had freeze-framed it. The movement resumed, but each small observation or activity, be it picking up a rock or kicking a leaf, occurred in treacle-thick time that slowly oozed and lazily stretched itself out as though it were awakening from the sleep of Eternity, the stoppage, into which it had just disappeared.”