“Her Walk Became a Trip”

“Rosie was walking slowly on the dusty path that would carry her, for several hundred yards, under the canopy of mid-sized trees, before turning back toward town and bringing her into a residential area adjacent to the business center. She seemed to herself to have been swallowed by the surrounding world, to have disappeared as a separate and discrete creature and become indistinguishable from the flock of immense white cloud-birds sailing overhead and the hippity-hopping, squeakily chirping sparrows gathered at the foot of the nearest oak tree. Her soul soared on high with the snowy-winged swans and her heart merged in love with the tiny fluffball birds. As she rounded a corner of the narrow pathway, Rosie met the sun head on. At first there was a vibrating, dazzlingly white ball; then great waves of brilliant light; and, finally, an endless ocean of undifferentiated brilliance. Her feet stopped moving. She waited for the temporary blindness to wear off. She felt such exhilaration, simply standing there, literally blinded by the light.”