Life began in a large explosion of light and sound. The universe expanded ever outward, and continues to grow at exponential rates every millisecond. Rain falls on a rock, and a desert forms five miles away. A lizard learns to walk, and a fish to swim. Someone beats a stick against a tree, and a rock falls from a mountain. A dog barks, a wolf howls, and a bird chirps. Tsunami’s form while the well runs dry. Time stops. Time begins. And so everything is connected and looped into a fabric of imagination and discovery.

Humankind breaks new barriers every day, sometimes in the most meaningless of ways. Simple acts connect time and space; people and animal into a hodgepodge of motion, reaction, interaction, cause and effect. When you step back and remove yourself from the weeds of life, climb a tree, and stand over the canopy to view the world from a higher perspective, the lines of space and time become more blurred and less defined. But the beauty of the world from that height can make a blind man a visionary, and a wise man stupefied.

The point of all this, was that in this moment in time, whether by science, magic, dream or reality, I can exist in a year, an era, a generation that is not my own, connected by some odd occurrence of space time convergence. As I lay in my bed, sweat pouring from every pour, eyes alert and focused on the cracked plaster of the ceiling, I suddenly felt as if I was standing at that amazing height looking down on the universe. My mind was searching for the answers to the words voiced by a crazy old man. Somewhere in his twisted story was the truth, and I felt that for once, there was no way I could ever come to true comprehension. I was probably not made to understand it. An evolutionary mistake, I was not meant to comprehend the breadth of knowledge that faced me in challenge.

I just had to live it.

I had to survive it.

I had to win this competition.

It was the only way I would ever go home.