Stop!

One of the many problems with Life, but not with stories, is that you can't stop it. But, how would it be if, face-to-indifferent-face with catastrophe, you just stopped, and said, 'Right. Just hold it there!'? Everything stops. Birds become blots in the air, and the wind at your back is stilled. The river is a frozen slick and the ocean is just paint on the sky. The sun no longer burns, though light hangs flabby in the air.

You step back in this shabbylight. One step, two, three. How far back will you have to go before you can discern the turn-off to catastrophe? And when you start forward again, how forceful will the propulsion towards it be? Will you be able to summon the will sufficient to deviate from that onrush once it begins again? If not, will you stop and try again? And again? Would this absolute liberty, power over all, become just a variant on the castigation of Sisyphus?