Expanded Lives 15

The Expanded Lives collection is emerging from another writing project:

'The Xpanded Family at Light-Mann Farm'.

While developing the Light-Mann Farm series, I became increasingly interested in the possible consequences of Xpansion, the idea that we can extend human identity, experience and connection beyond their familiar boundaries. Eventually I found myself with a list of twenty benefits that such possibilities might bring, alongside twenty corresponding challenges.

Those forty ideas became the foundation for a collection of forty stories within the Light-Mann world, which I titled

Xpanded Lives

.. but something unexpected happened, while I was writing them.

Again and again, I realised that the ideas themselves did not depend upon Xpansion at all. We already live with them, and so I created a parallel series of stories called Expanded Lives.

Our Honeymoon is the fifteenth story in the 'Expanded Lives' series, and the relevant realisation to this story is that we can grow close together but still retain our individuality.

During an anniversary holiday two people who have been close for many years spend time together beside the sea and become aware of how differently they experience the same place. One notices the changing light, the shape of the horizon and the movement of distant boats while the other is absorbed by sound, memory and the people passing behind them.

Their conversation gradually reveals similar differences in the way they understand shared events from their lives in general. Neither perspective cancels the other. Instead, the two chairs become a quiet image of intimacy without sameness: side by side, facing roughly the same world, but occupied by distinct consciousnesses.

The story explores the temptation to treat agreement as evidence of closeness and difference as a threat. Their companionship is strengthened as they recognise that they do not need to see the same sea to share the afternoon.