Twined in with these mental disciplines were physical ones — an organism that lives for its brain alone turns clack-stupid in its specialization, complexifying simple things to impress itself with its own cleverness. Healthy sane awake people know how to get out of their heads and into their skins. So Vigil members grounded themselves with Oolom disciplines we humans would call yoga, qigong, meditation, martial arts: nimbling up the body to nimble up the soul.
God, oh God… listening to Zillif, I wanted a nimble soul. I wanted a soul, period. And by all the saints and our Holy Mother, I wanted to make myself radiant. Bright as glorious fire. Valuable. Important to important events. Jawdropper stunning, yet plangently meaningful. I wanted to be the one to discover a cure for the plague; to find awe-pummeling treasures in the alien ruins dotted around our planet; to dazzle the universe by being beautiful and smart and talented and wise and loved and memorable and chic and productive and sultry and happy and alive…
On the afternoon of the fifth day, Zillif lost her ability to speak — tongue, lips, and jaw all went slack in the same second. Mid-sentence. "Faye Smallwood, why are you always so…" Then an ugly gargly sound, throat still pushing up noise with nothing to shape it. My friend Lynn called that sound "unloaded uvula exercise"… although Ooloms didn’t have uvulas, not big obvious ones like in Homo sap anatomy. "Aaaaah gaah gaaaaaaah hah kaaaaaaaa."