There was no light here. No feeling. No sound. Only thought. Thought probing at the boundaries of nothingness and finding nothing. With increasing panic, the mind searched for something outside itself. Only the lack of lungs prevented the being from hyperventilating.
Finding no crack in the darkness, the mind’s activity settled, its energy dissipating. The change in state indicated the passage of time, a first orienting and comforting feature in the formless void. The mind waited.
With time, memory began to thaw, giving content to thoughts. The darkness became light, a white light, fringed by orange and red, the colors of fire. The mind remembered that somewhere there was another who was different from it and whose presence resembled the light, a female, although she was not here now. And by this, he remembered that he was a male.
The first concepts were wordless, but soon words came. And with the words, concepts poured in more rapidly. Visions and images flashed through his mind.
Human. He saw a body, perhaps his body, laid upon a bed.
Animal. Plant. He saw a large cat padding cautiously through green ferns in the freckled light of a forest floor. Next a whale swimming in the sea, it’s eye upon him. He felt a form of communion with the beast.
Earth. He saw a shining globe of green and blue suspended on a field of stars. Home.
Past. Future. Money. Economy. He saw a shining net superimposed on the globe, yellow energy flowing along its edges. He remembered that once he was afraid of money, but in the moment he felt gratitude, as for the first time he understood what it was for.
Friends. Family. Mother. Father. He saw his parents, standing together in his childhood home and looking at him. His heart ached with a mixture of gratitude and a yearning for them.
And then he became aware of a mouth. His mouth. Feeling! He remembered feeling. His tongue reminded him of the feeling of matter and weight. He squiggled it about, playing it over the lips and teeth, his lips and teeth.
Next a hand came into being. He gripped it and ungripped it, relishing motion, playing the fingers across each other and across the palm.
Changes accelerated. The proprioception of a whole body materialized. Stomach. Torso. Legs. Eyelids…
Eyelids opened, a crack at first, letting in the outside world. His eyes brought sight to match his sense of feeling. He saw the hands he had felt, and a blanket with the shape of a body underneath. My body, he supposed, I’ll have to get used to that.
Light streamed in through the many windows of a large loft apartment. The sounds of birds accompanied the dance of dust particles through the rays of light. Fiat lux.
Thoughts slowed to a halt as a wealth of content flowed into his senses. He had experienced a rebirth, not just of himself, but of the entire universe. The world made new, fresh, like damp grass after the rain.
He took pleasure in his chest rising and falling, in the cycles of his body prefiguring birth and death, experiencing the world as if for the first time. He lay for several minutes before desire came to him, the desire to see the other he had first remembered. Her.
