Or Perhaps It's The Death

Perhaps it’s the death of someone. Perhaps it’s the casket of someone. And that someone in the casket. Who will shortly be taken away. Who will shortly disappear forever. In the earth or in a fire.

Ridiculous. You’re thinking. This is absurd. And wrong. And unfair. And stupid. And. And.

And the person seems. So unlike himself. So unlike herself. So like himself. So like herself. So much the same and different. So impossible lying here. Lying there. So possible lying here. There.

It seems like a dream. It seems like real life. More real than real life. More dream-like than a dream.

What is this, you’re thinking. What is happening here. This makes no sense. This makes perfect sense. This is a mystery. This happens every day. But not to me it doesn’t.

Time has been destroyed by this. There is a hole in time in which you have fallen. You are falling even now. You cannot stop yourself from falling.

Or maybe you’re rising. Maybe you're rising at a terrific rate. Or maybe what this is. Maybe what this is like. Is an elevator that goes up and down. Maybe you will go up and down like this forever. Never stopping at a floor. Never getting off again to stroll about in time. Stroll about again with the rest of humanity.

Maybe what this is. Maybe where you are going. Is nowhere. Nowhere now. Up and down in the nowhere now that is nothing. That is the zero at the heart of everything. That is the nothing at the center of all things.

But you don’t know. You speculate. You cast about for answers as you ride up and down the elevator of the now. On the walls are pictures. Maybe they’re moving pictures in frames upon the walls of this device. Of this machine in which you find yourself. Pictures. Sound pictures of your life. Sound pictures of the person who has died and you. Moving pictures of what is happening now in the realm in which time appears to exist. Appears to have meaning. Appears to be a dimension in which the rest of humanity exists.

But not you. No. Time is outside you now. All the world’s a video that plays upon the walls of your machine. And your machine goes up and down. The machine is metal, and it goes up and down. You know this from what is happening to your insides. From the way they seem to rise and fall within your body as your machine changes direction or speed.

Oh. It is quiet here. One might stand or sit. It is good to stand or sit. And not to be concerned with decorum. One might sit cross-legged on the floor or stand. Or sit propped up by a wall. In the corner of this little room that goes up and down. Or lie down here on the floor of this machine. Decorum does not matter. You are not concerned with this.

What you are concerned with is what is happening here. What the videos are that are playing. What this sense of timelessness is. Where it comes from. What it means.

What you are concerned with is the profound sense of absence there is in this. The profound emptiness. The echoing quality to all sound. The feeling that what matters now is this. This empty feeling. This feeling that at the heart of things, there is this absence. This cavity. This resonance.

There is to it the feeling of a concert hall. The feeling that if you speak you will be heard. Way over there. As easily as you might be heard right here. Right next to you.

And now the elevator seems like something out of Alice. Something out of Alice’s adventures. It has grown ridiculously large. It was small, but now it’s large. As large as a concert hall.

And you continue to ride up and down. You think maybe you are going crazy. You think these feelings are not normal and may mean you are losing your mind. But you don’t know. Maybe these sensations and thoughts are normal. You don’t know.

You look around for God. You remember God, and you therefore look around for him. But he isn’t here. As far as you can see, you are the only one here in this room, with the videos playing on the walls. Day and night. Always running here everywhere you look. These stinking videos. Reminding you. Playing scenes you can live without. Scenes you’d rather had been cut. Had been left on the cutting room floor. So to say.

And you look for God. You look and look. You watch the videos for him, but he is not there. You look around your elevator when it is small. When it is large. But you cannot seem to lay your hands on him.

You would like to lay your hands on him. You do not know what you would do exactly, but getting hold of him physically is something you’d like to do. You feel your hands compulsively opening and closing. You can almost feel God’s body in your hands. Your hands closing on him. His flesh giving way. Compressing and perhaps breaking as you close your hands tightly about him like mechanical claws. Metal robot claws.

Then you think. But what is this room, I wonder. Where did this room come from that goes up and down. In which I’m living up and down. Big and small. That is quiet mostly and controlled. That is new. This is new, is it not. This is different from the days before the death.

And you think some more. Speculate some more. Maybe this is God, you’re thinking. Maybe this room is God. Maybe what is happening here is that I am inside him now, and this is why everything is so confusing. Maybe he has made a place for me to be until time starts up again. Until I’m ready for time to start. Again.

Maybe. Maybe not. And then you listen. You concentrate on listening and looking. You concentrate on the emptiness. On what this is. Your heart seems to shrink and expand. Shrink and expand. And so does the emptiness. It grows and shrinks. Grows and shrinks. As though it were alive. As though it were all about you and held you in itself. Keeping you safe here in this quiet place.

You breathe, and this emptiness all around seems to breathe with you. Your heart swells and shrinks, and the emptiness does as well. And what this is seems to be a synchrony. A synchronicity. And this feels. Well. Right. There’s something good and familiar in this. Something paradoxically sensible in this. Surprisingly like God in this.

Yes. Yes, that’s what this is. You think. No. No. How can this be. That’s ridiculous. Then, yes. Then, no. Oh. I don’t know. Let me just breathe and let my heart beat like this. Let the emptiness breathe and its heart beat like this. Yes. Just like this. Oh, this. Just this.

And this is. You do not know how to say this. This is. In a sense. A comfort. This emptiness. This heart that seems to beat all around you, that you hear now all around you, as you concentrate. These lungs that seem to fill and empty. Fill and empty. All around you now. The feeling of a living thing all around you now.

Everywhere there is the evidence of God. The sounds of him all around. The feel of his definite presence in this. A blessed solitude. A beneficent aloneness. That he has given. He has granted. This time that is untimely for a kind of healing in the emptiness that. Strictly speaking seems. Has come to seem. To open up like the universe itself unfolding. Like the darkness of the universe itself with its many many stars opening its arms to you. Embracing you. Like any possible impossible loved one.