Chapter 3

I don’t know how long I was literally senseless, but I was still able to think. For instance, I could tell that I was floating face down, which seemed quite strange. Only, I realized that I didn’t feel that I was floating, not exactly; instead, I seemed to be suspended in some fashion, but that seemed even stranger. Strangest of all though, I seemed to be divorced from my senses, yet not completely. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t hear a sound. I couldn’t smell an odour or taste anything. Still, I knew that I was resting face downward. I have no idea how long I spent simply searching for any other sensation of any kind. I couldn’t feel my heartbeat or tell if I was breathing normally. Yet somehow I could detect the sensation of floating, but floating within bounds of some sort, and yet I knew I wasn’t touching anything. I recall considering the idea that the liquid in my inner ear might be responsible for that knowledge; after all, that’s the organ which gives any human a sense of balance, isn’t it? Did that mean that there was nothing left of my body, just my brain? Yet, if I had eardrums, then I had to have a skull, but I knew a skull couldn’t exist on its own; it couldn’t live without a torso and the organs within it. If I had a torso, why couldn’t I feel my heartbeat and my respiration? Finally, I decided that I might be in a hospital and under heavy sedation – maybe! But, then again, maybe not.

Having failed to discover any link between my limited sense of self and any outside influence, I considered my very existence. Was I still alive, or was this some form of death, perhaps a singularly bothersome form of purgatory? I even questioned that thought: why was I considering the idea that I was dead? Did I have a reason for that notion? Had I been through some monstrous trauma which was influencing my mind, my inner thoughts, and feelings, but I didn’t have any answer to that thought either? For some reason, there was a curious blank when I tried to remember recent events. Why? What had happened to me? Had I been the victim of a trauma so malevolent, so intense, and so distressing that my mind refused to even revisit the memory of the event?

I clamped down on that thought, reasoning that there must be a reason for my mind’s possible aversion to recent events. Yet the only respite I had to that worrisome tickle was another futile attempt to discover any sensation, but that was frustrating in its own way. I knew somehow that I had to resist that frustration, for I feared that giving in to frustration would lead me to madness. Unfortunately, I was becoming bored, and I recall deciding I needed to develop some sort of mental activity, since I worried that I could go out of my mind because of boredom just as easily. I had to think of some other method of entertaining myself, another way to pass the time, to kill the boredom of inactivity.

That thought brought up another question: if I had no senses, how was I able to think? Now that’s a philosophical question you can ponder for a long time – I know you can, because I did. My final decision was that ‘I think, therefore I am’ and I realized that was a quote, but it took me a long time to dredge up the memory of when and where I had heard it and just as long to think of who had originally said it. When I did realize where I had heard the quote before, I also realized why I’d had difficulty recalling the author of the phrase. I had learned it in Latin class in college as ‘Cogito ergo sum,’ a statement by the philosopher René Descartes. I decided then and there that my brain must have filed that little gem under a file title of ‘Latin studies,’ if such a thing was possible.

Researching the idea of how memories were filed seemed to naturally become my next method of fighting the incipient boredom which had begun to worry me. So, I spent much of my time in the next while on that research and although I didn’t discover how the brain files memories or how fast it works, I did learn that I have a very good recollection of my past life. Only those recollections aren’t arranged in a concise and consistent manner, at least not as far as I could discover. My memories certainly weren’t being accessed chronologically, nor by subject.

Now as an example of that, I went hunting for my earliest memory and I found that I recalled a day when my grandfather had lifted me onto the back of a donkey, but to get there we had to walk out of the house. I remember lifting my hand above my eye level to reach the door knob and then not being strong enough to open the door myself, so I must have been about three years old at the time. However, after that ride on the back of the donkey, my memory skipped forward and I recalled standing beside my grandfather’s grave as he was being buried, which happened almost thirty years later.

I have no idea how the brain works, and I have no idea how fast a memory passes through your mind, but I do know that I reviewed much of my childhood and even more of my adult life before I realized that my situation was changing. At some indefinable point in time, I recognised some form of sensation; some function of some unknown nerve was stimulated, and I felt certain that it was not within the limits of my brain. I didn’t know what that sensation was, but it was an expansion to that world of memory which had defined my personal limits for an indeterminate time. I reached out to it, did my best to hold onto it, to treasure it, for I was certain it was a gateway to more, much more.

Only just as I seemed about to reach some point where I could fully embrace that sensation, it softly and slowly faded away, and I seemed to slip into a dreamworld of fantasy. I found myself in a quiet world that held no true memories, but only elusive sketches of gentle dreams that fluttered weakly past me, leaving no track and no trail I could follow. Like a silent movie, seen through rippled glass on a foggy night, they were there, but to my logical mind, they made no sense. They existed, but somehow my search of their reason for being led me to a period of quiet rest, a time of peace.

Once more, I seemed to awaken – only did I? Had I been asleep? Did I have a body of some undefined sort which could awaken? There were still no sensations except those within my mind, or were there other sensations, sensations that I had yet to discover? Curiosity drove my mind to reach out, to search, and ... yes, that ‘outside’ sensation was back, but it was still just an indefinable stimulus that somehow impinged on my being. Having discovered its continued or repeated existence, though, I investigated that stimulus carefully, trying not to reach out, but letting the sensations of its existence filter through to me instead.

It seemed to send forth a fluttering sensation, a wave that waxed and waned, a repetitive quaver, similar to a pulse or heartbeat, but faster and weaker than my old heartbeat had felt. It wasn’t strong, but that mild throbbing effect gave me a sense of something I hadn’t experienced for an unknown period – it gave me a sense of the passage of time. Somehow just that tiny little item of information was vital to me, for it restored something I had sorely missed – a measure of duration. I knew that weak fluttering sensation was probably not accurate in any way, yet there was an interval between flutters. Accurate or not, I knew I was sensing the passage of time and that felt almost as if I was welcoming the return of an old friend.

You may have noticed that I didn’t say I was feeling, or hearing, or seeing that faint flutter, because that wasn’t a definition I could make. It was just – there – a measurable, functioning ‘something’ – a weak pulsing sensation, which existed outside of my voluntary control. In some strange way that ‘something’ verified my existence and gave reason to my conscious being. It gave me hope that I actually had a body – somewhere, somehow. In some vague manner it gave me reassurance that I was not simply an isolated thought pattern existing in a complete limbo of uncertainty.

That hope gave me assurance and for the first time in ages I was able to fully relax and that relaxation brought on rest. It was only then that I realized I was unbelievably tired, almost completely exhausted. That faint pulsing sensation lulled me and for the first time since that brilliant flash of searing light, I seemed to relax fully, then ... I slept.