gloamingdaydream

One morning, walking into the bathroom to wash up, an abhorrent figure reflected back from within the mirror. A blurry shadow overtook the all too familiar sight of my face, distorting it entirely. The person that stood there, making eye contact with me, existed in a dimension so similar and yet so far from the soul that filled up the physical husk comprising my body. The essence that had formed the intangible shape surrounding me had dissipated into nothingness, leaving behind fresh particles that themselves now began to merge into that new, unknown entity.

The idea of being cognizant overcame me as, hyperaware and fixated on every object that enclosed me within this small area, my consciousness detached itself from my frame, perceiving it from a state of utter apathy, alienating the face of the person that was being born in this very moment. As my eyes fixed upon the human being who’s colors were draining into them from this world, a parallel dimension superimposed itself onto this reality, shifting every conception built around myself, isolating me from the connections that tied me to this world’s bridge. It almost felt like the me that took control of every physical aspect was now completely separate from the self that created every thought, fired every synapse in my brain. “Who are you?” I thought to myself, attempting to communicate with the force that had confined itself here. A shallow, insignificant voice responded, with every intention of identifying itself, yet with no possible solution to the mishap that had occurred in mere seconds. A part of me was gone forever, having faded into the abyss of absolution, taking away a crucial fragment.

Just who was that person in front of me? Unable or unwilling to take their eyes off me, replicating my every move. Every cell of mine screamed in pain, telling me to remember, that person was someone I knew quite well, someone who I owed a great deal to, someone who constantly helped me stand up no matter what, and yet, for those brief, infinite moments, etching themselves into the universe’s history, I no longer had any recollection of who that was. My hand reached out, theirs did as well, yet we were forever separated by that inexhaustible dimensional rift. A visual canvas, one that I know all too well, shatters, a scenery that once existed as the backdrop to every action, fades into oblivion. Cut off from the noise that drowns out reality, the image of a person with no name is all that remains within this tiny, insignificant room. The ever constant change that occurs second by second for every breathing human, felt only by them, locks itself away behind a wall of code, unable to differentiate itself from any other person. Every sensation, sound, taste, that has been recorded within the shell of experience has been ripped away, or perhaps, the vessel itself has been ripped apart from those innumerable pieces that make up oneself, with no way to realize this other than a vague, indescribable feeling of existing in a void that does not calculate one’s presence of mind. Only then did I notice that incessable desire to understand the other as one attempts to understand or even predict the process of thought that envelops each person that is not one’s own self. And yet, those millions of millions of possibilities remain but possibilities, unattainable to anyone else but the engineer that continuously takes for granted their own self, and perhaps too desires to understand the non-existent. And yet, the idea of knowing that path was once one familiar to me, and yet lost for perhaps all eternity, rattled in me a sort of incessant, nostalgic deconstruction of all the events I’d once imagined in my youth, painting them as the years went by, believing them to be stable enough once they dried. However, somehow the entire canvas was now ripped out of the wall, the painting no longer known to me, as the imaginary possibilities once again took form within a space conjured up within the plane which one holds utmost control over.

Suddenly, with no reason or explanation, every expanding planet calmly collapsed, every qubit of information smashed into itself, piece by piece, reverted back into the empty wormhole, reconstructing the broken elements, and thus, observing myself. How could I possibly forget my own face, that I looked at every morning? How I could possibly forget every taste, every sensation that I’d ever perceived, every color, sound, motion, overloading into my brain. And finally, I remembered it all. And from the deepest innard of mine, a sound echoed out, the sound of my name. As I spoke it, to prove I was, indeed, myself, to prove that a momentary fragmentation that seemed like it had flipped my world upside down permanently was nothing more than a mere blip in my own history, every element crashed back into me simultaneously, the dissonance gradually dwindling. I then scowled and quickly left the bathroom, no longer in the mood as I jumped back into bed, feeling the soft and yet excruciatingly exhausting sensation of doing absolutely nothing, as proof that I, indeed, had always been myself, and no one else, and the shadow that had haunted me for but a brief fraction had been nothing more than a bad dream.