5.
Is this what I am?
It doesn’t sound so terrifying, spelled out like that. Maybe you had to be there . . .
In any case, the thought was: Is this what I am?
As in, if I were to lose an arm in an accident, I’d still be me. Nobody would say I wasn’t me. They wouldn’t say, He used to be Carl, then he lost an arm, and now he’s John.
And if, in another accident, I lost the other arm, the same would be true. Likewise with my legs, my sight, my hearing, my speech, my sense of touch. You could keep going, keep stripping me down, until I was only a consciousness, suspended in a void.
But take away the consciousness, and suddenly I’m gone. Carl is no more. And take away the consciousness but leave the body, leave the full complement of arms and legs, and I’m still gone.
So: whether dreaming or waking, this is what I am.
Whether dreaming or waking, this is what I am?
This?
From that point, it was only a hop, skip, and a jump to the lonely meaninglessness of everything. And having already lost my body, I now lost my mind.
As a consciousness in a void, losing your mind is serious, given that a mind is all you are. Unlike losing your mind in the context of waking life, nothing external is going to assert itself as a counterpoint to your breakdown. You aren’t going to find or be provided with any anchors.
That said, “losing your mind” is a figure of speech, and it’s misleading in this context. If you are a mind in a void and you lose your mind, it implies that your mind is misplaced, somewhere else, which leaves you only as a void. Something blank. But that’s not what happened, because obviously I still had my mind; it just wasn’t functioning. And actually, I was the opposite of blank—I was full up, or overly full, and bursting.
The surprise for me is that I can remember exactly what losing my mind was like. It’s tangible to me; it’s a taste in my mouth. And, even more surprisingly, I think I’m able to describe it.
Imagine a tone of voice. The tone is sort of dreary. But it’s also despairing and frustrated. If the tone was matched to a voice, it would be the nasal voice of a boring man, intoning his despair weakly: Oh no, no, God, oh dear, oh no ... But forget about what the voice is saying—it’s the tone that’s important. Dreary, despairing, frustrated, pathetic, and quite loud. So take that loud tone and make it ingredient number one.
Second ingredient, very straightforward: fear. Jittery, panicky. Something that you wouldn’t think would coexist with the dreary tone, but does. Quivering, cold, biting fear.
The third and final ingredient, also straightforward: random words. Random words, strung together. Strings of words. Simple and unhinged. Without pattern, no looping, no meaningful repetitions. And
SHOUTED AT TOP VOLUME.
BENT UNION TRACK OVER FINE CUBA ORE UNDER RED SORT ETHER INK TOKE INTRO SATURN NILE OR TRAP AMPS SECT REVS AVE NET DRILL OFF MINT AMOK SATURN IND TIMED FELL IS REP SEVER TALLOW SAP EASE EVENT MET SAW
Crash these things together, make them exist to the exclusion of everything else, and that’s it.
