💾 Archived View for gemini.onedimension.net › thought › the-pieces.gmi captured on 2023-05-24 at 17:57:36. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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He wasn't sure where he came from. It was all a bit fuzzy, the beginning. He'd just woken up from something, who knows what. But certainly there had been something. A bright place, maybe. The world around him shifted towards black. The grayness of light from the place before faded quickly until the place itself was gone. There was nothing, and to say that it was even possible for something to be "there" would be impossible. There was no place at all.
But he existed. Existed without a place. He floated around, between here and there, except without the here, or the there. Just floated. Somewhere. But not really anywhere.
He felt this existence. It was true, he existed, he felt to himself. It did not occur to him the strangeness of his condition, existing sans-place. But for him--for him--well existence just was. As it was for all those around him (as much as anything could be around without a place), for the others like him. They too floated around this placeless place.
Bits and pieces of them floated around. They were not a being, complete and place-ridden, no! These bits and pieces of them were free, floating around in this placeless place.
He felt this, he felt the existence of these nameless companions through their bits and pieces. These were them--the companions--each piece was as much a true representation of them as any other. The feeling of each, the essence of each. It was true, it was them, it was individual. Unique. Unique without being place-ridden. These pieces, floating around, each unique, were his companions. He felt them.
He himself was composed in just the same manner as his companions. He knew; he could feel his being split. Existing in many contexts, in relation to the many other pieces of his companions. He felt this existence, this relation-ness. It felt good, it felt true.
Realizing this, he filled with a sort of giddiness, a glee. His pieces existed beautifully, shining in context, in their true nature[1]. Here he was, floating, floating in just the way he was meant to. All was as it should be, he felt. His companions shone too; they buzzed with him, feeling his trueness themselves and echoing it back with affirmation. They too existed, they felt back at him.
Did his companions know where they came from? No, no they did not. He could feel the answer echo back to him. No they did not. They existed now, here and as pieces. This they knew to be true. The time before, just before, they did not know. They existed then, but in a different way than now. He concurred. He felt the same.
And how, how were they? What was this existence? As soon as the question had been echoed, the answer was obvious. He felt the existence, it was as he felt it to be. In bits and pieces, floating.
Did his companions know what would happen next? Existence would continue, was the consensus. The context would change, most certainly. The context was always changing. Existence would change along with it. The feelings would change. He could feel this to be true.
And yet, there was something. Something small, a nagging unanswered question within his component pieces. Each could not feel what would happen next. The consensus had been that what would happen next would be continuation of existence. That much was true. But the question, the question remained. What would happen next within that existence? What would be the quality of existence? He wanted to feel. His companions had no convincing response.
The glee at existence that he'd felt before faded. The question circled around his placeless-place, floated amongst his companions. The feeling of the context dimmed into a monotonous uncertainty. Existence was nothing without knowing more; knowing the next step, knowing the existence ahead. He had to know. He had to feel it. Otherwise what was the point of the feeling of the present? It had to lead somewhere, and he had to feel it.
And so, he devised a plan to find that feeling. He echoed to the pieces of his companions who--
A flash.
Light streamed over the pieces.
But they were no longer pieces now, they formed into one thing. An object, in a place. It was grotesque, a thing slammed together and caked with pure white light and sticking the existenceless pieces into the shell of a thing. These pieces--this thing rather--had no feeling, no existence. It was inanimate, still and flattened. It had no true nature, no existence, no context. It was a vapid thing; the absence of any real thing at all.
Last updated Fri Dec 03 2021 in Berkeley, CA
1: /thought/the-nature-of-something.gmi