1033

Ten thirty three. It was either the time, a price, a social security number, or any other significant value. But it was a value I hold no recollection of, no awareness of any sort. It was just what it was – ten thirty three.

As I paid more attention to my abnormally null existence of the time, all remained black. The most pitch hue of it. It was antagonistically black that even the blindest of the blind could see more light. In my unreasonable and timeless state, I recall moving, but see no change in my sight. No angles altered, no perspective distorted. I tried to recall everything: my name, my age, my life in general, but in my sweet amnesia any miniscule of information was cleansed off my brain, if not my brain was deleted in entirety. Oh, the excruciating nothingness! None has remained!

None, but the figure of ten thirty three. And I don’t even understand it. I didn’t even understand if I was hearing the numbers, or if I was seeing them in my head, or maybe I lay atop a giant figure and it sensationalized itself to me telling me I’m touching the ten thirty three. It made no sense still. No sense whatsoever.

I attempted to bring out a tune to distract myself. So I hummed. I hummed but no bat could’ve detected it even if it were gifted with super sonar. I tried again, and nothing came out of my mouth, wherever it was. I couldn’t even feel it moving and no vibration pleasured my throat at all. Perhaps I am dead – I thought. I thought about it, and all the things you’re afraid to think about, even in death, intensively. And I reflected for a time period that endured for days, or at least that’s how I remembered or felt it to be.

I am not gifted with distinguishing time from time anymore anyway. I was in punishment for some spiritual treason, or by it, that the consequence is leaving me with a splintered feeling of oblivion. And it went on for more days. But does not it all feel like days? Love surpasses the twice of immortality, life is nonetheless immortal, prominence is a seedling of forever and eternal is the sun and all the routines it influences; until, of course, it snaps from its cord and all ends in a matter of minutes. And it surely suffers in just a matter of minutes, when it felt so immortal when one still is encompassed with it. Away it goes; separated and segregated from its mother, Immortality, if ever she exists.

And once I accommodated these contemplations in my mind – which oh yes, I feel now, forming and swerving inside my head trying to solidify itself – I felt myself floating. I rotated clockwise and counter, but not in an axis. It all felt so random that a certain joy drugged me. “Freedom!”, I exclaimed. But again, nothing came out of my mouth. I turned flabbergasted and delighted, and twisted with anxiety and frustration. Then something came up to what I figured was where my head should be. A bubble. Two bubbles. Three. Three came near my face, encountered it, and popped to its death. Alas, the bubbles disappeared, returning to nothingness, but adding to me an awareness of myself.

I waved my arms and I actually heard new bubbles coming to formation. It was a perversity in me that led me to think I was not only giving life to them, but that I was, too, creating them. I, from vertically waving my arms, did so horizontally, smiting the bubbles I just created and simultaneously making new ones. The new bubbles danced and trailed me in my rotation, and one by one disappeared. All lest one bubble.

This bubble, I was unaware of primarily. It probably floated from behind, or either it was in front of me all along. In this environment of mine clear to me now of liquid matter, who knows where it came from? Anyone but I, of course, servant to Darkness. A servant of innumerable Time. But this special bubble would make itself known to me of its worth sooner (than later).

At first, I saw what I thought was a dot of light. A hint. No, a molecule. All it fascinated in me was disbelief. Skepticism of its existence. But it was there, for it grew. It grew with divine impatience since it grew with much speed that I missed the process of its maturity. And so from a dot it became a ball of elusive light that was enough to blind me even further, if only it were possible. It exchanged a part of my darkness into a ball of white, with hues of blue, red and yellow blurring in the gradient of its edges. And as it grew, slower now in development, so did the bubble that kept it inside. I recognize the bubble for the light was reflected in its spherical borders, so a very thin line formed around the light which was imperfectly circular but only a circle could closely describe its shape.

I returned my concentration to the ball of light. I centered my focus on it and collected all my composure, but it left me all but composed when images started flashing from it. One by one, gradually the images would be replaced by one then another, all so random and strange and astoundingly meaningless. Somehow, each image would strike me and strike me dearly, with a pain of heart I could not measure or understand. Perhaps I saw my life flashing in front of my eyes, literally, but all was unfamiliar in my amnesia that I scorned the fact of my state. But I did manage to take control of my anger because in this experience I know nothing would come of it, and forever, probably, would my oblivion remain unrequited. So I watched the show inside the ball of light inside the bubble, which was now static. All was now static. I. The bubble. The ball of light. The image inside the ball of light inside the bubble. The image was disturbing and horrific, but in a way beautiful. It was of a hydrangea. It was colorless though it lay stemless and rootless on top of a light green marble epitaph, with copper writing I did not comprehend. This epitaph laid as cemented as it was on green, rather long grass. Other sights included colorful weeds of lavender, pink and yellow. Clear were all the colors that I could distinguish the slightest difference of their hues, all except for that hydrangea which was only a mixture of gray and white. Somehow, I sympathized with that hydrangea in a way. Without a stem, without roots, without any body or gravity to interfere whatever movement it planned, or to make it possible.

Suddenly, the vivid grave where the hydrangea lay atop of slowly blurred into a blanket of white. Only the shades of gray made the hydrangea visible to me, if not, it would have easily blended with the blanket. Even the primary colored edges of the ball of light turned fascinatingly white. After everything of which, even the blindness I was in, turned white, the hydrangea was all that I could see. Then I saw a volume of blood trickle underneath the hydrangea, and from a trickle it turned into a pool. Then it started moving with a gesture which was almost signifying that it was human or something as complex. I felt strongly for it, as it formed into a silhouette I found insanely familiar.

It continued to mold itself for days. Again, I could only estimate. The blood, I realized, molded into what I knew were interconnected veins. Ah, yes! It was a human being’s circulatory system, and the thickest part of the blood formation was the heart, of course, where all the various veins and arteries seemed to have originated from. The hydrangea was on top of the heart all along, but at that very moment, upon the completion of the bloody formation, it gradually sank inside the mass of blood of the now pumping heart. It pumped irregularly – sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes flat, sometimes sharp in the sound of its pulse. Finally, the last petal sank inside the heart, and I said goodbye to it, though voiceless I heard it reply, inside my heart as far as I know and believe. A tear fell from one of my eyes and it turned into a balloon of water which floated its way to the red mass and merged with it. At that very moment, a human shaped bubble formed around the red mass, and it disguised the blood in flesh. It made sense, for my tear was made of water and we humans are creatures of water.

And so this flesh took the shape of an infant. It looked, though, less mature than an infant, but it was no fetus. It was crouching with its fists clenched, and its toes curled. Its eyes were closed and it floated in the whiteness like a feather in the wind, seemingly lifeless, but it was subtly alive. Somehow, it was evident to me that it was a carrier of life. Then a cord appeared from its stomach, swerving away from the flesh to some direction then another, until it stopped when it reached a certain length. Enchantingly, a hydrangea bloomed and blossomed from this cord’s tip, but now it was no longer colorless but has a soft color of pink. I stared at its beauty, and I wondered if the infant was the origin of its life or if the hydrangea was the origin of the infant rather. Maybe it was both, and I, at that moment, probably months now since my blindness, was enlightened by the cycle and duality of life.

Then I heard a shrill scream, sharper than any blade could probably compete with. It came from the infant, I saw, with its eyes horrendously bulged and its mouth opened in such horror. I heard myself, for the first time, scream. It was, strangely, very much similar to the infant’s. Suddenly all returned to my past blindness and amnesia. The bubbles, the ball of light, the images, the hydrangea, the cord, the infant: they all disappeared the moment I produced my first sound.

Then I felt a strong blow from my back. My head somehow defied a certain force, making me feel as if I was upside down. Again I felt that blow, and I heard myself scream like the way I did back in the blindness. It turned into a cry. An infant’s cry. I heard a medley of voices, low and high pitched, male and female. Nonliving sounds were, too, present and produced. I heard them all, but I was again in blindness.

But in a few moments, I felt a certain warmth, a loving comfort. It was around me, but not in front of me. I was wrapped in a furry, cloud-textured cloth, damp with my blood, if I may say so myself. I heard words of congratulations, praise, compliments and finally, I heard from the one that overpowered them all. It was the voice of the source of my comfort. It was nearest to me but in no way the loudest, but yes, it did overpower me greatly, especially in my heart.

It was the same voice that the hydrangea had, I identified, the moment it replied after I said goodbye to it and finally sank into the heart. Right then and there, I felt the hydrangea sink into my own heart. Instead of inspiring pain, it consoled me so, and I halted from crying. I felt home in the hydrangea’s embrace.

I would lose all recollection of that day and the months of darkness before it. Who ever had memories of the instant one was born, after all? Not I. I did not remember these series of events after I came into fullness of existence on October 1933. Yes. Ten thirty three. And how, you ask, do I remember all these now?

Because now is the day I died. Ten thirty three in the evening, one thousand thirty three hours after my seventy-sixth birthday. I am again, in the blindness which I only find familiar now after seventy six years of being apart from it. And the cycle continues. The blindness, the bubbles, the ball of light, the hydrangea, the blood…

The life.

February 20, 2005, 12:50 A.M.

2nd: Febreuary 20, 2005, 04:21 A.M.

3rd: March 14, 2005, 5:49 A.M.