Once upon a time, not so long ago, it was Christmas eve. A most happy fellow was in his kitchen helping prepare a feast for a couple of dozen friends and family. Suddenly, without warning, everything went blank. It was not as if all was merry and bright, then turned dark and sad and gloomy. Everything just . . . disappeared.
The fellow might have been mystified, started a search, hired a detective, called 911, talked to a therapist. Might have done any number of things anyone would do in such an emergency. He might have been sad, mad, depressed, enraged. He might have done or felt any of those things or some combination of them if he’d had a chance. Problem was, the fellow wasn’t there any more. Just disappeared. Right when he was expecting, supposed to, wanting to slice and dice and roast and mix and set the table, but the only thing of that was left of him was
A
SPACE
As usually happens in these situations, nature loving a vacuum the way it does, the world rushed to fill in. Unfortunately the fellow had no knowledge of or say in or control of who when or what came into the space or why. What had been, at least nominally, his space, now belonged to forces and objects that, as far as he was concerned, were unknown and unknowable.
But the way he described it to me much later was nowhere near this prosaic. What he said was more like a mad poem which makes no sense because poems don’t emerge from oblivion, yet there was both poetry and and oblivion don’t tell me NO because then you are talking states of being that are
here
there
everywhere
then
now
yet
to
come
stacked
and
merged
in ways that cannot be yet are and yet cannot not be but are
arranged in time and space completely outside the laws of physics or any other science or science fiction for that matter and even with chaotic imagery can make no sense out of that which has no sense to make.
It wasn’t the kind of thing when a person goes to sleep and then awakens recalling what it was like to crawl under the covers, then move on into a new day. It was oblivion, void of dreams or pain or desires or basic bodily demands or functions.
But the way I’m describing it here is still way too prosaic.
Under the circumstances, you’d think he was gone.
And you’d be right.
And you’d be wrong.
If he were gone, truly gone, as in dead and gone, vanished, blasted away as if he were cradling a nuclear weapon in his arms just before ignition, you wouldn’t find him again. Maybe some microbes, or radioactive particles, atoms that were once in what someone used to ascribe to his physical self. But not him. Not even him and not him. If it was like that, he’d never return. Couldn’t.
But this fellow did. And the world had a lot to answer for concernning things that went on during his absence. They called it a seizure. Okay, fine.
Something seized him.
Grabbed him
Kept him in thrall
Then let him go until whenever
He’s back now he tells me
But he can’t tell me where he went
Or what went on while he was gone
He hears stories, tales, of adventures involving him
But ask him about those?
A shrug. . .
No involvement
Wasn’t there
For him, in these adventures that are purportedly so real to others, there is no
here
there
everywhere
then
now
yet
to
come
He asked me to explain it all to him one day. I said I’d work on it. Though I might not. Some mysteries are like, as the priest says, “mysteries of faith.” Not only unknowable, but best left
un
touched
