This is the first thing that fills my mind. 

That, of course, is how I think of it after.

But during the moment itself, there is no thought at all. 

Thought, in fact, does not quite

exist

here,

at least not in the way we think of it.

Which, by the way, is it even possible to think

about thought?

Isn’t that kind of sketching a drawing of the very pencil and paper you are using? 

Anyway. 

This thing, this place —

or should I say space —

is flat but bulging and comprises incomprehensible dimensions, which is just about the only thing I think I’m certain of in terms of the description getting the concept across.

Dimensions, yes. Embossed, emboldened, whatever you’d call it. 

It is not outside the realm of possibility that, in my attempts to describe it, the mind attempts to focus on the senses and cull the abstractions. Because the first thing that comes to mind now is red. 

Yes, that’s close enough. A throbbing miasma of variant reds fills my vision,

all the reds in existence, and

then

there is something very much like

awareness.

^ This awareness

is not unlike the one that forms the basis of our very oldest memories,

which by definition were born at the point where we (‘we’ as in that part of of us that, when asked ‘who are you’ — who is ‘we’? — might preface the answer with ruminations involving the stripping away of role and possession and body and history and memory up to the point where all it knows is I and there is no AM — WE? ARE?) were are our youngest, which is very much not unlike how when you dig a hole your second and all subsequent shovelfuls will always contain the dirt that begins its life as the bottom of the hole and immediately transform to the top of the pile the instant it loses its identity as the bottom of the hole, or rather transfers that identity to its successor without any involvement on the part of either, which kind of makes you wonder whether it might not be the case that consciousness itself operates on a similar basis in that it begins as one thing and when it ends it does not exactly end, or rather, on one level a thing — in this case the life (life here referring to the existence that sprung into being the moment the (w)hole thing began) of the dirt remaining at the bottom of the hole — ends as another — in this case the life of the dirt arriving at the top of the pile — begins, while on another level there is only one thing — in this case the life of the hole (life here referring to the existence that spring into being the moment the possibility of this particular hole crossed some inscrutable line at the borders of the liminal space between itself and non-possibility) itself — that neither ends nor begins but is transformed- but hold on, don’t get it twisted; the possibility of this particular hole here does not represent the ultimate beginning of all things because obviously for the possibility of this particular hole to even exist there must first exist the possibility of holes in general which depends* on the possibility of A) its components, mainly 1) dirt and 2) the absence of dirt (or, if you prefer, the presence of a pile of dirt that both represents and consists of that which was once the very core matter making up the nonexistence what it is now) and, much more crucially — if we’re talking about things in terms of being able to talk about them; that is, if what we’re talking about is not a specific hole which 3)* I can point to and 4) you can look at, but rather a hypothetical hole (as in a hole wholly based on hypotheses) which of which C) its constituents, mainly 5) abstract, non-specific, lexically*-designated dirt (necessarily so in order to allow for our shared (in other words a situation in which one (w)hole is broken into two halves of a (w)hole, each of which is given to both — either? — of us and from which (I’m talking about the non-halves (or more specifically the halves that were only halves for the brief period after they were separated from each other (“each other” here referring for the even briefer period during which “they (the halves) both did and did not exist (that is to say the period right after there was only one (w)hole but before there were halves), keep up) and 6) the lack of the presence of 

and where was I

RED 

Yes, red. 

No, awareness.

Yes.

So.

The thing there or here that is very much not unlike awareness is also 

When I try to touch one, it is sharp; I cut a finger. Wondering how the red blood will look, I pool all my attention to it and am surprised to find the liquid seeping out is not liquid at all, yet liquid is the closest I can come to describing it. It is fluid and flow, as if floating, from a finger-shaped stick of fuchsia. As I or what I take to be what I think of as “I” stare at it a feeling of pure shock and not-knowing fills me. The colors of this non-liquid emerge in a blistering blaze of colors and tone and motion and rhythm, yes rhythm as each hue throbs and thrums, pulsating with its own beat, its own life, and that’s when it strikes me that this is indeed what this liquid is, life. I try to stem the flow by placing another rod of fuchsia on the slit as I watch the drops follow their ancestors into the blossoming pool on the burgundy beneath me, dimming slightly but still painfully alive. I try not to stare but the insubordination of my attention has grown to pulverizing proportions as the proliferating pool pulls me into its