We are gutting a building after sunset. The yellow floodlights we work by reveal an atmosphere of drywall dust. I take a sledgehammer to the wall on the earth around the sun through the infinite.
Planetary orbit is second grade, but kids can’t feel that knowledge. I recall that as a twelve-year-old on the cusp of abstract thought, the existential jolts into the present moment, crises of reality and perception, flooded my knowledge with a new weight I couldn’t handle.
One traumatic night riding in the van on our way home, the friend talking to me suddenly felt eerily far away, as if my spirit were retracting deeper into my body. At the same time, my brain seemed to be exploding with unnecessary sensory detail that brought everything oppressively close. I could not comprehend a word my friend was saying. I tried to act natural. When I got home, I starting sobbing while my parents frantically asked what was wrong. I was speechless. I thought I was dying.
My forearms resist as I struggle to raise the hammer back for another blow. In spite of a lackluster swing, the drywall crumbles before the blunt steel and debris particles sting my eyes. When I open them, I see the lights beaming through the hole I just created. A hole in the wall on the earth around the sun through the infinite.
Today, I relish both the sensory closeness and the spiritual distance, the discrepancies between my organs and soul, the gaps in my thoughts, the sensitivities of unedited conscious purity. I’ve found such shifts can rarely be forced. I do not mind, because it is their spontaneity and brevity that make them precious. The simultaneous sensations of stepping back and stepping forward reassure me with the absurdities of existence on large and small scales: the construct of consciousness, really real stars, my ability to reproduce, man-made measurements of time.
