My feet are wet, I notice, as the whistling stream floats among rugged pebbles. Why did I wear socks, I think to myself, my skin is enough. I don’t move to remove them, that would disturb too much, I should deal with the uncomfortable feeling.
The light is too bright for this time of day, then I remember, I do not know what the time of day is, if a day is time or time is just a day. Day, day, day, I toy around with the word in my empty mind, as a whisper, it echoes, I find no other thought replacing it. The meaning fades as usual and springs back like an elastic band, but there is less depth in its meaning than before. I think things mean different things here, or they mean nothing at all and everything and perhaps meaning doesn’t matter.
I realise my fists are clenched and I unclench them, slowly as if they are my first movements as a human. Human, human, funny word. I realise that it’s cold, but not really, I don’t notice the clothes I am wearing and I don’t think they matter really as I don’t feel I need them as I’m kind of warm enough, but I’m also not warm, not cold. I remember I am breathing and I think about it, now all my mind is is breathing. All my body is is breathing. I would think about how empty my mind is but it is empty except for breathing. The air cannot be described as it is air and my mind is empty.
There is no sound but the water and what I imagine are birds some way away. They move too much for me to know where they are. The thought drifts towards me that I don’t know where I am, much less the birds, why do I think about them, but I don’t think about them, I realise, I know them now like I know the feeling of the water, I don’t think, I feel, I hear.
My feet are now bare, of course they are. I move my toes and feel the stones against them. My legs are unshaven, as they usually are this time of year. What time of year. What year.
I move my legs around, start kicking in the water. There is some feeling in my legs that my head cannot feel, something has been unplugged, I think, as my legs continue to kick rhythmically. The sound of water is like ecstasy. It fills the air and my head in waves of white noise, blue noise, green noise, colour of the rocks noise.
This sound feels infinite, like it’s all I’ve ever heard. I can’t remember any other sounds, my own voice feels distant and I don’t try to seek it. There’s no use for it here.
In one movement my body meets the water and I can feel weightless again. It’s been so long since this feeling, perhaps before I was born, floating in the gap not knowing which way is up. In this water I don’t know which way is up or down or right or forward. Lines blurred between me and it. I toss around the it, a screeching proposition. It, like the bird I notice hovering some way above me. It, like the arm of the tree that reaches over the river bank. It, like the water droplet that steals away into my ear. The notion of it crunches into the wall of my mind as the emptiness presses against it.