In The Night

There were squares of moonlight on the floor, and I stepped across them and climbed into bed. I couldn’t get back to sleep, but I didn’t mind. Something was happening. My soul was open like a bowl, and being filled.

It began with nouns, mostly. Ordinary objects infused with light, all waiting and portent, newly significant. Teapots and tools, an open umbrella, a felt hat and a feather. I saw streets and paths I have walked upon, felt the touch of a hand I held as a child, and watched vignettes that starred the people I have loved, flickering quickly before me but fully absorbed, for they were here already. (I love you, I love you they said to me in a thousand silent ways.) A tiny blue bottle drifted towards me in the surf, an orange fell from a tree, the parched summer ground dreamed of rivers and rain. Meanwhile, the lozenges of moonlight quivered on the floor, and there was aliveness in everything, and I was absorbed into it.

And still the memories came, decades compressed into flashes of clarity, as well as a procession of indifferent wonders that had nothing to do with my personal history other than my having had the privilege of bearing witness. I felt dazzled and humbled by the enormity of it all, by the banquet of this life, the gifts I have been given simply by existing. It seemed more than my consciousness could possibly hold, and yet I expanded to contain it, and it dispersed like stardust into infinity, and still there was no end.