It is as dark as black-lung breath in here: I can’t remember now if my eyes are open or shut. One finger wave, one facial tic even, would be enough to propel me like torn scud across this big sensory deprivation tank. I float in a solution of water and Epsom salt so thick and buoying that it hammocks me. I hang: my suspense is terrific. I can’t give you the right time of day: minutes elongate and break apart. I’m an open letter, a catch basin, a jumpingoff place. The human brain cooks best at 93.5 degrees Fahrenheit. In here both water and air have been regulated to that precise thought heat. After a short while I can no longer determine whether my wrist, my stomach, my knee are above or below the surface. Everything is continuous and overlapping. I’m at the limit of resolution. My flesh has emulsified. We were all some kind of water once, I guess.
Then, listen, my body is a bumptious rain forest. Blood crackles tracking its own spoor. I hear the jungle-telegraphed pulse beat. My roaring inhale might spook wildebeest. My stomach has bellowed as a cow would taken from behind. The death even of cells, I presume, will cause sound. I am a Madagascar, half-submerged: alive and rambunctious and . . . nothing. I don’t hear anymore. The left side of my brain—perceiver, superintendent, rational orderer—has simply gotten bored. Without stimuli it is inattentive and wayward: like the three-year-old child it best resembles. My right brain— imaginer, game player, meditator—has slid over to drive. I am not in a trance. Nor am I asleep. I have merely, for the first time ever, forgotten to be conscious. And it is a grand, weird experience.
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