Things and Themselves Part I

    It arrived like a raindrop on the back of my neck. I felt it before I saw it. My focus arrested. Aware of the obvious for the first time, of the surface and my reflection across it. I whispered to myself, " I am here.... a distinct subject, incongruent objects, and the illusion that separates them."   In another version of the story, Echo asked, "Where are you?" But I could not tell if it was Eden anymore.

   Then all of a sudden, and for no apparent reason, it changed once again. I found myself just above the south pole, just below the infinite bend of the earth's surface. Water and ice, sometimes light... the landscape lacked scale and lay abruptly flat. It reminded me of the surface of a page or a screen.  Anxiously, I tried to imagine Greenwich. Then thinking of the surface below my feet, I remembered something about the transitions and translations of surface tensions… You can walk on the surface of water if you wait for the surface to freeze.