everywhere I go

I woke up the other day and opened my eyes, and found myself staring at something funny-shaped, flesh-coloured, that was located uncomfortably close to my face. Maybe not every one of you would recoil from a funny shaped object in front of your face early in the morning, but I did! I jerked away -

from my own hand. It took me a while to realize it was a piece of me (it looked like a piece of someone else, until in my panic I had uncovered a shoulder portion of my existence). It made me realize also how terribly limited my human perception is. Think about it. How is it that you sometimes do not even understand that you are inside your own body?

Now, what do we most often rely on when we want to evaluate what's real and what's not? (now please don't say rationality, it's so uncommon). The EYES of course, duh. Here's another fun bit, though. Your eyes are in front of your head, and they're called "the mirror of your soul", but without a little help from a real mirror, you can't even see your own face! Isn't it funny? It almost seems as if we're constructed specifically so that we didn't really know what we looked like, or what impressions our face conveyed to others.

Expanding the thought further, sometimes I feel that if we're so ignorant of our own bodies, how completely ignorant we might be on a larger scale! For all we know, we might all actually constitute one Big Person, not Myself or Yourself, but Ourself, a very complete existence that is simply a little unaware of its own body parts. Like a crying toddler at war with himself, who has realized that he's been facing floor for so long only because he has yet to raise his head, and not because the floor is permanently stuck to his face.

Sometimes this "we are ourself" thought is merely a curious guess at "what if". It might become a good science fiction story, maybe. Well OK, most likely it would be a science fiction story that would never sell, because there is not much complication or suspense there, is it, in the base plot - "We Are One". Ugh. How exciting is that!

Sometimes, though, I think it's not a hopelessly boring story. See, in the face of the tendency towards distinction, segregation and separation that lives in people's homes and minds, from conversations to ads to graffiti - thinking even for a moment that we may be one entity with a shared consciousness would make it seem like the most incredible story ever told.

Yet when I was standing at the bus stop the other day - a rainy day with gloomy bypassers - and looked up from the pavement, and saw what I saw (and what you can see in the picture), I felt like whoever wanted to say it, had said it for me also.