Anthypnia
Created | Updated Jun 26, 2011
Frankly, the approach of midsummer has made me cranky. I decided to write something that wouldn't entertain anybody except me. I suspect I have succeeded.
Anthypnia
Hyp·na·gog·ic: Of, relating to, or occurring in the mental state immediately preceding sleep. From the Greek, υπνος, sleep, and αγω, to lead away.
Jim lounged alongside the pool, staring drowsily at the sunbeams dancing across the blue surface, letting the interplay of light and water dissipate the irritations of life. Such as the fact that it was glorious summer, and he finally had more work than he could usefully do in a day, something that would not have bothered him in the least (he being a workaholic three-quarters of the year) when there was snow on the ground. Such as the banality of so many of the verbal and written exchanges he had had in the last, say, month. He usually didn't notice much, but somehow the fatuity must have approached critical mass. He was beginning to feel that if one more person started a conversation with him on the basis of 'I'm thinking about something, guess what it is and respond in the way most likely to make me feel flattered,' he thought he might:
- a. scream, Or
- b. take a pickaxe to
- a. the computer,
- b. the telephone, or
- c. the person talking to him.
As Jim was a lifelong and committed pacifist, this sort of thinking bothered him. And as – unlike most pacifists he knew – Jim was not prone1 to passive/aggressive behaviour, he had these thoughts anyway, because he had no outlet for abreaction other than his own imagination. Thinking is not doing, he reflected wrily. Or the world would be in even more trouble than it is now. So he stared at the water and let the sunlight play.
The sunlight was attractive. The sunlight was soothing. The sunlight danced upon the waters in the way that Jim imagined the ruach Adonai to have done, back in the opening hook of the Genesis chapter. Jim half-closed his eyes, thought about the pleasant warmth of the sun, thought about water...
He briefly mused on that anthropologist, what was her name? Same as his sister's, he thought...the one who said the rest of them had got it wrong, early man lived, not in caves or on the savannah, but along the shoreline, which explained the hair pattern on humans and, Jim supposed, the desire on the part of people like him to swim and then drowse while staring at water...the goal of life is to get to the beach, maybe it's an ancestral longing...he would have felt sorry for any of you who are reading this and thinking smugly, But I don't like to go to the beach, I'm too busy for that sort of thing, but he didn't know you were thinking it, you see, because he wasn't talking to you, and he would never write any of this down, he was just thinking about anthropologists and water and sunlight, and then he wasn't, because he wasn't thinking of anything at all.
Jim had achieved samadhi with the swimming pool.
The best part of samadhi is that people aren't talking to you.
The next best part of samadhi is that the Sanskrit word means, roughly, 'getting your mental act together'.
sa·ma·dhi: a non-dualistic state of consciousness where the consciousness of the one who experiences becomes one with that which is being experienced.
ω ω ω ω ω ω ω ω ω ω ω ω ω
Light was, and water...sunlight glinted on the water, and water, uncomprehending, reflected, becoming lighter...water, light, light and water...patterns of light on water, now brighter, flashing, now steadier, chequered, patterned, blue, yellow, water, light...water becoming warmer, light becoming brighter, a dialogue without competition, mere call and response, frictionless, full of meaning but wordless, perfect...pattern in fractal, edgeless, boundless, on the cusp of becoming, itself a perfect representation of itself...a map of one to one, understanding arriving, finally, on little photon feet...particle becoming wave, wave becoming phenomenon, the feeling of isness, the feeling of rightness beyond time...a feeling beyond contentment...so that's where the unpaired electrons go...
ω ω ω ω ω ω ω ω ω ω ω ω ω
Arriving at their table with drinks, Jim's wife noticed that he had fallen asleep on the chaise longue. Silly thing, she thought as she gently propped a straw hat on his unprotected head.
She didn't want him to get sunburnt.
