Letters

There was a brilliant flash, I saw it outside the window and knew at once what was coming. I hadn’t the time to fear before it was over. Before I was over. There wasn’t a moment to process the pain, only that bright light and then deep darkness. Yet even as I noted the weightless absence of body, my mind trailed on. I myself remained intact, without the slightest interruption of experience. So I began to pay attention to what I could. I soon came to find that I could see, in a manner. Not places, but patterns. A tablet of characters stood before me, neither near nor far. Letters, I think. Etched as it were into clay, arranged into rows and columns. All foreign to me, and mostly quite simple: curving strokes, lines, and wedges. Hundreds of characters, more than I could take in. Each representing a unique meaning. Not a sound, like our letters, nor even a definition, like our words. Something more basic, more abstract: elemental meaning itself. Then all at once I felt myself waking. I looked frantically at the tablet of characters, wishing to remember them, knowing I would not. Darkness began to flood my vision again, and with a sudden snap I was myself, motionless and sweating, a thunderstorm passing outside the window. I was very much alive, but less certain of life than before. I did not know then, nor am I certain now, but it seemed very real, more real even than life. And what was a living fellow to make of that?