The Question

Sitting here in this balcony, overlooking this crowd, I am suddenly conscious that I am all that I see, all that I hear.

My mind goes out through this space and becomes extended as it touches each thing here. I own it all and am it all. I can further extend myself to ages past and future, all that I have ever been or could be, all experiences of all men of all times. These things am I.

And yet, there are the others, sitting in those rows below. They are self-contained; they do not extend as I do. Surely each is no more than a part of the trappings of this place. Their heads contain them, but my head does not contain me. I am larger.

This morning as I looked in the mirror, that is a stranger there. It is not me. I’m much more alive than that, better looking than that fellow, that weary-looking old man. I am young and vital. How could that pallid, sickly-looking head ever contain me?

Suddenly the speaker finishes. He asks for questions. My mind races. I have a question, yes. I have a question. But should I raise my hand? Or should I rise to speak across the vast space between me and the speaker, across the others’ heads below? My question rises within me. I must ask. I must communicate-- .

“Yes?”

The speaker recognized my hand! Across the space he is directing everyone’s attention to me! I am standing—my God, I’m standing up here in front of the others and they’re all staring at me. I must speak, I must!

“I—I couldn’t help but wonder—as you spoke—I felt that—that is, could the news media networks be converging to the degree that—that—they have reached the point, whereby==whereby-- ?” My head! My head! My heart! What’s happening?

“I don’t believe I understood your question,” the speaker said, and everyone is still looking at me—looking, and whispering--.

“I mean—that is—well, thank you very much!” I say through my choking throat, the pressure on my body nearly more than I can withstand. I fell I must sit down, yes, sit down immediately.

Now I look out at the rest. The walls, the platform, the others—they are not me at all. I try hard now to become lost, to hide in a space so small that no one can find me. My body is embarrassed that it can’t get me out of it. It tries to pretend that I am not within. It looks this way and that at the others, as if it, too, were wondering what had happened.

Could they forget? Could my body forget what I had done, in that one brief moment when I had taken control of that physical frame and exposed it to such shame? Can my body live, so long as I am within it?

I must be very, very quiet. That’s it. Very quiet, and very careful. I must never again come out in the open where the others can see me. I must remain behind my body’s eyes and ears, and nose, and hair, and so on, where I can still know what is happening, what is going on out there around me, around this room, across the vast spaces of the world, the past, the future. I can still watch, and listen, and extend myself out and touch each thing as before, and own it all. These things I can do yet, and be—but I must be very, very still.