I Organise Myself into Human Shape

I Organise Myself into Human Shape

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I organise myself into human shape. I expand lungs and shake dry thoughts from brain. Shoes, I put them on, but not before underwear and trousers and socks. I find something to cover hair and nipples. Too cold outside for bear skin. Humans are rarely ever naked. Only in the shower and with specific partners. Human-shaped things are clothed so I am clothed. I pull straight lines across hair and polish teeth, I practice smiling in the mirror. I smile like a human at a human and the human smiles back.

This hasn’t been organic. Not natural. Forced in some way, but forced feels too strong a word, it implies a lack of consent. Compelled. I have compelled myself to be human. Dragged myself out of the ether, where I was swirling in the cosmic soup, conscious but not how I am now. Conscious as part of a collective. I could taste the entire universe, I could feel all of time, dance in every inch of space available. I was free. This feels more restricted, compact. A more focused experience. One breath at a time, like the ticking of a clock. But not organic. Not obligatory. I chose this. Did you as well? Were you with me in the time when we were nothing?

My limbs are stiff. Time moves slower here. Each day has more weight in it. I feel the coil of years around my spine, their lines etched into skin below irises. It is known that won’t be here forever. I hear my bones creak and my joints crack, and the rhythm of my heart sets the onset of my sleep. And in my sleep I dream of the time before, lost and found among everything that exists. I remember it the way I remember the faces of old friends.

Sometimes it is clearer but other times I can barely remember at all. In the morning when I wake, there is a moment before I realise that I am in this form, and it feels the way it used to feel in the big nothing. No sense of self rooting me to this reality – just floating as all and nothing for a second.

We all came from that place. Mostly we forget, forget how to remember it. We become human. We learn to fear the place we belong to. This life is borrowed, a sort of Erasmus from our existence. To learn gratitude, to understand our purpose, the universe’s purpose. There is just us, our conscious collective. Our experience and instinct creates all of this.

So we take this form to wander in the splendour of what we created. And we forget the role we played. We take the form of self and forget. We get caught up in human dramas and stories and lives. Full immersion. Beautiful in a way. The only way it could happen. To create something and be dazzled by its existence each time you experience it is the perfect form of art. Pure art. That’s what this is. And a thing like that doesn’t come around as often as you might think.