Sink
I have weekly experiences where perception changes. When it happens, my inner monologue disappears. My sense of self becomes unimportant. It feels like the whole question of myself stops mattering unless something external interrupts me.
Time changes. It can slow down. It can zoom in or out. The boundaries of my body also change scale. The experience is intensely vivid. More physical than ordinary experience. More real, although not in a way I can easily explain. It is often pleasurable. The emotions are difficult to define separately. It feels like awe, love, gratitude, sadness, connection and beauty at the same time.
What affects me is that beauty has an ungraspable quality. No matter how directly I experience it, it cannot be captured. I don't see meaning into it. I experience it as witnessing something.
Around nine I discovered that I could enter this state intentionally. I remember doing dishes and realizing that the sound of the water, the texture of the sponge, the appearance of the sink and the movement of my hands could trigger it. I first noticed this because I didn't want to do the task. Part of the motivation was finding a way to do something I didn't want to do.
But then I discovered something else.
I could become curious about what would happen if I paid attention. I might be surprised each time by how amazing the task actually was. I never forgot that discovery. It felt like a blessing. A gentle touch from life. A small pause in the middle of chaos. A reminder that even when I felt alone, the world felt so much bigger than what was in front of me.
Many memories disappeared over time. That sink moment stayed with me.
When these experiences are triggered by non-human things, I usually feel nurtured by them. A dying iris. The sound of rain. A procedural software. Light through leaves. The smell of turpentine. The slow waves on the river at night. The variations of blues. There is intensity, but also a feeling of being held by the experience. They welcome me.
Human beauty is different. When I see beauty in another person, I don't recover from it easily. It breaks me a little. Something remains open afterward that wasn't open before. It hurts.
When I saw you holding back tears, sitting quietly in front of me, listening, I didn't experience that moment as being about me. I felt myself dissolving into you. It was as if your life was happening in front of me like a silent movie. I couldn't see it. Dancing blurred lit saturated shapes. I could only feel it on my skin. The gigantic hole that makes you infinite. So vast. No matter how close I get, there is always more. An interiority that is so much bigger than what I see.
People might call this falling in love, having a crush, or attraction. Maybe sometimes it is. But that description feels incomplete. The experience feels closer to what happened when I discovered beauty in washing dishes. The same astonishment. The same dissolution.