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Time and Space Are Compressing, But I am Enjoying the Silence
AS I AWAKEN FROM uneasy dreams one rainy Seattle morning, I find that both time and space around me have inextricably compressed. I do not mean in the Einsteinian relativistic way. What I mean to say to you is that I recently fell into a time and space hole, only to emerge from the abyss, not to safety, but with this even more frightening insight: In my daily life, time is compressing, and space is shrinking. What is happening to me, I wonder.
What is strange about the space around the recovery from anesthesia is the silence. The in and out of consciousness and the underwater-like stillness is matched by my utter lack of insight into the volume of the space around me. That is all about to change terrifyingly.
As I drift into a more conscious space, I am utterly terrified to discover that there is virtually no space between my head and the edge of a smooth white and well-illuminated box. I think I have become utterly flat with space compressing me from above. I am not sure that I exist — am I alive? Reality is not always probable. Is this my Kill Bill moment?
I am in a magnetic resonance imaging scanner, my head but inches from the machine’s gigantic spinning circular magnet. For a moment, I cannot catch my breath. I am not dead, but I am exhausted, and I am suffocating and cold. This is…
