For me, the closest thing to a "holy" or "magical" experience comes with a changed environment - drowsing on an intercity bus and waking to the new sounds at my destination; rousing from a nap into the altered light and chemistry of a given day.
In those moments there is a quiet in my mind that makes my thoughts feel like a crust of untouched snow.
My first words, whatever they might be, powerful enough to transform everything.
I've never had a word for this.
But it is so precious every time.
I'm sure it's related to the "event boundary" phenomenon, when we enter a new space and forget what we came in for. After all, our ancestors certainly only traveled while alert, unless very young and carried, so modern transport is psychologically *weird*. But there's also no need to be scientifically reductionist about it; it's just a lovely, potent, evocative state in which we sometimes find ourselves making meaning. Thank you for sharing yours. 💛
https://news.nd.edu/news/walking-through-doorways-causes-forgetting-new-research-shows/
@MLClark Fascinating, thank you. The "event boundary" -- forgetting while walking through doorways -- is a great concept and title for a collection of poetry or short stories, don't you think?
Ohhhh, that it is! ❤️ Have you found much time for your own writing as of late?
@MLClark Nope! 😂 I'm quietly working on a website for my photography so I don't keep spamming my friends' and family's emails, and I may add a bit of text here and there to see if I remember how to write. Thanks for remembering and asking about it. 🧡
Some of our writing comes to us in the act of living. So glad you're developing a space for other creative practice while this one percolates behind the scenes. 💛
@MLClark Transcendence?
No, there's something more acutely embodied about the experience - not a rising above it, or one's corporeal self.
Possibly closer to a Taoíst description of oneness: an elevated awareness of the relationship between thought and reality, and of the specialness of every other thought-reality relationship in the vicinity.
@MLClark Okay, my thesarus says it's out of ideas. 😉
😬 Your thesaurus doesn't talk to you through a light like this one, does it? Because when this suggestion engine runs out of alternatives, it's a very different situation for us all...
@MLClark HAL 9000 -- Murderous AI, now with optional thesaurus!
I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't synonymize that. 🔴
@MLClark If only Dave Bowman had seen this Star Trek episode ...
"HAL, compute to the last digit, the value of Pi."
Problem solved.
@MLClark That's beautiful. It reminds me of an experience I had decades ago, when I was at studying in Edinburgh for a bit. I was drowsing on the train from Calais to Paris in the wee hours and I kept half-waking to misty new scenes that were magical and dream-like and otherworldly. Buses and trains, huh?