Because concepts can never embrace reality, I find myself faced with the strange mystery that I will never know who or what I am. “I” is a place-holder of utility, like a doctor distinguishing liver from kidney. What “I” refers to, however…. I can’t say where it begins or ends. Why should a border of flesh contain it? If I don’t divide between the cells of my body, then why individuals? It would seem scale and purpose alone determine the differentiation of elements: As I move inward, “me” fragments into the countless parts of body and mind; as I move outward, it diffuses until the whole planet is only a speck among billions. Where on the ladder of scale does “I” rest? When I don’t need to separate “you” from “me”, what meaning does it have?
If none, it is a temporary convenience only, a phantom within the echelons of description, a humble ghost haunting the spaces between “large” and “small”. As a word, it assumes everything while telling nothing – a formless void kept whole through lack of examination. For whenever I look closer, to find the true face who bears my name, I’m at loss even how to begin.