the motionless image, hoping to ascertain the position of this thing we cannot see.
J ust now, it seemed there might have been a tiny movement at the corner of Eri Asai’s mouth. No, we might not even be able to call it a movement. A tremor so microscopic we can’t be sure we even saw it. It might have been just a flicker of the screen. A trick of the eyes. A visual hallucination aroused by our desire to see some kind of change. To ascertain the truth, we focus more intently on the screen.
As if sensing our will, the camera lens draws nearer to its subject. Eri’s mouth appears in close-up. We hold our breath and stare at the screen, waiting patiently for whatever is to come next. A tremor of the lips again. A momentary spasm of the flesh. Yes, the same movement as before. Now there is no doubt. It was no optical illusion. Something is beginning to happen inside Eri Asai.
G radually we begin to tire of passively observing the TV screen from this side. We want to check out the interior of that other room directly, with our own eyes. We want to see more closely the beginning of faint movement, the possible quickening of consciousness, that Eri is beginning to exhibit. We want to speculate upon its meaning based on something more concrete. And so we decide to transport ourselves to the other side of the screen.
It’s not that difficult once we make up our mind. All we have to do is separate from the flesh, leave all substance behind, and allow ourselves to become a conceptual point of view devoid of mass. With that accomplished, we can pass through any wall, leap over any abyss. Which is exactly what we do. We let ourselves become a pure single point and pass through the TV screen separating the two worlds, moving from this side to the other. When we pass through the wall and leap the abyss, the world undergoes a great deformation, splits and crumbles, and is momentarily gone. Everything turns into fine, pure dust that scatters in all directions. And then the world is reconstructed. A new substance surrounds us. And all of this takes but the blink of an eye.
Now we are on the other side, in the room we saw on the screen. We survey our surroundings. It smells like a room that has not been cleaned for a long time. The window is shut tight, and the air doesn’t move. It’s chilly and smells faintly of mold. The silence is so deep it hurts our ears. No one is here, nor do we sense the presence of something lurking in here. If there was such a thing here before, it has long since departed. We are the only ones here now—we and Eri Asai.
Eri goes on sleeping in the single bed in the center of the room. We recognize the bed and bedclothes. We approach her and study her face as she sleeps, taking time to observe the details with great care. As mentioned before, all that we, as pure point of view, can accomplish is to observe—observe, gather data, and, if possible, judge. We are not allowed to touch her. Neither can we speak to her. Nor can we indicate our presence to her indirectly.
Before long there is movement in Eri’s face again—a reflexive twitching of the flesh of one cheek, as if to chase away a tiny fly that has just alighted there. Then her right eyelid flutters minutely. Waves of thought are stirring. In a twilight corner of her consciousness, one tiny fragment and another tiny fragment call out wordlessly to each other, their spreading ripples intermingling. The process takes place before our eyes. A unit of thought begins to form this way. Then it links with another unit that has been made in another region, and the fundamental system of self-awareness takes shape. In other words, she is moving, step by step, toward wakefulness.
The pace of her awakening may be maddeningly slow, but it never moves backward. The system exhibits occasional disorientation, but it moves steadily forward, step by step. The intervals of time needed between one movement and the next gradually contract. Muscle movements at
J ust now, it seemed there might have been a tiny movement at the corner of Eri Asai’s mouth. No, we might not even be able to call it a movement. A tremor so microscopic we can’t be sure we even saw it. It might have been just a flicker of the screen. A trick of the eyes. A visual hallucination aroused by our desire to see some kind of change. To ascertain the truth, we focus more intently on the screen.
As if sensing our will, the camera lens draws nearer to its subject. Eri’s mouth appears in close-up. We hold our breath and stare at the screen, waiting patiently for whatever is to come next. A tremor of the lips again. A momentary spasm of the flesh. Yes, the same movement as before. Now there is no doubt. It was no optical illusion. Something is beginning to happen inside Eri Asai.
G radually we begin to tire of passively observing the TV screen from this side. We want to check out the interior of that other room directly, with our own eyes. We want to see more closely the beginning of faint movement, the possible quickening of consciousness, that Eri is beginning to exhibit. We want to speculate upon its meaning based on something more concrete. And so we decide to transport ourselves to the other side of the screen.
It’s not that difficult once we make up our mind. All we have to do is separate from the flesh, leave all substance behind, and allow ourselves to become a conceptual point of view devoid of mass. With that accomplished, we can pass through any wall, leap over any abyss. Which is exactly what we do. We let ourselves become a pure single point and pass through the TV screen separating the two worlds, moving from this side to the other. When we pass through the wall and leap the abyss, the world undergoes a great deformation, splits and crumbles, and is momentarily gone. Everything turns into fine, pure dust that scatters in all directions. And then the world is reconstructed. A new substance surrounds us. And all of this takes but the blink of an eye.
Now we are on the other side, in the room we saw on the screen. We survey our surroundings. It smells like a room that has not been cleaned for a long time. The window is shut tight, and the air doesn’t move. It’s chilly and smells faintly of mold. The silence is so deep it hurts our ears. No one is here, nor do we sense the presence of something lurking in here. If there was such a thing here before, it has long since departed. We are the only ones here now—we and Eri Asai.
Eri goes on sleeping in the single bed in the center of the room. We recognize the bed and bedclothes. We approach her and study her face as she sleeps, taking time to observe the details with great care. As mentioned before, all that we, as pure point of view, can accomplish is to observe—observe, gather data, and, if possible, judge. We are not allowed to touch her. Neither can we speak to her. Nor can we indicate our presence to her indirectly.
Before long there is movement in Eri’s face again—a reflexive twitching of the flesh of one cheek, as if to chase away a tiny fly that has just alighted there. Then her right eyelid flutters minutely. Waves of thought are stirring. In a twilight corner of her consciousness, one tiny fragment and another tiny fragment call out wordlessly to each other, their spreading ripples intermingling. The process takes place before our eyes. A unit of thought begins to form this way. Then it links with another unit that has been made in another region, and the fundamental system of self-awareness takes shape. In other words, she is moving, step by step, toward wakefulness.
The pace of her awakening may be maddeningly slow, but it never moves backward. The system exhibits occasional disorientation, but it moves steadily forward, step by step. The intervals of time needed between one movement and the next gradually contract. Muscle movements at
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