The Paradox

And when she died, there was nothing. More than nothing. It was the total absence of nothing. And she couldn’t breathe, but she wished she could so that at the least she could sigh. And that was paradoxical. Because how could she still be? . . . How could she still wish? . . . When more and less than nothing was all there was and logic led her to believe she too was a part of the strange, not-quite-nothing all around.

Tentatively, she expanded herself to fill the nothing. She extended into it, filling every corner of it, and also filling no corner at all, because of course, corners did not exist. And, also, they did. It was strange, and her mind – which also did and did not exist – could not fathom how this was.

For one moment, she had been alive. There had been breath in her lungs and love in her chest, and now it was gone. But it had been, and now she was more confused. Because since it had been, then the remnant of it, the feeling of it, still lived with her, lived as a part of her, and so, that moment was not gone either.

Oh, the paradox of it! The confusion of it!

How was she to live when she was not alive? How was she to be when she was not? With no eyes to see, with no senses to filter the void and the not nothing in the nothing, she saw all of it. She felt everything that ever was and would ever be, and she felt nothing at all. She felt the most powerful she’d ever been, and she felt completely powerless.

Her body had been a vessel, yes. A beautiful vessel. A fantastic vessel. And now it was gone. And it also wasn’t. There were no answers, only questions. Questions without language, because she didn’t have a mind and so she could not form thoughts with language in the same way she had when did have a body, made of flesh and blood and organs.

Answers were not the way of the universe because did objectivity even exist? And if it did, then how could it?

Still extending into the more-than-nothing, not-quite-nothing, she saw so clearly now. She saw clearly because she couldn’t see at all.