Accepting the likely identity of the wetness on his
cheek--his right cheek, the sensation having appeared it seemed in
the hollow just below the malar bone and trickled to a pool at the
jaw--relieved with a certain doleful satisfaction his initial quest
for resolution, and impelled the segue into a more pressing realm.
Whose blood, and how did it get there?
The answer depended in large part on context, he knew,
and with this understanding came the astonishing discovery he had no
clue as to where he was or even who, his inward focus so intense it
excluded all else. The terrain on which he found himself, allowed for
no conscious navigation, no initiative to examine sequence or
linkages. An awareness did exist, but it was subtle and elusive, a
passive cognition with authority only to interpret, to question,
hypothesize and form tentative conclusions. What seemed to be memory
fragments appeared and vanished with no apparent affinity. An
incrementally expanding hunger for pattern made its proximity known
through the chaos. Yet a countermanding energy struggled away from
all restraints, all familiarity.
Tension between the push and tug of these forces
burgeoned and ebbed without apparent rhythm, and this uncertainty
created a dichotomy of its own that both pleased and jarred the
nerves, requiring of him an acquiescence with no semblance of
expectation or chagrin. As a babe, he wondered, in the womb.
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