I am wandering down a wide aisle of books at a library. One end of the aisle opens out to a set of interconnected tables at which many people are seated and working or reading. The other end of the aisle leads to a short walkway near the entrance. On the floor, leaning against a shelf, I find a hardcover copy of a book on Kafka titled Representative Man: My Trial which is not merely an updated version of the Frederick Karl biography. I wonder if it might contain something that I’ve not read, but my excitement is immediately dashed as the first third of the book appears ruined, its pages burned and blackened. Though this renders much of it illegible, bits can be discerned here and there of which I only remember one image: a photograph of a man (either bald or appearing to be bald due to the distortion), a real bull of a man, leaning forward with his hands upon a desk full of papers and simple instruments, his face jutting out as though interacting with someone off-camera. Paying greater attention to the legible passages, I begin to get the impression that it is not tragically damaged but that these parts are previously unpublished and are being presented here just as they were found. Strangely, I decide to put the book back in its place on the floor regretting this even as I do so.

A young fellow comes down the aisle from around the corner taking change out of the pockets of his baggy jeans and sprinkling it around the floor in a casually directed manner as though he was responsibly performing a mundane but necessary task. I watch him with more than a little concern for a few moments before returning to my browsing. Following the trail of change left behind, I find another hardcover book of interest but upon closer inspection it turns out to not be whatever I thought or hoped it might be.

I look up intending to move along but find my friend, M.D., approaching. We greet one another, say that it’s been awhile, and he mentions that he doesn’t have money on him with which to secure a spot at a table. Although I am surprised to discover that one must pay for a seat at the tables here, I merely tell him that he is likely to find more than enough change on the floor for his purpose. He thanks me while we laugh at this resolution to the situation, and he continues on down the aisle toward the tables.

I turn to do more searching and find myself looking at some books behind a glass case—the cover of one in particular catches my eye: a small boy leans against a tree with multiple trunks upon which the face of a clock can be seen; the boy looks off to the right at a girl standing nearby; the children, clothed in primary colors, look like those found in elementary school books of the fifties. As I move closer to it, it becomes rather confounding: the image looks more and more three-dimensional, the face of the clock is not upon the tree but is a part of the tree itself. It now looks more like a model than a front cover to a book.

I step away and turn a corner contemplating whether I should now take a look at the poetry or philosophy section. But I advance only a few steps. A vision begins to replace the books, the shelves, the tables, the people, the entire room until there is only the vision: a young man with floppy blonde hair and a drooping eye is trying to speak. He is trying to answer questions that I cannot hear being asked of him by someone I cannot see, but he manages only a continuous stutter. All of this might have something to do with a missing girl, but the stuttering fellow seems to me as much of a victim as anyone. I strongly sense, though I cannot see, something strange and immense in the distance behind him—something that might suggest that whatever he is being questioned about is an event that is still at this moment taking place—but perhaps I am only imagining his mind as though it was a heavy presence hidden behind an impenetrable veil. The vision intensifies as the fellow’s stuttering becomes ever more pronounced and his face painfully contorted. My fear that he is heading toward a major epileptic seizure crescendos into a transcendent awe as blasts of electricity and a pervading static become the essence of the air and quite suddenly . . .

. . . I am floating, spinning in the cosmos—surrounded mostly by the darkest black of space salted with pinpricks of light of varying colors and brightness and of unknown distance and origin. I am spinning toward and through a nearby swirling cosmic dust. The unreachable firmament beyond seems almost unreal, but the mist that unconsciously moves past me is coldly and immediately present. My bewilderment at having nothing solid with which to steady myself is equally real.

One thing, however, does provide me with a sturdy focus: I can still hear the stuttering fellow now no longer stuttering but clearly speak-singing over and over and over and over again continuously like a mantra:

“. . . Was I lost in the naked eye?
. . . Was I lost in the naked eye?
. . . Was I lost in the naked eye?
. . . Was I lost in the naked eye?”

I wonder if I am seeing something that is somehow his—but in this moment, floating in the loneliness of space, I am myself, alone—but for his spoken chant which must now be mine, ours. I wonder if anything shall come next after this floating—will there be the world again or only this useless vastness? Is this my new inescapable reality? Does it just go on like this forever? Was I lost in the naked eye?

I feel a strong sense that someone or something is approaching—something enormous—something of momentous importance—perhaps there is something actually present—other nearby beings with genuine feeling and, perhaps, true sympathy—or a presence of all possible feeling where every single thing disintegrates, collapses into that ever-throbbing deathlessness—or perhaps I feel only my very own desperate hope projected out into the world as my personal savior.

I do not know. I do know that there is still me—and, somewhere, the stuttering man endlessly repeating the same words—but these things might as well be the faraway stars.

[I awake still hearing the echoing mantra and wondering for a moment if I am actually still alive. Flashing light brightens a strip of wall that dutifully points to the space between shade and window followed closely by an intense rumble. I wonder if I am still dreaming. I feel again that something might be approaching, perhaps the end. Or perhaps a neighbor is driving by my house in the predawn on their way to work.]