It was the heat of the sun, the discomfort of it, that first caused Adam to stir to consciousness. He wanted relief. While he lay on his back in the mud on the sandy, moist riverbank, the sun of the Middle East baked him till he knew he was done. That was the first thing he knew, even before he opened his eyes, that he was too hot to stay as he was—in the oven, so to speak. He was done.
A cooling breeze passed over him, and he was washed by the coolness, the need of which had awakened him, though his eyes remained closed. The gentle energy of wafting breezes entered his nostrils, and the moving air tunneled its way as though it had volition through his nose, down his throat, and into his lungs. What had been outside him, and refreshing to him, was now gently invading him. When the breeze moved within him, he believed he was One with what was Beyond him because It had freely visited him. He sucked air into himself and was blessed with life.
As Adam lay on his back, he both felt and heard his breathing—the in and out of it—and he heard also, beyond the quietly flowing river, the sound of not too distant surf, with its own rhythm of coming in and going out. The sea, he named that sound, though he had yet to see it.
He knew his parts before he knew the wholeness of his being. There was something that thumped at the center of him. From the inside of his body beneath the bone of his chest, he felt its drumming.
Feeling—touch—was the first sense to awaken fully.
He folded the lobe of one ear and pressed it against the canal that led into his head, that passage to the interior, and listened. He listened patiently. Adam waited. Then he heard it—faintly at first, and then strong and regular, the drumbeats from the interior. Reverently, he placed both hands over his heart.
His feet stirred restlessly. The gentle caress of barely flowing water on his heels was not enough. His whole body wanted caressing, and like any baby, he wanted it now. If that was not possible, perhaps he could address that area of his body that seemed to be the origin of longing.
(Not his solemn heart!)
Something boisterous and frolicking, something mischievous and needy, something goatish with grapes in its hair, something laughing, and ready to dance on cloven silver hoofs! That part!
With first one hand and then the other, he reached for the part of his body that called without words to his hands: Ease me! Rolling from his back onto his side, Adam curled his body like the letter C so that he might know himself. And Adam touched himself till he was satisfied.
And Adam slept. He dreamed of vast watery heaving; he envisioned it as a mighty bosom ready to pillow the entirety of himself. Adam was, above all, a dreamer.
When Adam awoke and parted the lids of his eyes, he saw the fringe of his own lashes, both the top and the bottom. They frightened him, for he had an intuitive dread of the legs of spiders. ‘Twas fear that caused his brain to jump. When electricity of very low but important voltage passed from one cell to another, the world beyond his own eyelashes flashed into being.
Thus Adam achieved through fear the sense called sight.
Noiseless, bright beyond belief! Banglike, but silent: behold: the visual world!
Adam looked and there was light.
He felt his heart beating, running, trying to leap beyond the confines of his chest, trying to squeeze itself out through the less solid spaces between the ribs. To leave that cage of self, to be a part, a true part of Out There! That was his frantic heart’s desire.
Before him, the world hung flat as a painted window shade. It hung before him like an Impressionist’s canvas—Renoir, Monet—all a-shimmer with color, but initially the world was without form or meaning. Patches of color: blue shimmered against small red dashes, leaving his eyeballs vibrating; green rested against blue and gave him peace and comfort. And what color was he?
Adam lifted his finger into his line of sight, and he saw that he was blue. Or that his hands, at least, were splotched and streaked with blue.
And why not? he thought. (It was his first fully formed sentence: And why not?) Surely I am born of the heavens, and why should I not be