The height of noise

There it was again. Even over the shunt of the train and the mobile phone jingles and the terminal chatter of the voice in my head, I recognised it immediately. The resonating sound was like a solid flat plane of energy pulsating in all directions at once. It even travelled through my hands because I heard it with them over my ears, although it did create a strange sort of echo.



I got off the train at the next station, and let it carry me toward the hill above the village. The trees seemed like cardboard cut-outs in the clear daylight. Everything got larger, and loomed green above me, grew and grew til I could no longer see the point where any part touched the sky. When I got to the end of the lane and turned off into the grass I realised that no, I was wrong - there was no change in the size in the landscape or the wilderness.

I had shrunk to an extensionless point.

I tried to look down at my body, but my vision seemed not to have any originating physical counterpart. Nor did it have any specific direction, yet I could see everything, as if I was focused intentionally on every minute speck of space all at once. It was the strangest thing, but it felt like this was the way it should be, in fact always was, just that I'd never paid enough attention to my own awareness to see it, laid bare, naked and dancing. I floated up the hill, but stayed motionless. There was sky. Birdsong. The breeze on my...