The sand, the moon, the stars and me.

It was New Year’s Day, 2007 (although midnight had come and gone, so I suppose it was really January 2nd); it had been 109 degrees all day, and I was surrounded by an overwhelming sense of tranquility, if tranquility can be overwhelming. As I lay on the beach, somewhere between the two states we call asleep and awake, I suddenly found myself overcome by a sense of being totally and utterly lost. The first three seconds were filled with sheer panic, “Hijo de puta, where am I?!?” But almost as instantly as it had struck me, the panic began to melt away and was soon replaced by two sensations that I can’t quite describe. The first was a very real and almost magical calmness and the second, an odd happiness. No, it was more than happiness. As strange as it may sound, I think it was ecstasy. To be honest, I’m still confused about it. It was not like anything I’d ever felt before, nor was it the kind of adrenaline-filled ecstasy I’ve always imagined would come at the climax of sex. The kind of ecstasy accompanied by sweat, shrieks and moans, and maybe even a momentary blackout at the end to top it all off. It was not like that at all. In fact, it may have been the simplest thing I’ve ever felt. Which is why I can’t quite put it into words. The only thing I know for sure is that, whatever it was, it was beautiful. Beautiful and pure. I can’t tell you how long I lay there wallowing in the wonder of being absolutely lost. Not lost in the sense that I didn’t know where I was, but lost in the sense that I could have been anywhere in the world. I could just have easily have been nowhere. Or everywhere.

I looked up at the moon and thought how strange it was that from my point of view it was waxing but to everyone back home in the northern half of the planet, it was waning. It’s the same moon, is it not? So how can it be waxing and waning at the same time? The answer is it can’t. The moon is always there. It doesn’t grow or shrink. The only thing that changes is our orientation, our relationship to it. And if tonight I look up the moon and you look up at it as well, between the two of us we’ll see the whole moon. If you stop and think about it, the same is true for all the things we call opposites.

Take black and white, for example. Opposites. Two sides of the yin and yang. How do we know they’re opposites? Because one is the absence of the other. If we are talking about paint, then black is the presence of all color and white the absence. But if we consider light, it turns out that black becomes the absence of color and white the presence. It is impossible, then, to determine which of the two, black or white, is truly the presence of all color and which is the absence, which is full and which is empty. It is entirely relative, really. If one is the presence of all color and the other the absence, then must not the one that is the presence of all contain the one that is the absence? Or, since something full can always be fuller and something empty can never be emptier, does that not make absence bigger than presence? In which case, could it not be absence that contains presence? Or maybe the answer is simpler. Maybe there is no such thing as absence and presence. Absence and presence. Everything and nothing. Life and death. Asleep and awake. Black and white. Where does one stop and the other begin? Perhaps they neither stop nor begin. Perhaps there is no such thing as opposites.

The concept of opposites comes out of our necessity to see things as linear, as a progression from one pole to another. But the world is not a line and evidence seems to indicate that neither is the universe. So I say we do away with lines altogether! The things we label as opposites are not really opposites but simply reflect two different perspectives on the same thing. The opposing terms we place on certain things do not describe the thing itself but merely our orientation to it. We need these labels in order to organize our thoughts and attempt to understand the world in which we live. But we must keep in mind that words are just that, labels. And labels can describe reality, but they cannot define it, because reality is indefinable. Through words we create dichotomies, and if we allow these dichotomies to define our reality, we limit our vision and understanding of the world. I’m not saying that we should live without words or dichotomies. On the contrary, without them we would be lost. (Plus, where would all the linguists go?) But once in a while, being lost can be a good thing. It can be wonderful. And you may be right, I may be crazy, but I think that it is only by being truly lost that one happens upon that rabbit hole where all of the things we call opposites come together. I also think that it is there in that rabbit hole where ecstasy hides.

Last night, for a brief period, I forgot about labels. For the first time since coming to Uruguay, I forgot that I was in a foreign country. I forgot that I was in a country at all. I forgot that I was thousands of miles and even more thousands of kilometers away from my family and friends. It was only the Southern Cross shining directly overhead that reminded me that I was somewhere in the Southern hemisphere. But hemispheres are labels too, and once I realized that leaving labels behind freed me from the bonds of geography and in a way, from everything physical, I soon forgot that too. And it must have been through this temporary divorce from the physical that I wandered into the rabbit hole and tasted that simple drop of ecstasy. And it must be because of the fact the loss of labels is the very thing that allowed me this fleeting escape that I now find myself virtually unable to capture it in words. And so I will stop trying.