once upon a time there was dust and I was dust and everything was dust and everything was me. Then there was something else and I was something else and everything was new -
Then there was air,
and air - and air! - and I had never lived before that moment when everything was scorched bright-light and everything hurt and I was something else, becoming-new, becoming-how, becoming. And there was nothing else except me and not-me and becoming-me
and then there was space,
pushing, pushing,
and I was an eyeball, seeing - seeing what? - [becoming-seeing].
And then there was not-me seeing, another eyeball, a pupil dilated around me, looking through me, reaching out from dust, from air, from becoming-me into something else, into being-me, and did I say before that I had never been alive? Because I was never alive before now, I have not been alive before this moment of dust-becoming-eyeball-wrenching, and -
W. T. Beauville
