The Bomber

HUMANITY

I have always liked walking. I love the light and the wind, the stars and the sea. I have walked for so long that my body would eventually start walking by itself, barely touching the ground, dissolving into the elements around me and becoming an invisible, jubilant cheer. At other times, my legs would help me focus on life. Instead of dissolving into the environment, they would contract it into a single darkening point. I have walked along the streets, concentrating on my body, letting the thrust from the heels travel up through my limbs. With every step the question would echo: What am I? Where am I? What makes me be me?

In the days when the question was important to me, I was living in a town where the wind never stopped blowing. Wherever I walked, I had the wind against me. The gusting winds were so strong that I would sometimes be breathless. While the dampness crept into my bones, I would go over my flesh and my blood, bit by bit, trying to determine where my essence was situated. Not in my heels and not in the fingertips, neither in my knees, nor in my womb or stomach. My conclusion after these long walks can hardly be considered controversial. My essence of being is somewhere behind my eyes, above the neck but below the top of my head, diagonally above my mouth and ears. That is where the part that is really me sits. That is where I live. That is my home.

My house at the time was cramped and dark, but I remember it as being immense, impossible to fill or conquer. I was so busy trying to understand what I was. In bed at night I would close my eyes and try to feel whether I was a man or a woman. How should I know? My sex throbbed in a way that could not be put down to anything other than lust. Had I not known what it looked like, I couldn't have described it in any other way than as heavy, deep, and pulsating. Man or woman, white or black? My mind could not define me any closer than as human.

When I opened my eyes, they would be hit by the electromagnetic radiation that we call light. They would interpret colors in a way which I could never be certain I shared with other people. What I called red and experienced as warm and pulsating might be seen differently by others. We have learned and agreed on common names, but perhaps our perception is wholly individual.

We can never know.