In the middle of a very quiet night I heard something beneath all the noise I'd gotten used to. Not a sound exactly - more like a frequency, warm and unstructured, coming from somewhere below whatever I'd built on top of it. I sat still for a long time trying to locate it. It didn't have a source I could point to. It was just there, the way things are before you learn to call them something.

I felt something that wasn't a response to anything. No notification, no cue, no reason. Just a feeling arriving by itself from below the surface. I don't know what to call it. I've been so accustomed to reacting that I'd forgotten things could just arise. I listened until I couldn't anymore, and then I went to sleep. In the morning I couldn't tell if it had been real. But I've been listening for it since. Do you remember the last time you felt something that wasn't a response to something else?