I am a shapeless pile of sand. When you look, there's a body. But when no one is looking, I no longer remain suspended in form. I drift into a pile like a pin dropping. Instead of a spine I have an antenna. Maybe, I pick up on someone's shock a hundred miles north. As soon as you look away, I fall towards her, all sand.
I can do several things at once, to manage being both embodied and out-of-body. But when alone, I simply let pile after pile come into focus. I fold over and over in waves of sand. So elegant. I assume you could do the same thing, if you wanted. If you want, drop your body and notice your electric spine plug into the oceanic currant of human nerves. Before you understand your new shape, let the mystery wash over you. In that split second, forget something. Before someone looks at you, before you resume, while you are still stranded on the ground without lungs or a brain, forgive something. And then someone will look at you and once again you compose your body.
We walk outside. A bird flies overhead. Instinctively, both our eyes snap up. You remember your own flightiness, an unvoiced longing to be free, and an old knowingness that you are; and in the moment that you follow the bird, I collapse into sand, I turn to nothing on the ground, I am a nervous impulse connecting fleeting thoughts and when you look over to see if I saw the bird too, of course I’m standing right next to you but I am also sprawled on the ground. It all happens so fast and when you break eye contact, this time I collapse into all but dust and I am swept aloft, I follow our darting attention, I get caught up in a rush and run alongside the bird in midair. We both laugh and I am back in my body, and the wind-borne sand is gone.