Before time, when in the complete silence of eternity and before scholarship (sigh, philosophy)¹ could revel in its crude approximations, there was contemplation. Mind was at one with its uncreated object before the difference-making we call creation. Forms of ‘noise’², mediation of conscious states (devices, tech, senses, languaging of which this is an instance) were absent, allowing immersion. In the chaotic any of those possible worlds might have become actual, yet divine spirit swelled alone in that silent arc of contemplation, whose character is a premise, connecting line to plane, whose conclusion is to yield dimension to the subject at hand, silence. 

The sacred character of silence as such comes from its sameness, if the time before creation and difference is this state of uniformity and there is nothing to differentiate any given states of silence³. It is not the sameness of a face, a piece of music, a drawing, each of which transfigures under the auspices of memory. Yet it is sameness that could not stay still. Then you will know, when you imagine sounds freeing themselves from their lush bind in the world’s early hazelnut—silence’s density from within that sacred core, how—if we believe the stories—some word was supposed to burst. Why & from what remote intent we only understand as spectators—the atmosphere of divine wonder obscured by habit, veiled by conformity, personal identity, is only really tangible in dreamless sleep.

Reflect on Logos, that first sound. Then after what indeterminate amount of time, perhaps infinitesimal, perhaps on scale w/the Big Bang (ironically named), forms its initial string: Let there be light, a response to a question posed by some future existence. I grew into someone once, like that, entwining space and time. Consider if you have as well. Its etymology is from the Latin ‘considerare’, literally to look up at the stars, even if they haunt you. I would look up at the stars in southern Connecticut, at Soul Mountain where I was finishing my dissertation and had found a place of utmost solitude to write. It was before everything would fall apart.

Then if in a state of wonder consider what is immediately felt reflecting on an arbitrary question. Pick one of interest, in that case. If not straightaway demanding an intelligible answer one that could be understood by some kindred soul, note especially the clarity, the pitch as you feel you wish you knew the answer. Envision the hearts that sank after a particular answer to a question of the same type, not necessarily yours among them, but necessarily yours among them as their answer made clear the finality of its disclosure. A dark silence grows before creation, a white silence obliterates everything in the thereafter, there are no blue shades of silence in between then and now.

Then you are primed to experience the similarity between an imperative’s intensity, and the intensity of its pale twin, the interrogative. In a broad sense any difference in said intensity reflects that in wondering (quickly transitioned from factual additions to belief set) there is less total, less critical perceptual information at one’s disposal. The apportionment of belief to evidence doesn’t matter because there are so little of each; no world, no laws; which may explain the pretty conflagration of faith, belief, & wonder.

This is a period before visual, empirical bases for knowledge. Then consider the beginnings, Genesis, how one might translate between feelings reaching outward and a sense of belonging inward. 

It should be intelligible to ‘translate’ ‘Is there light?’ into ‘Let it be known whether there is light’. If the article of faith, whether in some person or not, is light, asking if is there light, is the wondering about a divine existence, whether alone that divine entity exists, whether it needed to be alone. It couldn’t have been idle curiosity that gave birth to the question of the origin of existence, hanging from the rasp of the annunciation of being, not silence misunderstood, but an unfolding of how everything must be in order to escape the most divine question: why must I be alone? 

If self only exists in relation to others, the only answer to divine solitude consisted in creation, of which ‘Let there be light’ is one statement. 

Who is our audience? Let there be blaring light, exhaust, words, semen & ovum, music & poetry, whatever else self-expression entails, it exists only in relation to others. 

When the only other at the act of creation in which the divine was creating what had been mere possibilities, can you imagine the courage of the divine if in the act of creation it is partly destroyed? 

Now you might think of someone you thought you could love, whom you walked at sunset down the bottle glass-scarred trail. It seemed Roman glass, without the iridescence. The two of you, hand in hand. What then happened when at night and in a cheery voice you bided each other farewell; and it was rational to do so, you have met so many other people it is hard to keep tabs on and nothing ‘obviously’ clicked in this case. But the number of such moments is limited to a few (believe it or not), demands no reciprocation, is known instantly (or not). You regard the other as an artwork, or deface them, avert your eyes to them, or come to see recognition itself as a sort of compromise between some ideal and what you really wanted, the actual. The actual is embedded in loving relations. The creation of love, though in the final analysis evil, is instanced in all the contented faces that came from love and who in turn wear its face, that see each other flourish as the divine would see life flourish, unquestioningly.