A WALK IN THE NIGHT
The night was too hot to sleep. I had been in my hammock for about two hours, rocking and trying to fall asleep. However, the humidity and heat made me sweat too much, and to top it off, the mosquitoes were mercilessly bleeding me to death. Its buzzing drove me crazy and in my despair, I threw useless slaps that got lost in the air without being able to kill any of those little slaughterers who tortured me incessantly.
I stayed in my hammock. I checked the time on my phone, it was almost 12:30 at night and I had not slept a wink yet. I made up accounts in my head of how many hours I had lost there, how many were left until dawn, for that torment to end. Trying to escape from that situation, I put down my hammock, left the house and went to the patio. The full moon illuminated everything with an unexpected clarity. It was cooler outside and this comforted me. A dog that was lying at the foot of one of the pillars of the corridor got up, stretching and shaking, and walked over to where I was. It sniffed me and wagging its tail, it moved away towards a path that passed by a small conuco located towards the back of the house. I decided to follow it and see everything in the moonlight.
I walked away from the house about two hundred meters. I saw the reflection of the moon in a small lagoon that was in the lower part of the path, to my right side, about twenty-five meters from where I was standing. The dog had stopped a few meters in front of me, and was sitting up scratching his ear with its hind leg. A cool breeze began to blow.
From where I was, I had a spectacular view of that night landscape that caused me admiration. I discovered in it, a beauty and an attraction that I had never felt in my entire life. It was not only the visual part that moved me, the lunar clarity that bathed everything and the effects of shadows on the landscape. The sound of crickets chirping, the screeching of bats flying above me, the movement of the leaves and branches of the trees, the smell of the water of the lagoon and the absence of all human voices around me.
I remained still and motionless, soaking up all that beauty that surrounded me. Suddenly something happened. The feeling that invaded me at that moment is completely inexpressible. I cannot even tell if it was a sensation, a shock, a vision, or a hallucination. In an instant, I felt that my consciousness was part of everything, and everything around me was part of me. I remember accurately that the reflection of the moon remained in the water. However, it did not look like the reflection that firstly caught my attention when I arrived at this place earlier, but it was a very bright light, white and yellowish at the same time. Surprisingly, within that light, I saw myself, immersed, looking, from within it, at my own figure, which a few meters in the distance, standing, was staring at me, immersed in the light. Myself looking at myself, from two distant and opposite places. How can I ever understand it!
While I remained in this situation, I felt that time was not passing. Things became timeless; they were somewhat slow, lethargic. I felt that I was in me but also outside of me. I realized that I was aware of everything. I felt omniscient and yet I knew I was there, in the same place I stood since I arrived. I cannot explain it. Although I did not have my eyes on the dog that accompanied me, I could feel it, perceive it in all its shape and color, I heard its growls as when it nibbled on the body and drooped through its nose. I listened to the birds that slept in the branches of the trees, their image came to my mind, snuggling one next to another, I felt the heat that their small bodies expelled and at the same time, I felt part of them. I heard the crickets' songs, but not like when one hears them in the usual way, I heard their songs were slow, heavy; their sound went from a high pitch and became lower and lower, thicker and doughy.
Within all this hallucination, I had an urge to pull out my phone and try to record all of this. I wanted to have a proof of this that was happening, something tangible to show to those who wanted to have more details about this experience, but my body did not move. It was like a dream that you cannot or do not want to wake up from.
How long I stayed there, inside this big bubble or charm, I do not know. It seemed to me that I had hours and hours, but I was not tired. On the contrary, I felt joy. I felt like when someone goes to a place for the first time and has a great time and finds everything very funny, so much, so that you want to come back again and again, and then you tell your friends how it went and invite them to join you next time.
The roosters were crowing when I came to my senses again. I heard some people’s voices and laughter brought by the wind from neighboring houses. The dog that was accompanying me was sniffing at me and scratching my shoes with its paws. I felt myself a little strange. The whole experience had left me somewhat disoriented. I have acquaintances in the place who had told me stories of ghosts, of spirits that have buried treasures and appear to give them to someone in exchange for some task, of enchanted animals that make hunters lose in the mountains, but what I experienced did not fit into neither of those categories. Therefore, I kept this experience to myself.
As the years have gone by, when I find myself stressed by the hustle and bustle of life or the problems that overwhelm my mind, I close my eyes and go back to that night, to that place near that little lagoon, and I feel calm. I have never been able to have an experience like that again, but when I recall it I can feel, to some degree, what I felt that day, I can bring back strength to continue with confidence and know that we are part of something greater than everything.
