Waking up to your self

Extremely late or very early one morning I woke with a dead arm that was resting above my head. At first I thought there must have been something long and heavy that had placed itself near my head, I lay there for a while, unperturbed because the thing wasn't breathing or making sounds at me. Eventually I reached up with my other hand and realised it was my own limb - wow!
Then I was wide awake, I realised this is what it's like when other people touch me, because the dead arm couldn't feel a thing, I might as well have been shaking hands with the Queen for all I knew.
I touched my own hand, noticed all it's wrinkly bits and how it felt surprisingly dry and weathered. This was amazing, it struck me as being the kind of experience I want to have more often. I think we're all a little obsessed with the idea of getting into someone else's head and coming to know what it's like in there: but re-meeting your own body as though you'd never inhabited it is something altogether creepy/lovely/new/POSSIBLE.

Sometimes when you are drifting off to sleep or sitting still in meditation you feel like you're falling or you have elephantitis of the hands, or that your hands are miles apart, or that your hands aren't even there at all.


Every now and again you are forced into acknowledging a part of you afresh.