The Adventures of Flying Monkey: Re-beginnings (exerpt #2)

The following is a chapter excerpted from an unedited draft of a novel-in-progress with the working title The Adventures of Flying Monkey.
 
Flying Monkey lay on the ground. He didn’t know yet what ground was, or maybe he used to but had forgotten, or he never knew but always knew... Anyway, that’s where he was.

He lay there sleeping, though he didn’t yet know what “sleep” was, even though he always did, and was always awake, never awake, neither, both. He had been awaiting this day for millennia --longer than that, actually-- but also only for a moment, because there were no “moments” yet, or else all moments were always happening all the time (though of course there was also no “time”).

"The Emergence of Spirit and Matter"

Folio 2 Panel 1 from the Shiva Purana
attributed to Shivdas c.1828

The nothingness lay on every side all around, extending into every direction everywhere at the same time, but also no direction at anytime, all times at the same place, no times at any place. The nothingness (which was also everythingness) had both always been there and never been there. It had always existed and never existed; it was existence, though no one anywhere knew what “existence” was yet, except maybe Flying Monkey. But he had forgotten, as usual.

Something somewhere (and everywhere, and also nowhere) was rumbling, though no one was anywhere to hear or feel it, not even Flying Monkey, though at the same time he had always heard it, had been expecting it, even; the rumbling was his reminder. The rumbling was him, and was not him; it was also everything and everyone.

“How terrible and wonderful and exciting and ordinary,” Flying Monkey thought for the first time, again. “How very Interesting!”