Imagine nothing > imagine black.

Imagine something, something undefined coming together; your very perception building in fits and starts.

Imagine glimpses of light and then later > glimpses of recognition.

Imagine sensations with no meaning and > no way of knowing what they are > it’s all a network with nodes unknotted.

Imagine a vague notion of motion but no way to move > Imagine expending great deals of energy to lift your head, then rest.

Imagine warmth and peace and being re-minded of an earlier existence and then everything changes and then it’s same and nothing makes sense and now there is another emotion and another sensory experience and why not whimper into the void > Imagine the warmth coming back and then going and more intense whimpers and crying just come out > screwing up your face and ringing in your head.

Imagine the slow realisation of your arms and your legs and your body and yourself, imagine the slow dawn of awareness coming in shocks and taking you away from a warm, cosy peace.

Imagine eating and sleeping as your overwhelming urge > while processes much deeper than even your primitive developing self awareness takes on the mammoth task of simply growing.

Imagine just whimpering with confusion and a lack of understanding of your most basic experiences, then imagine > the warm safety of what you one day will come to understand to be your mother and your father, an experience and understanding and a relationship which will change again and again as you grow and we grow.

Imagine the gathering of experiences into coherence and a sense of self building in concert with a sense of otherness >Imagine somehow over time learning to understand and perhaps appreciate the warmth of the love of your parents peeking down on you.

We say ‘hello’ > then, ever so slowly, over hours and days and months and more subtly, over years and decades, you come to smile and say ‘hello’ back > growing into the first unbreakable bond you have in this world > a world of potent love and powerful potential to be good.

Imagine the love in every glimpse as you learn to understand that > we are there for you and as your world changed from being ‘one’ with mummy’s tummy-world > to you to being shunted around this little insignificant but ever so beautiful blue and fragile jewel we named ‘earth’ > you, the littlest one > has become the very centre of our world.

This is the Long Hello, as what you are, develops into your, and our, consciousness & imagination.

 

Edgar Kazu Hegland on his 1 month birthday, 8th of June 2017