I became aware of the cells of my body in the oddest fashion. Each seemed to possess an alertness, a mini-personality—eager, responsive, and individualistic—and most of all, each initiated action and didn’t just respond to stimuli. I had some crazy idea that my consciousness had dropped back to its components, when suddenly I felt … loose, or unfixed. There was that same clicking sensation in the back of my neck again, and to my horror I found myself quite literally suspended in the air, outside the terrace, about five feet away from the railing, with nothing but some sixty feet of space between me and the ground.

At any instant I expected to go crashing down. But nothing happened. I yelled for help, though there was no one in sight. It was late afternoon; I’d come home early to work on the student’s report, but most people in the building were still in classes or meetings. In complete disbelief, I hung there, telling myself that I couldn’t possibly be where I was, and wondering why I wasn’t falling. It seemed that nothing was ever going to happen; no one would come to discover me, and I’d be left there for all eternity, like a fish on an invisible line, waiting to be pulled back in. Then, just as suddenly, I was back inside the living room, but still in the air, floating.

Next, I changed position and got the next-worst fright of my life, for I was staring down at my own body. There “I” sat, eyes closed but pen in hand, as if I’d taken a catnap while reading. I looked down at the top of my head; each hair springing up merrily like red grass from my scalp. My shoulders were slumped. The familiarity and unfamiliarity, so intermixed, quite transfixed me. My body looked so weirdly forlorn that a heartrending pity for it rushed through me.

But how could I be outside my body, looking down at it? I’d hardly thought of the question when I was drawn back into my usual form so quickly that I closed my eyes, imagining the worst kind of crash landing. I’m not sure what happened next, except that the clicking sound came again, and with it a sound like a soft explosion. Almost beyond panic, I opened my eyes to see my fingers holding the pen. I was back in my body. But if I had just opened my eyes, what eyes had I closed just before I plunged back in?

Dazed, I looked out the window to where I’d hung just a few moments earlier and I had the disquieting fear that I might see myself, still dangling there.