The sediment of tension is the only trace that survives once the session has lasted long enough to erase the usual points of reference. I am not sure how long I have been here. The rope remains where it was. The pressure remains where it was. The only thing that changes is whatever my attention decides to pursue.
There is an old stain on the window.
It is not large.
It does not even have an interesting shape.
Yet I keep returning to it.
I study it as if it contains some important piece of information.
As if, given enough time, it might help me remember something I have forgotten.
It does not.
The stain remains exactly the same.
And so do I.
My mind begins using it as an absurd point of reference.
I count it between breaths.
I compare it to the shadow cast by a chair leg.
I turn it into an occupation because every other occupation has disappeared.
The rope does not disappear.
The rope continues registering in the background as a constant presence.
It does not exactly hurt.
It does not exactly rest.
It simply exists.
And that constant existence gradually changes the way I think.
There are also tiny holes in the wall.
Small punctures.
Marks left by nails that once held something and now hold nothing at all.
I cannot stop wondering what used to hang there.
A picture.
A shelf.
A photograph.
Any answer works because none of them can be verified.
Time begins behaving strangely inside those useless questions.
Meanwhile the harness continues doing its work.
It does not need to remind me of itself.
It does not need to reassert its authority.
It is already integrated into the experience.
Every fiber occupies its place with the same natural certainty as the dust suspended in the still air of the room.
And then the contradiction appears.
The same contradiction I have been trying to avoid from the beginning.
I do not want to be here.
I do not like this feeling.
I do not like discovering that a rope can monopolize such a large portion of my attention.
I do not like realizing that the body can reorganize its priorities around something I would never have chosen for myself.
And yet I cannot stop thinking about it.
The resistance does not disappear.
The discomfort does not disappear either.
Both remain.
Both coexist.
They contradict one another.
One part of me wants the experience to end.
Another part studies every detail with an intensity that makes no sense for something it supposedly dislikes.
Perhaps that is the most unsettling part.
Not the rope.
Not the stillness.
Not the tension.
But the certainty that my attention keeps returning to the same place.
Like dust turning slowly inside a beam of light.
Like a gaze returning again and again to a stain on a pane of glass.
Like a thought that should have left hours ago but, for reasons I cannot explain, is still waiting exactly where I left it.
The neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
