Last night I finished some work on a website I’ve been designing and watched a video lecture before tucking into bed. It was pretty late by then, around half past three, and I was very sleepy. But I think I got a small idea for a blog post (after a long time) and wanted to write it down before I either forgot or lost the enthusiasm the next day. So instead of turning off the laptop, I opened up the blog publishing program. I remember that well, although I was terribly sleepy and there was a film of clouded haze before my eyes, and I was forgetting whether I was asleep or awake.

I wrote down the title, I remember that. What happened next was pretty creepy, but I remember that too.

I collected my half-asleep mind with considerable difficulty in order to type down the formative idea for the post. Then, just as I was about to type it, just as my fingers hovered close above the keyboard, I heard this distinctive patter of the keys. Moderately fast typing, like my speed. I blinked and shook my head, but the haze did not clear. I could still see though that the text area was blank. I looked down and my fingers were still poised above the keys.

The soft sounds of the typing continued. I completely forgot what I was about to write.

I have been going to bed overworked, tired, and very late, a lot lately. So I stopped and tried to figure out whether all this was really happening, or I had smoothly passed from reality to a dream without significant changes in my surroundings. I was thinking that when I realized there was no sound. No typing noises. I sat up, rubbed my eyes and took stock of my surroundings. I was in my dark room under the sheets with a laptop on my lap, staring at a blank blog post. I remembered why I had it open. I remembered what I wanted to write down. So I thought of typing it down before I fell completely asleep and forgot the thought the next day.

Again, just as I was about to touch the keys, there started this soft patter over the keyboard. It wasn’t coming out of the speakers or anything, I was sure. It was coming from the keyboard, as if I was typing. But I wasn’t. I just sort of gave up then and lay back and let it be, much as one does after some shots of alcohol. I kept listening and did nothing. The typing continued. It was fast, and did not pause for long gaps, as if the mind was made. It continued, interjected by the slightly louder tap of the spacebar here and there. It was as if someone had wanted to write down a lot of things on their mind but had for long been unable to, and now took the opportunity of my attempt at a post to pour out their heart and mind. Only that it refused to show up on the screen. But it was as if I knew that someone, with that distinctive typing speed, that peculiar distribution of speeding up in some words and slowing down, pausing, thinking for a moment in others, that so familiar punching of the spacebar…

It was as if that someone was me, from some place else I had long neglected.

I kept listening to the typing in a general sleepy trance, trying a bit to guess from the source of the sounds which keys were being pressed, when there arose from inside me a faint feeling that I wasn’t asleep or imagining this.

I listened to it for a long time, gradually slipping into a deeper haze until I remember no more.

I woke up very late this morning. Afternoon, rather. The laptop was on my lap. It had turned itself off. I remembered last night. Before I did anything else, I booted the laptop and opened up the program.

Something had been written and saved last night. I opened it up and almost fell off my bed.

It was huge. I read through the whole thing for an hour. Then I sat silent for another hour afterwards, not believing, not being able to figure it out.

I don’t remember writing any of this. I don’t remember ever having thought of writing any of this. A person half-asleep, disoriented and hallucinating cannot write like this. But they were my thoughts, my own thoughts. My own wispy odds and ends that had flashed past the mind now and then and been carelessly shelved away for later reflection which I never had time for. Thoughts I had had on a bus, on the road, while looking at the face of a sad young girl in the metro, thoughts while listening to a song, thoughts about the nature of darkness and the lives of animals. Inconsequential thoughts, unfruitful thoughts, the smallest of thoughts. Picked and arranged and nurtured now into a long monologue before my eyes. Everything I had wanted to write about. Everything that is proper to write about, and everything improper.

I have not read it a second time since. I cannot put it in my blog. It cannot be read by any person except me. And the one thing I can swear on, is it couldn’t have been written by anyone except me.

I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t know if I am happy, or upset, or scared. I can’t decide. I don’t know how this happened. I need to find out. But I don’t know how. Who else can I ask? I have my doubts whether anyone else can help me.

I just know one thing. I’m going early to bed tonight.