The next morning, Benny felt like having an egg on toast for breakfast, and as he went about making that happen had a passing momentary thought, or rather it was more of a fleeting mental image — and I’d try to bring him back to it to consider and dissect sometime. It was the egg itself and how it was presented, which became obvious as he broke it into the frying pan — the shell and the white and yolk inside.
The cursory concept that glided across his mind but had no time to gel (which is why I grabbed it) was of those three elements that were each an essential part of the whole, and that the egg wouldn’t be an egg without any of them. Separate the parts, and it becomes something else — like breakfast, or a mess.
That may seem obvious, and it must have also seemed so to Benny although the passing thought was not even really conscious and was, as I said, over in a flash. But the concept that could be worth his coming back to was that there can be some elements in this world that should always be considered together — taken as inseparable, as it were.
To hope for more of those lucid moments he woke up to now and then, which he seemed keen to keep finding, should obviously mean maintaining that approach over thoughts, how these are expressed, and how he presented himself — well, it seemed obvious to me, keeping action, word and thought together. These three as a package would be like Benny’s intact egg. I would bring him back to that thought when the moments presented themselves.
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