"couldn't help but notice her mind failing to categorise this person" (S54)

couldn't help but notice her mind failing to categorise this person. Everything about them was amorphous, ambiguous, in a way that her preconceptions could not gain footing upon. She could not place their accent, their ethnicity, their gender, not to mention their religious affiliation of belief system, if they had one at all. Jesse could hardly discern whether this was a real being at all. Yet it was despite these mysteries that she found a peacefulness in this figure. The video showed them, sitting in on a sturdy oak branch, their back at the trunk of the tree. Some creature, an aphid perhaps, crawled between their fingers, and the figure spoke, as they guided the insect along its journey. The video was interspersed by artwork, videos of nature, videos of cities and stars, as if all were one and the same. The figure spoke in vague, intractable language. "All is water," they said, "all is dust. We are born from the electricity of dead stars - though, really, we were never born at all. Breathe." And so Jesse did. As she exhaled noticed that, in contrast to her initial thoughts, it was not *despite* these mysteries that she found peace - but because of them. The formless figure, passing boundaries, provided an escape from the fervent lines drawn by her modern-day life: of messages, of emails, of labels and obligations. For a brief moment, she caught a glimpse into the space between all things - into the great unknown, where nothing makes sense, and nothing needs to.