Across the farthest horizon into a doorless world, into an unparalleled universe called here-and-now, we arrive. The mind is sprained by this thing called here. It’s a place. But it’s an odd place. Hard to describe. Poetry helps. We look around in the half-light of early mourning, aware that here is always about to bid farewell to now. Always. Do you see where that leaves us? We are born nowhere in this world except in time. We experience moments. But there is only ever one now. So, are we pieces of time or are we fractals of an unutterable whole? The mind wanders, but the body has nowhere to go. It’s always here, always now. And yet – we are falling deeper into the future. Remarkable that some atoms fell together as wet brains. Even more, it’s astounding! Astounding that wet brains house a metaphysical agent of will whose meaning prevails against fate and chance. Scant comfort in fate, less in chance. Free or illusory, willpower at least gets us moving about in the here-and-now – but where exactly are we to go? Deathward, we look the wrong way. Move instead, sages say, toward beforeness. Before birth. Before the world begins. Name that place, and it kindles unknowing. Let us not name it then. Feel it. Feel the one transparent instant before wet brains. Before atoms. Feel into our nameless self. What we experience there is so intimately our own and small, how can it possibly hold us and the whole universe together? No one knows. But we already understand, because this truth is a felt truth: Love and compassion, while feeble as forces, are mighty as powers.