Aw, Rig, those wilting clocks were just an indicator of how nervous old Sal was at the time with the young wife and all.

Well, Amos, that's a good try and narrows the field some - I will not expect to see you tricked out in burnt whale fat face paint and loon feathers, then.

I know that point of consciousness of self that you refer to, and Carl Sagan speaks of it in, I think, the Demon Haunted World or Dragons of Eden (I need to read Sagan again, been too many years). He was, if I remember correctly (and I recommend reading DoE if you haven't, as my memory is faulty and I don't have the book), suggesting that the 'other self' we encounter is an evolutionary revenant, perhaps related to the (almost independent still) reptilian brain upon which our mammal brain sits, like a fat marmot on a turtle, thinking the reptile beneath is just a convenient rock when it is a living entity on its own. Or maybe not, but Sagan gives the investigator into spirituality and the mind a lot to consider.