“Given our wings, our blinkers, it’s hard to look up, hard to get the full view, of the sky, of anything. But we can do it, a little at a time, a quick move of the head, up and down, to the side and back. We have learned to see the world in gasps.”
For the past two years, I have been interested in collecting images of the world in relief. What I mean to say is, the world in shadow, or, as Atwood writes, the world in gasps.
This, a version of Japanese golden joinery, though this version happens late at night in the hallway and we can't afford gold bars, but we can afford lightbulbs and the gaps between all of the doors are lit up gold from behind, throwing light on the doors across from them.
Do you realize that happiness makes you cry? / Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die? sang The Flaming Lips to everyone inside, to everyone outside.
The morning after a party. The house is exhausted but, somehow, over the course of the night, someone put the disco ball in a place where the sun could rise and sparkle over it and so the whole living room is reflective, light and shadow on walls and amber glasses.
The shocking regularity of light, the shocking regularity of how we slice it up into little pieces.
Steps from the ocean in San Francisco, I found the exact same color of the shadow and light in my bedroom in Virginia.
From the roof where the laundry dried, eight year old Damian stood up and looked over the view we had of Oaxaca: the church and its plaza, fireworks from guelaguetza shooting off wildly and without regularity, the earth furrowing its blue brow into hills that made the city into the pit of a bowl. What can you see? his mom asked. Todo el mundo! he responded.
For all that I love about a thick, straight slash of light, I think like it best when light looks like this: washed, swirled, uncontrollable.
I wrote once about being made reflection of trying to learn how to refract myself in just the right way so I could be just the right thing for the men I desired. You can read that photo/video/translation/essay here www.refractionskr.com (available until at least until May 5, 2020).
Comments