From Else

Someone has spilled grey paint over the great table that is the sky; so much paint, that it has seeped through the wood and is morphing into shapes on the underside. There is a hole in the sky. In it I can temporarily see what is on the table: light. Light that shines from a particular angle as to pour onto the leaves of a nearby tree, toning the undersides of leaves and the backs of branches in a hue set on fire. The grass is cut short and as I look down on it from the height of my eyes, I can see all grass united into one vibrating, pulsating lawn that is yet silent. I have the urge to probe my fingers through the green and feel the roots on my fingertips be tugged. Then I want to turn my palm towards the sky and run it further, so that the underside of my hand can mete the undergrowth. There is something quiet that I feel, but a desire, to get beneath things, to see them from below their surface, and feel them work, pulse and sugar upwards dispensed to reach and give appearance to the exterior, the seen blade of grass, the bottom lining of clouds, the sheen of leaves and the disordered delineation of wood.

It is so, with people. There's a certain fascination I feel with the workings of human beings, with the way their cogs of flesh and blood and neurose twist and work to make ideas, to generate worth. It is a machine, and yet it works by a design that cannot always be planned and predicted. It is fascinating for there to be a structure and a process in being human and in doing human, and yet not being able to replicate the same schema and apply it to all man that breathe and operate under the said sky, under the great table. There's a harmony, humanly accessible yet humanly impenetrable, that is at ether. The design, I cannot predict, though as the course of my life has happened, so have I learned about the workings of the design, where the ideas go, where the magnitudes fit and scales weigh naught.

When a piano is being played, I wonder what the undersides of the keys would look like. When a finger is pressed down upon a key and the design of the piano function so as to produce an expectant sound, the pressed white piece of painted wood looks different from under. I am imagining the set of keys on a piano, being played, but being seen from underneath. The force that weighs down to formulate sound, then manifests to the eye as a pull. I can see the keys being pulled, strings attached to them, strings that have on them somewhere a key, a key that rings when the string is tugged.

The same goes for a man. He is somebody you know, because now you have imagined him and fashioned him in an image. Perhaps he is indeterminate, unspecific, but he is recognisable. You know him. He's watching you imagine him. He's watching you look at him to give him eyes. He's watching you clothe him to give him contours. He's watching you decide facial features, even if you don't see his pupils or if you don't imagine eyelids. He doesn't say anything, except right now he is talking in your voice, and saying what you are thinking, and wishing to be where you want to be, even if you cannot, with words, say. He knows, even if you don't know you know. But you know, really. He's a man you made up in your image, as you.

From underneath, he is a body, an imagining, a carrier of things that when attention is upon-placed, it forms – instantly. Whatever he is, you want him to be because you want you to be. From underneath, he is a simple man, of flesh that doesn't exist but of flesh that you feel as your own. You have made him yours. You have given him life as life was given you, and upon the life that you are does he live, as upon life itself do you. From underneath, you notice that I am drawing parallels. Layers, whether they be of paint in the sky to delineate the different atmospheres, or layers of clothing to warm on a cold day, a man. There is only one layer we see. The closest to our eyes, our heads, our chest and flesh. Yet there is more, and it all seems to fade into an obscurity, a blob of when-where that fashions itself as a humanoid when we imagine it, but it seems to be something else prior, or rather, nothing but else.

Beneath the form, there is the gap, the nebulose, the capitalisable else. That, is fascinating. Because there is potential for anything, anything that can be narrowed down to be a something, and out of it emerges something and then disappears after. This movement – creation – that holds our attention. The wave in the sea, tiding over the sky, covering it in liquid, and then, retreating, leaving imprints, soon to be gone. There is the man. There you are and there I am, in the sky, waving.