Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Both Captor and Hostage, My Mind and I

The atoms pulse and hover and fade as I turn away, then focus and form into the familiar upon my return. In my absence they can be themselves: solids relax into blurry whirls of possibility; liquids bend and unravel at their leisure, scattering themselves into marbles of gossamer; even the air assumes hues and shapes that slither along the tenuous matter in which I believe. I believe in the cloaks of objects, and in the consensus constructed around them. Because I believe, you believe, and because we believe, they believe, and they believe because those before them believed. The painters and the poets aspired to lose their faith, and pierce the gauze upon the world to reveal its truths; their tools conspired against them, being in on the ruse from the outset. Even the mind, unseen and unknowable, is particularly unreliable in penetrating material truths. It harbors great secrets. Out of kindness or contempt it refuses to offer a glimpse of what lies beneath. The mind gives form, gives names, gives expectations and veils the buzzing hovering of matter. This enemy within is unflinching. If I stop believing, will objects dissolve into themselves as they are without the deceitful filters of eye and mind? Am I to have faith in what I cannot see, or faith in what I can?


Copyright 2010 Max Jukes/Brian Edward Hack. No quotation or reproduction of this material without permission from the author. Illustration copyright 2010 by max jukes/brian edward hack.

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