A Thought Falling – Spain and Germany (Part 48)

Transposing emblem by Blanca Domínguez Cobreros

A hand holds a pencil before a blank paper. About to start the trace of a drawing, it ponders the move and remains still. It doesn’t know where to go in the immense whiteness. Uncertain of the right path, it petrifies. Its músculos grow tenser and tenser, the skin sweaty and cold. It remembers vaguely la existencia of a space of soft and edgy líneas, of free shapes and contours. The hand looks around and perceives only surfaces, but it isn’t able to find the lines, the traces to follow. It cannot pick up one thing; it cannot distinguish a form anymore. Everything becomes one continuous, indistinct substance.

Tenerife, Spain – Drawing light at night – Alexilena

The hand faints.

My eyelids open and close softly, as I look at the face in front of me. Two eyes look back at me while talking, and I manage to tune my brain to a lower speed to observe closely.

El acto of looking becomes very detailed; I start to notice the forms of the eyes I have in front. I see the fleshy contour moving, demarcated by a forest of eyelashes. I see two brown, watery fruits with piercing black holes pointing at me. I try to focus on them, but mi atención jumps to the next spot until I get lost in the wrinkly valley between the cheeks and the eyes. Thoughts sprout from the landscape I am contemplating, and I can hear them clearly: they talk en español. I pay attention to them and realize that they do not belong to the person; they come from my own mind.

Berlin, Germany – Schwarz, rot, gold – Artem Gavrysh

If this means what I just said, when I look at la persona, what I see is the backstage of my mind: ¡I am looking at my judgment! While this suspicion assaults me, the skin of the person starts to feel a little blurred. I hadn’t noticed that there is a second layer, almost perfectly adjusted to the face, but a few millimeters away from the first one. It’s like un holograma, but with a fine, fleshy quality. In a forth and back movimiento, I realize I am having both an image of the person and that of my own thinking in front of my eyes. I want to play with this new magic power of mine, but the more I look, the more layers come out, and I understand I have no control over it. Deviating from my subject, I gaze around to find out, horrified, that every object is now un holograma: their shapes, slightly distorted, vibrate like a humming sound. Meanwhile, la persona accumulates more and more of this coating, emerging from every new perception, fantasía, thought, memoria, … ¡Basta!

Berlin, Germany – Part transparent – Michael

I breathe.

I know there is a quiet place somewhere behind, almost at reach. Following the glimmer of an image pacífica y constante, I focus with some effort and keep on looking. The noisy layers get thinner and thinner… I see them fade.

Two serene eyes look back at me, and “me” dissolves like salt in water, and I become the look of the eyes. In this looking, I can feel more than I can see. I feel no fear.

Cadiz, Spain – Water flowing – Huaidan Photography

The look wraps me like a nest of warm hands, and we drift down the flow of a river silencioso.

I let myself go… I wonder where, though. There is something rather disquieting about “knowing” when taken as the conqueror of a totality: you will never get there. The more you know, the more aware you are of how much you don’t know. Knowledge is an island, one astronomer said.¹

I move slowly down the river and flow into a pool of water. Knowledge is an island, and I sail in a sea of ignorancia. If such an island exists, it should be easy to see it on this immense plate. I get concerned I will never find it. Or that it might not exist at all – although, if this water is ignorancia, the unknown, there must be a known somewhere… This dialectical game keeps me busy for hours, maybe days, until I realize that I am sailing on the same spot. ¿What if knowledge is el movimiento?

Spain – The Beehive – Munimara

A big void opens in the water.

I find myself alone in free fall, my mind full of possible endings. I fall and fall, and I open my arms with unexpected joy. In the fall, dancing with the mystery becomes natural: the counterpart of uncertainty is la libertad.

Stuttgart, Germany – Stadtbibliothek – Max Langelott

« ¡Unlearn everything and embrace madness!», urges Rumi in un poema.² I guess madness is the closest we can get to our percepción innate, like the child in awe about the world, the eyes free from the skin of common sense.

¡Embrace madness! The words resonating in the void. I fall. I fall. I fall in the clarity of madness. I am the flow of the hand, pouring as a current of lines on the blank paper. Living in the things, I see now, there is no need to explain to myself who I am: I am being. And this is, certainly, all I need to be.

Blanca Domínguez Cobreros

Works cited:

1 Gleiser, M. The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning.

2 Rumi. “Your mind can fly to great heights (M II, 2326-2332)”. Rumi’s Little Book of Life.

Credits

Photo 1: Hamburg, Germany – The black escalator – Wellington Rodrigues

Photo 2: Tenerife, Spain – Drawing light at night – Alexilena

Photo 3: Berlin, Germany – Schwarz, rot, gold – Artem Gavrysh

Photo 4: Berlin, Germany – Part transparent – Michael

Photo 5: Cadiz, Spain – Water flowing – Huaidan Photography

Photo 6: Spain – The Beehive – Munimara

Photo 7: Stuttgart, Germany – Stadtbibliothek – Max Langelott