Not much Science but some Fiction
A friend sent me the link to a Swiss painter’s website. I explore it with interest. I see oils, acrylics, three-dimensional works, and photographs.
Above all, her cyanotype prints captivate me. I submerge myself in a web of white lines: shiny filaments on a deep blue background. I pause to digest what I’ve seen. I look up toward the window in front of my desk, where a similar image surprises me. Above the whitewashed stone cubes of my town and the expanse of the cobalt sea extends, like a net of scars, a tangle of vapor trails that cross and lose themselves in the azure nothingness. Superimposed, an army of gray lenticular clouds evokes the silhouette of several UFOs.
To board one of them, I think, and fly to distant, ephemeral worlds—worlds that no longer exist anywhere but in my memory. To lose myself once again among the caresses of cotton fabrics and natural fibers. To let myself be carried away once more by the adventure of turning that delicate image into tangible matter. To create a space of dreams where reality vanishes on the threshold of the borderland, where the interstice transforms into a physical sensation of nothingness.
Ma, as the Japanese call it. For them, the space between things is not empty, but filled with energy: a force that moves you, inspires you, and lifts you up, like a flight inside a lenticular cloud. A possible interaction with the foreign, whether object, plant, animal, or human. Everything possesses a soul, a sensual promise, and deserves respect. The other, the unknown, is that which disquiets and at the same time fascinates; that which invites exploration. Is it not similar, perhaps, to being aboard that fictional alien ship?
I imagine black spheres descending on thin strings from that cloudy craft. As they draw near, the skeins unravel, turning into wavy filaments and shaping letters. They enter through my window and gather on my computer screen. As if holding hands, they weave sentences. I press a few keys to save this extraterrestrial text. What a rescue for a blocked writer!
