“THE OCEANS OF THE FUTURE ARE IN THE SPACE BETWEEN THE STARS” shouts
the headline of a 1957 newspaper. The year I was born. Perhaps
this is why I have such a fascination for interstices that are between
objects and the molecules and atoms that vibrate and intermix from substance
to substance and flesh to flesh. There is something in that uninhabited
void. They've discovered neutrinos now (neutrino n : an elementary
particle with zero charge and zero mass ) and certainly the scale will
become more and more diminutive as our tools become more and more powerful
but there will always be an entity of emptiness which slips seamlessly
through the constricts of time, reality and location. Black holes
and anti-matter be damned. Beyond any measure it is eternal and all
things are interstitially intervolved through it. It dwelled and
still dwells in Aristotle's brain, Elizabeth's wigs, Vincent's ear, Gustav’s
heart, Edward's eye, Albert's bicycle, Sylvia’s bees. My ankle.
Your knee.
A little girl sits just outside a musky-earth shelter she has just made of bark and moss and branches. She is in an old-growth Canadian forest and it is raining. Her best friend Dagmar sits next to her. They both huddle happily under a clear bright-yellow plastic umbrella. A camera clicks.
Sometimes one stumbles upon an unexpected stairway long overgrown with brush or hidden in the shadows; you cannot help but to follow the steps to where they lead. Whether an ascent to a glorious sun-kissed grassy meadow or a descent to a shadowy limestone waterfall and pool, it has been put here for the purpose of providing guidance and direction toward the rarer way. So too are the interstices that form a hidden ladder of sorts that takes us between and beyond the ordinary atoms importantly jostling about.
One step. One step. One step.
Where will it lead?
4/6/2001
Ingrid Karklins