Michael Scott Hand

We learn the shapes and they are so simple: square, triangle, circle. But the shapes that are not simple: there is a square inside a square, a triangle with a rounded edge and circles of different sizes connect to form a spiral. Eventually, we learn about these too, these combinations-of-shapes, and no matter how many edges or curves, we learn that each silly shape consists of the essence of those basic shapes that we first learned.

The shapes, no longer content to live within two dimensions begin to pop out from the page. On graph paper they assume new forms, the forms of three dimensions, and as such the square becomes a cube and the triangle a pyramid and the circle a sphere.

And what of the cube with another cube inside it, the pyramid with a curved edge and the sphere containing spheres that form a spiral?

As with the primary colours: red, yellow, blue. Not reality but art theory. Not art theory in practice, but colour-mixing. Could it be those hues combined consist of nothing more than those hues we already knew? Is a clock-tower nothing more than a square, extended into three dimensions, a square with another square inside it (the empty space) and a pyramid perched on top?

Is the clock merely a circle and the hands of the clock mere lines? What of the seconds that pass as we wonder; a second when considered for more than a second rapidly becomes memory and memory becomes history no matter how poorly remembered.

Is a religious fresco merely shapes and primary colours? Is a bowl of pasta? Is the sky on a clear night, glittering with stars? Is all that we know, and are, reducible to these primary facts? What of these words… they are “shapes” of a fashion. And what of the imagination that takes these words and sets them alight with images described like: red triangle, blue sphere, green square.

What of the thoughts that toss and tumble and the shapes that are incomplete, or where one line extends beyond the boundaries presumed to be proper, like an untidy triangle that forgot to comb its hair? What of beginnings and endings and molecules and waves and the ocean churning and churning and churning.

A bubble may appear as a perfect sphere until it pops and then it is little more than myriad tiny spheres too small for the eye to see. And the grains of sand too. And the sun that stains the sea red and then dips below the waves and out of sight.

Is all that we know, and are, reducible to these primary facts?

Are we… merely imperfect shapes?

The tall grass in the field sways when the wind goes over it.

The tall grass in the field sways when a creature passes through it.

The mountains look on, impassive, peaks cloaked by mist.

People wear paths where they tread. And generation after generation follow those same footsteps.

The tall grass in the field sways when the wind goes over it.

The tall grass in the field sways when a creature passes through it.

The mountains look on, impassive, peaks cloaked by mist.

Everything is a series of processes set in motion long ago by the first–itself a series of processes–begun when ending not-ever, but overflowing from the first in great milky gusts of star cloud.

Thus transmuted into inconsequential carbons that comprise me and my fingers tap clumsily at keys that register some runic approximation of my thoughts through processes yet arcane and not understood.

Brain cells and firing neurons and we know not what they truly are as thought and self, perceived, exist within a slab of meat; cut into thin slices enhance image, enhance, enhance until we eventually find a tiny image of an elephant stored within the brain–except…

It is no image of an elephant but an elephant, living and breathing and warm and large. And it smells like an elephant and it sounds like an element, but it lives here in this nothing-space between neurons.

We are made of threads like balls of yarn that stretch between bookshelves that are far apart.

Like knowledge on pages spread like melting butter our thoughts expand beyond the edges that contain us.

Such as it is we cannot be contained, but rather, continue to expand our thoughts and consciousness beyond that which we thought we knew.

And like the butter who first thought its destiny was to be only milk, so too are we transformed by the alchemy of existence into something more than gold.

For gold is a precious metal formed by millions of years of geologic processes; but we are the living thoughts of the universe given form.

As such any attempts to perceive ourselves become tangled and we know not who, or what, we are.

For we are born into this clumsy, violent, rapid, empty, busy siren-song of flashing sounds and blaring lights and we are as lost as time-travellers.

For we are time travellers. That which birthed us so long ago slid (or perhaps did not slide) in ancient pools and oceans beyond our comprehension.

And so on and so on… until we not only had eyes, but also minds with which to fixate on this strangeness. But still we make no sense of it.

The oceans that birthed us still rise and fall and the memories of our ancestors linger within us, mostly unremembered.

Yet we are as much a part of those who came before us as our shadow is part of us. But is a shadow also a part of the ground that it darkens?

Then, are we also part of the ground upon which our shadow falls?

Yes.

Old belongings lay scattered like memories and the boxes that held them are empty.

These objects, once imbued with such power, lie dormant on the floor. They have been reduced to their base components, stripped of memory and context such things become as plastic, metal and paper of no use to anyone at all.

Pick something up and hold it. How does it make you feel? Do the memories come surging, even now? Do you breathe life into this object as the witch doctor and his fetish?

No. Today there are no memories. Today there is only the sound of blood rushing in your ears like the ocean. You are alive and yet you are not the same life. You are the result of a constant shedding, not merely of skin and cell, but also memory and emotion and ideas.

You are a juxtaposition of every mistake you have made and every victory you have celebrated. You are sawdust-shavings of everyone you have lost. You are the very wind itself, the surging storm of memory, all the sadness and the hate and the mistakes–yes, again, the mistakes–and the victories; again, the victories.

You are a box, emptied. You are the belongings, scattered across the floor. You are none of those things.

You are the thought that perceives these words. You are a vibrant living thread, even now forging towards a future that is yours alone.

Again, you will make mistakes. Again, you will be victorious.