Mouldable Air

There is an important distinction at the level where the earth meets the air suspended across its face.

There are pipes extruding from puddles which dribble a peculiar purple fluid. No one knows what they are supposed to be used for but it has been respected that they will be unclogged when the dribble stops.

An internal ear is whirring, its minuscule tubes with minute fluids. A murmuring thump pulses - an internal activity formed through a very delicate balance of components. A personality founded upon contradictions in itself. The desire for freedom to roam diverse climates, to toy and flirt with undulating lands, only to return to a hole propped up with ancient planks which in themselves form a cavernous old shed underground. The moist air feels comforting, yet the fresh blue breeze is enticing in an eroticism that can never become ordinary.

Moving between lungs, the wind explores circles, triangles and humans. Awake there is no better friend that the voice in one's head and the cycle of day, with distant sunshine and the night with stars that exist in far off galaxies cloaked by distance and dense atmospheres.

Asleep there is no worse enemy than the voice in one's head and the cycle of night with intimate darkness and the day with sunshine that exists in imagined skies cloaked by the thick clouds of rationality.

Behind the shadow an unidentified creature presents a most ridiculous appearance. It has an inflated head with a long and peculiarly undefined slender body. Something like a tail protrudes from the nape of the neck and follows the pattern of the spine only to disappear with a wiggle underneath the tail bone. There are two rather egg like eyes mounted on stalks just above where the ears of a man would usually be positioned. The skin is somewhere between tough leather and an egg shell in texture. This queer thing is very active and lively, continually wriggling and paddling with its worm like legs.

The landscape in which it can be found is covered with a dense layer of fine ash, a dust which forms dunes and which resonates under the moonlight. During the day the sunshine causes this material to heat to the point it almost melts, it almost pours like liquid silt into valleys to expose a porous rock head, like some sponge confronted with Medusa. Out creeps an army of these comical organisms, it is impossible to deduce their scale in relation to the human form, since the punctures in these rocks may be craters or else smaller than pin pricks. Although this place has the sense of somewhere looked at, it is observed but not observable.

Biolody Thing

How and why is this being done? A peculiar sense of enjoyment resides within this constructed world of safety. You are trying to feel that you are putting yourself at great risk although a silent voice keeps its pace - you never really know - something terrible could happen.

A medieval laugh, uncontrollable, rattles and swings, adopting symbols to speak - not with words but with visions, sensational in style, too sugary for some, too abstract for others. Disjointed frames shift in and out, amusing the wonderer who hides beneath the canons of time, ashamed and strangled.

And all the while we are seeking to emulate this sense of teetering on the edge, finding the limit to push oneself - how to determine when one action is both an act of brutality and a thrill, and investigation into one's edges.

It can get quite tiring sometimes. Simple things - if only to be satisfied by them. Activation, becomes better than the subject - slapping your jelly, rippling your legs, reinforcing your eyeballs as they roll around empty cavities. This process slowly forms a ritual that becomes increasingly habitual.

It's not concerned with trying to recreate some other worldly planet or existence. It's all more about how the rules function here and how to use them, the operation of patterns - poking in and rummaging around for some root, grit and dirt beneath fingernails, an intimacy between human intention and the building blocks of this stuff of matter.

Often a common feeling is the gaping gap in one's own thinking. Yet no matter how much training or research is done it only acts to pull you further off course. Everyone sees that, heard it all before. You are trying not to let that put you off. Whatever it is won't establish itself clearly or coherently, your squelching heart squeaks and swishes and swirls its liquids around your head. Veins and intestines seem to get muddled. Worm brain.

Beneath the skin rumbles sticky fibres, mucous recoats internal passage ways, interrupted by intermittent spasms - micro muscles forming rings around some swallowed subject. The acid secreted gradually peels away surface by surface, as one thing transfers itself through the imagined membranes that constitute your insides.

It becomes impossible to determine whether the following set of sensations exist physically or are a figment of your psychology - lifted gently through a set of contradicting inhalations. Waiting for a punctuation which only holds off. Lump, one great lump extends and interferes with the the retinas - slowly swallowed into the eyes.

Is this a joint or singular experience? What does the passing of time have to do with this moment? A suggestion which went further than an idea.

Movement on the other hand is an important force, something which should direct the passage of ideas through an expansion in several directions at once. Just as pulsations may be sent down nerve fibres branching - splitting one surface into strings pulled through every angle of the sphere - thoughts can consume their surroundings in the same way.

We see a miniscule speck slowly attracting sediment, sucking, rolling and grabbing bits that it contacts - and its surface area expands exponentially.

As material becomes charged and jumps to join this terrain, a void is left behind. As the balance is tipped further, the contrast in density between each extreme gives birth to a intense pair - a tug of war between an emaciated vacuum and a giant gravitational glob. One greater for containing everything in its greed, the other wild in a hunger stretching and devouring thin air.

On a more human scale loneliness becomes a common symptom - or perhaps more, the inability to contain enough content to feel full. Bounded by this delicate skin, it is as if a hole has crept into the bottom, forcing open an exit greater in size than the neck of the entrance. So now, no matter at what rate a filling is pumped in, it continues to be expelled just as fast as it entered in. But if this gaping exit is then swapped for the entrance and pumped to the same degree, the thing will brim and stretch with contents that cannot be expelled fast enough. We are then left with an added risk of explosion as the pressure becomes too great to be contained. So what is the preferred situation? Is it possible to train asses to speak, to eat, to sing and breathe and for mouths to shit and fart and bleed?

Violated in the most tolerant of ways, an addiction nests within each weakness. Yet, something more subtle resides between the infected folds of this tract. A tight feeling that is impossible to locate either in position or scale. A pale throb which slowly swells in relation to the varied occurrences of everyday activities. Through a gradual process, this forms predictable patterns which if paid attention, provide a root into a constant that can become a meter to that which you would best ignore.

Getting Deeper Now - Reflections from a Head Stuck in a Hole Somewhere

Your essence somehow doesn't match the thick crust crisping around your edges, I want...... I can't let go, except into lost moments.

I can feel my intestines slowly and carefully wrap themselves around my outsides. A shiver.

What a mess.

You are sinking into stone, folding into the interior. But still you stare blankly into space.

I lower my head further, not to break your gaze, empty.

You fill me up, but replace my insides with what? There am I, emptying my contents into that ridiculous pit.

I am afraid of the intimacy of no knowing, but am repulsed by not touching. I don't want to know.

I can only imagine. I find pleasure in this - futile amusements, stirring unknown substances into mine.

If only you could roll the rest of me out flat like a piece of pastry, putty, pretty much extending in all directions, pressed all up against an opposing plane. That is how to feel it.

Gastric juices popping through burst membranes.

ahh...

What's left of my eyes are stuck on minute nodules, small warts, pimples, follicles....no....grit, grain, bit, speck.

Rub it in....go on.....exfoliate.

Remove impurities, and those dead layers.

What?... You are not my landscape.

Pick me out. Squeeze through that cone - listen to something relaxing, try to get deeper in - nearly there now, you are doing really well.

But there's nothing in there, or never was.

No, it's yours though - look what you could put in it, fit into it....room for movement.

It's so dark though.

Adjust your eyes.

There's never enough light.

But, you like it that way, fumbling across blind spots and corners, your hands on their own.

That way the subtleties....

somehow.

Come on?

Well, reveal, unfurl, but most of the moisture has been extruded now, I am not sure....no... I'm not.

Drawing Together a Big Ball of Space Existing in the Head of a Human, with flawed notes on the idea of the Tractor as Human.

Voice 1: So what is it like being like a human?

Voice 2: Being a human initially seems incredibly limiting - stuck in one place having to lug this heavy thing around that seems to lack coordination and dribbles and stinks, potential words come out of my mouth and it is hard to touch the right spot with them, I find it easier to communicate through doing and actions but then that can risk becoming too intense for others - I quite enjoy that fact though. Yet, I often have to step back and dip my fingers into too many things to satisfy a sense of inquisition. I realise how liberating having fingers and legs and all the rest becomes. Being a 'thing' seems to provoke an intense intimacy as well as a peculiar detachment in the same moment. I pause and refrain, drawing myself into thought, mulling round in my head, I escape. Without formalising my thoughts they often become circular, without realising them or spitting them out into an external reality they stagnate and I am stuck in a non-time, suspended as if waiting to be tapped from below.

Initially I felt that being stuck on planet earth was a time trap, stuck in a linear existence, although more and more it becomes clear that having a brain actually instigates time, but not one based on the steady rhythms of the clock, but on the rate at which my neurons fire, and that my cells grow and replace themselves to keep up with the constantly fluctuating image of what my body as 'me' is. That is exciting.

Sucked back in, I learn to talk, it makes me feel somewhat ridiculous. I feel incredibly un-eloquent, cumbersome, primitive. It becomes more fun to bash the other human next to me with a plastic hammer. They don't seem to like it - but I find it fun, that's a shame....what, that other human is bashing me over the head this time....gosh, that hurts...maybe it isn't such a fun thing to do after all.

Voice 1: You seem to be veering off course....what does 'human' mean to you?

Voice 2: well....I mean I am human, sort of, to the degree that everything around us is human really, or at least all the things that humans have created with their hands directly or indirectly.

Voice 1: so am I correct in saying that a tractor is human?

Voice 2: well, yes in the sense that the tractor becomes an extension of the human - like an arm, I suppose more a human prosthetic really.

Voice 1: but for it to be human doesn't it first need to have blood, and a brain? and of course be able to reflect on its own process of reflecting on thought or thinking? Isn't a human being a person as distinguished from an animal or (in science fiction) an alien?

Voice 2: well I feel that in order for the tractor to be used to its best ability the operator has to imagine that the tractor really is a part of its body, it has to believe that it has become its arms, to coordinate itself with it, so although in reality it does not have blood or consciousness, by being

used, the tractor becomes subsumed within the faculties human that way. Like with driving, you can't feel that you are driving the car, you have to be the car to be the best driver!

Voice 1: Are we talking about 'human' or 'human beings' here? The two are fairly different to me.

We also need to make some distinctions between the human body, in the sense of it as an object versus the human as a thinking personality. When we talk about tractors, I can see that they could be seen as some extension of the body but how can they be human in the sense of the human mind?

Voice 2: Well, that is clear, they are an extension of the body in physical terms, and usage, and on the other hand they encompass design, problem solving, engineering and purpose which is intimately tied into human thinking.

Voice 1: hmmm ok. I am a bit confused - but what about a leg that has been cut off, would you say that is still human then?

Voice 2: Well if that leg has been cut off then it is hard to pick it up straight away and put it back on and walk - so when it was attached to the body and functioning it was human, but when it has been cut off and becomes something separate, then I would say it is devoid of humanness, so no not human. Maybe that is why lost body parts are so unnerving. Because you can't just pick them up like a usual tool and use it straight away.

Voice 1: But what if someone is paralysed then, so they still have their legs attached to them but they can't use or feel them?

Voice 2: Yes well, that is a common problem, you are stuck with a pair of legs which no longer seem human to you...defunct, but they are still attached. And it is only then that people start reflecting on those things as separate from themselves, because they can't use those legs as integral and useful things, the legs become 'other'.

Voice 1: So we haven't got very far have we? - except perhaps establishing that tractors are more human than detached or non functioning human legs.

Voice 2: no....well it's not that simple...I'm not sure....

Voice 1: why are you saying this then?

Voice 2: ...to get over one hurdle so that I can attempt the next.

Voice 1: What do you want to attempt next?

Voice 2: I want to be able to be more secure in feeling that I am burying deeper into something, to get better at communicating some of my core intimate questions. But depending on the mood I can become frustrated, or pacified, or enlightened. I feel that the deeper I get, the more futile things feel, the deeper I get, the more I feel that I a stuck in some centrifugal orbit - I can see what is before me from every angle but it becomes more and more difficult to penetrate - all I can do is talk about its surface. I am hoping, an intimate awareness of the surface will cause it to peel back - I am not sure if there is anything inside, everything and nothing - both become the same. One thing can only expand into nothingness. Everything leaves no new space for something.