Study in Black²

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

This time, the man said it was a subtle piece, and together we stepped into the black box, our hands groping handrails, darkness so thick it seemed to swallow us whole. And what is human instinct, really, if not the deep-rooted panic that sets in when we lose our understanding of sight? For here is the world eyes opened or closed. Here is our bodies becoming undone. If you can’t see the hand waving in front of your face, how do you know the hand exists? And no, this is not a question of trees falling in woods or Schrodinger’s cat alive or dead in boxes. I’m tired of people questioning whether we matter unless we matter to them.   This is, after all, a poem about matter.   And existence. And how, after awhile, a light appeared in the distance, glowing like a fuzzy cataract on an otherwise perfect plane of black. Without it, we might have been everywhere and nowhere, boundless. Tell me, if you can’t see the walls around you, how do you know they exist? Don’t pretend they don’t. You know they do.

                                                                                   And I am so tired
                                                                                   of being boxed in.


2 “Study in Black” was written in response to James Turrell’s Hind Sight (Dark Space).

Wednesday, July 15, 2020