"I sense space’s elasticity, go on reading the books"

How much space do you have?

from Edwin D. Babbitt’s Principles of Light and Color (1878)

Creative Reflection

I think it would be interesting if we could see more about other people’s inner states. How would we interact if we could see a red or blue status bar indicating the current level of distress/anger or peace/harmony in a stranger? How about a pie chart showing the distribution of their concerns? It would be much harder to pretend what we felt if others had a view in. And if we saw a symbolic emotional register around others, it may be easier to extend compassion; to them and ourselves.

How about space? I’d love to see a hologram of the space inside a person. Is it crammed full like a hall closet? Or airy like a summer tundra? Is it a library or a zoo? How much space is inside me governs my capacity to love, imagine and rest.

Consider having and not having. What if there were hovering transparent golden coins and keys surrounding a person to indicate how much money, stock or land they possessed? Alternatively, flashing black tear drops falling around a person if she were in poverty or debt, or worry emojis rising from her shoulders ? This pecuniary disclosure could go so wrong (ex: credit scores). Yet laying bare our inequalities in wealth distribution, plus the identity lines along which power is rewarded, could be revelatory. I’d love to try it out. If I could see that someone had negative money, I would be moved to offer them food, inquire about their wellbeing, share what I have. I’m not sure how I would respond to cues that someone has hoarded much too much.

What about your existence do you wish others could see?

What currently private or hidden qualities would you like to percieve about others?

Personally, I would like to see how many cats a person has.

Drawing by Gottfried Mind of cats hunting in a mice-infested bedroom, ca. 1783–1814

---

From "Surge"

[Please imagine this poem center-justified as the author chose in the original. Center justification is a formatting Substack doesn’t support.]

by Etel Adnan

A long night I spent
thinking that reality was the story
of the human species

the vanquished search for the vanquished

Sounds come by, ruffling my soul

I sense space’s elasticity,
go on reading the books she wrote on the
wars she’s seen

Why do seasons who regularly follow
their appointed time, deny their kind of energy
to us?

why is winter followed by a few
more days of winter?

We came to transmit the shimmering
from which we came; to name it

we deal with a permanent voyage,
the becoming of that which itself had
become

by Etel Adnan, originally published in Surge, Nightboat Books, 2018