(Quick dash before breakfast on a new poem)
I’ve been thinking about the nature of seeing, and of being seen. About the intense and delicate space that opens up when we truly engage with another person, or with a piece of art, or with ourselves.
It’s a space full of strange and beautiful – and challenging – tensions.
There is the drive for a kind of objectivity—the desire to see things as they are, with precision and clarity. There is also the undeniable realities of our own sensitivity, our own deep vulnerability to the world, to each other, and, of course, blind spots.
How do we navigate that?
How do we navigate that? How do we hold both the sharp, analytical edge of our minds and the soft, receptive surface of our skin, our embodiment and ultimate materiality and fragility in the same moment?
How do we hold both the definite edge of our skin and the permeable, receptive surface of our mind, our embodiment and ultimate materiality and fragility in the same moment? (J)
This little poem is one attempt to map that territory. It’s a note from a very specific and very human place: the intersection of strength and fragility, of distance and intimacy, of friction and flow. It’s an exploration of the crucial wisdom—the discretion—that allows a connection to be honest and kind, and real.
It’s part of what I think of as a “Landscapification”—a mapping of an internal state onto and or into a field of words, of image.
The poem is published here: https://andresclements.com/1296/a-razors-feel-a-landscapification/
P.S. For those interested in the deeper architectural and philosophical context this poem emerges from, the ongoing README project can be explored here: [André Clements’ github README repository]