Imag-ine

Roberto desires something fantastical, a drawing that will transport him elsewhere, a painting that will cause him to inwardly traverse the knotted realm of neural fibers and wooded pathways of his mind, perhaps a film that will insist upon furthering the edicts by which he currently lives his life by. He has none of these things, simply looks out the window to the snowy street below, one older man ambling through the carved-out pathways of soiled snow having been shoveled carelessly to the side. Worn and torn knit hat, gold-rimmed glasses, a cardigan pulled too tightly over his overbearing frame, and a scarf, just long enough to wrap itself around his neck once: Roberto sees these things from three stories up, wants more than the meaningless details of a person’s costume seen from afar. The man’s speed is carefully mediated, each step seemingly a debate between mind, foot and earth as to where to step, in what manner to lay foot to ground. Roberto notices his cane, the elongated mahogany fibers spotted with rings of oxidized copper, the curvature of the handle, the wood sliding seamlessly into the man’s furrowed palms.

Roberto thinks of the much-mediated distance between himself and this stranger. As if trapped within a bubble of solitude, it is from afar and encased behind a pane of glass that Roberto observes the world. The strangers he watches carousing the sidewalks are the peopled fancies of his mind, the creative whimsies of his non-personal existence. This is a safe distance, far from potential pain, far from unwanted conversations. It is a distance which, when destroyed, has the potential for utter disruption from the normalcy of life’s mechanical operations.

The man has walked ten steps by now, stops to rest and arches his back, his shaking palm placed gently along the grooves of his lower back. He looks up to the sky. The gulls fly by. One cries into the frigid air. The sun is warm against his body now, his back has settled. He begins to walk again.

“What distances must we forego to be admitted to the personal sanctuaries of another human’s life?” Roberto thinks to himself. He knows the well-mediated distance, the distance imposed through personal defenses. But he imagines two bodies and perhaps they are shaking hands. He thinks of the physical distance which still, even though embraced, exists between those two palms. The physical distance that cannot be closed, the space between the atoms which only lends itself to further inquiries of deeper spaces unbridged. Roberto takes these spaces or distances as metaphors for the representation of distanced existence, the glassy windows which from behind we view the world and ourselves.

The man has walked farther now but remains in sight. His steps are more steady, his placement of foot to ground more pronounced. The light filters through the clouds and worn tree branches casting shadows along his aged body. He knows this man no better than himself and like a dream, takes his representations of this man to be a vector of his own subconscious, his readings of the man’s existence that of a dream analyst catalyzing imagery for the meaning of the here and now, now past. Through the partitions of this window, Roberto views the apparitions of a world of people unknown.

Grander significance erupts from no where but the recesses of his muddled mind and fervent imagination and he awaits his next image.