An interesting thing of late is the roundness of human perception–as a geography at the outermost surface of the eye. How things stare back at us. This deep space is filled with language–the language of things, sounds, colors, and other phenomena admitted into the mind. Clouds, for example, which are always troublesome. I write them as “cloud” or “cumulus.” I write them as “Look, a cloud,” and my companion looks. Her geography of perception is round, an historical circle, bounded by peripheral vision, an inheritance.
I cant say when I first became aware of walls. When I could name them? The first memory is an intriguing question. Some people relay an image but the narrative is questionable. The image comes with a name. I remember seeing a dog in the hall, my companion might say, whose tall, leans into a room, and employees a welcoming courtesy. We watch the sky when we drive; we feel the wind against our ears.
Formal viewing breaks the illusion of roundness. We watch films in rectangles and as we observe the film the edges of the screen disappear and the mind plays tricks. The contents of the screen grows out to the periphery, the world is forgotten, and we go inside the film as my friend, Russo, did when he first saw Edward Allyn on stage and tells me and my companion how odd it was to imagine him as Faustus rather than as a father or brother.
The pages of books are rectangles but the space sentences occupy is not. This space is a mystery. We write hypertext into polygons. Our word processors are windows or doors and the windshields we study pretentiously evoke the surface of a pond.
My companion says, “Look at my eyes. They’re as round as oranges. Look at the clouds. At night they become rain.”
I say, “I once woke to a sky the color of blood oranges. I knew it would be a long day. That on this day, the rain would sound like the subtle friction of clouds against the air. I said that clouds are troublesome and I meant it. There are satellites at the roadside.”
My companion says, “It’s going to be a long year. We should take to the streets. We’ll drive south. We’ll stop for gas only. We’ll pretend to be on the run.”
I say, “We’ll drive with as little clothing as possible, too. We’ll become characters in a film. We’ll watch the world through two windows.”
