instantiation
And see here, an instantiation as an instant itself, a temporal moment captured, attempting to express a template for self, do we see a frame, or a fragment, a plot of points that we call a moment, or a point itself, the former as a photograph, which we deceive ourselves into seeing as an instance instantiated, a frame frozen, for our later perusal, to recapture the captured, yet what truly lies within the layout is not a single instant instanced, but many, the light though at the limits of haste takes time nonetheless to paste itself into place, and we have captured a series of moments, close enough for our purposes to propose it as one, but the frame is reducible, a single made of many moments; is this what we have here, or do we see instead a point with no spread, not part of a plot and no other piece to point to, relative to nothing else but itself, no parallel before nor after, nothing to tempt the gaze toward past nor post, no space for me to move within, packed tight between its bounds, I attempt to handle the point as I would handle the picture, careful not to smudge its surface or bend its borders, but I know it is unbendable, the light has long struck and stuck in place, this thing that is both framed and frameless, unbound for there is no outer bound to border against; and so I lose my grasp, fumble in my fidgeting to hold the moment a moment more, until I realize that a point is insubstantial, and like old associations of mind and matter the groupings may not group, before we knew what Newton knew, and so to impress an expression as my hand passes through I have to express my point as a plot, render one unto another for hand to hold and mold what can be handled, make finitude from infinity that it might be grasped within a finite mind, another grouping ill-grouped but grasped nonetheless.
place
Here, we find, is a space warped to encompass all that lies within and all else withal, with walls that bend and billow as an inverting bellow to reach outside itself, and meeting nothing without what was within reaches an end, and that end is supplanted as it breathes a new boundary, its walls wrap outward to envelop its own rim again, impregnating self with a new self enfolding its skin within; but endlessly undulant, each contraction impacted by its own inversion reversed and so with inward walls transposal encompassment of outward walls once more, and so it has within itself itself again, not another space but the same and not another skin but its own reaches outward and folds over self; and as it ever expands to enshrine what was beside we are left with little room in the imagining for anything other so engrossed, for in the beholding I compelled a space expansive, as a passage populates the page to perpetuate its places.
and what fills it
And look, here we have one that is a body, a body whose borders encompass the ends of its realm, and it seems as though those borders are ever shifting and changing, if I should find myself within that body, not of the body, as the mind consciously moving that self, but as a microscopically scaled model of my own self, this self narrating now, if I could find myself coursing through that body, rapidly riding through the blood vessels as foamy river’s rapids, mapping the monumental network of its insides, my job would never cease, for the landscape would shift, perhaps rapidly, as my own body would paddle along its paths, and my task would become a fool’s errand, for I should quickly see that the paths I partook in pathing were changed as quickly as charted; or perhaps the world’s wandering would be at a pace imperceptible in the moment, a slow shift that only showed its patterns over great expanses of time, time I would surely establish in some manner relative to that undoubtedly bounded but seemingly boundless body, measured in the movement of the rapids I rode, perhaps, if they proved consistent, a constant I could measure over distance traveled, time to travel the length of my ship seven times over could be a single unit, or if the rapids pulsed, this body as my own driven by a pumping heart, the pulsing of the stuff I rode could be my meter, the movement of my boat a metronome, seventeen pulses ago I began this narration, and by these measures I would discern how quickly the world quaked, and my data would become worthwhile points urging me toward better understanding that body and its barriers. And I should explore the shores endlessly, and ponder the power that moves it, for I had found it to be moving at the rate of seven of my own finger lengths per seventeen thousand pulses, this number must not mean much for anyone but myself, and I cannot quantify it in terms of my own time keeping, how many seconds a pulse, or is it days, perhaps years, although I think it likely the scale of movement would be only trackable over vast tracts of time, something of my own internal experience equating to what I might call eons, though time there acted oddly, in my experience, and I could only relate it in terms of pulsing, relative to itself alone. And so I had plenty of time to ponder that power that moved it, that body, the body, really, for there was no other, well my own, but I was simply passing through, not a permanent fixture of the world, an outsider, outlier, soon to be ousted, longing to be removed, in the meantime I pondered that power, was the body conscious, and so moved itself willfully, and how did that mind meander, slowly, infinitesimally increasing in speed, perhaps, with such subtle shifting, only over eons, that is, many many pulses, would it reach the rapidity that I found myself charting its course with, but even that is relative, my own speed of thought irrelevant, the body experienced its own rate as the same rate, no doubt, even as it sped, or perhaps it was aware of its progress, I was never privy to its thoughts, I merely coursed its ever changing courses, charted its slow and steady movement through the ages. I think I was present during its adolescence, for over time I found that not only did its boundaries meander, but they grew, I spent many a pulse charting the progress of what I believed to be the right foot, and I found that the time it took, over many cycles around that foot, from heel to big toe to pinky, back and again, thousands of chartings, over eons of pulses, that the length of pulsing it took to chart one full cycle and back grew exponentially, and perhaps the pulsing was slowing, or perhaps the course grew sluggish, and my speed slowed, or my own vessel had taken on some extra buildup, undoubtedly this was true, though I tried my best to clean its hull, the buildup was unavoidable, and not entirely unwelcome, indeed some bits of husk newly hewn I left behind to act as ballast, and while possible that I merely traversed more slowly or the heart of that body beat more sluggishly I think it more likely that the distance was growing, that that body was expanding, and it had not slowed by the end of my excursion, by the time I left the foot the coursing had grown fivefold, by then I grew bored of the boot of the body and moved on, and I never repeated my experiment, charting the same part over time, but kept to mapping the movement, and if I went over the rest of my data I’m sure I could map the growth overall, but the time and energy here are finite, unlike within that body where they seemed endless, for myself, at any rate, and so while I have my suspicions that that growth still grows I find it less interesting now, that I’ve returned, and I have such other worlds to relate.
a mind
That itself only knew its self until my penetration within, but I wonder now as I did then how deeply did I penetrate, was I experiencing its insides as I experienced my own or was I privy to a place transformed and translated as all others experience my own private parts, conforming to the contours of a space shaped by palms not my own, its borders yet unbroken that we remain so bounded; is this barrier ever erected between the bonds that bind, or already bounced beyond with the perception of the page, a passage entered that was made as bridge between our mountains, so let us clear the way, that we might rebuild upon that base of Babel a monument to the masses, that is, to other masses of spongy matter.
regret
That upon entering I introduced a violation to its virginal space, as a corpse interred disturbs the ground surrounding it, reentrant in repose upending its previously salient state, so that instantiation no longer is merely an instance of regret, for it progresses toward repentance as remorse is wont to do, and further forward lies resent and just beyond revilement is slowly approaching too, as a dandelion wilting toward disintegration, but not before sending a smaller sense of its self toward another, irradiated as a particle expelled passes into that other to seed a sorrow deeper than that initial regression, and although I left at the earliest opportunity I regretfully believe I set in motion a most unfortunate chain of events.
a moment of realization
So that all that existed, all there was to be experienced, rather than a world walked within or time’s pacing passage was more akin to an impression imposed immediate and complete, as that moment when the photon’s pathing is realized only with its meeting an end, alights upon a stage as when light finds its way from the page, and then a when might begin, and while normally my internal understanding is as a personal passage of thought through mind’s myriad troughs alit by a light that makes its own time in striking a path through that sky, this instantiation necessitated that internally as externally everything simply was eternally outside of time, yet like the passage of that photon once related time’s passing instantiated, so this passage of my passing without wandering within time’s passes can only be expressed as a spacetime instance, an instant of time as passage internalized.
propagation
I am often unable to tell if the instance I am inside is indeed a new experience or one walked many times prior, a near infinite number of instances have I both come across and crossed again a near infinite number of times, or is near infinite nearly enough for the distinction to be negligible, it is understandable that I might conflate separate configurations into a single entity, that is that I would find such relations indistinguishable from identity, and so although I cannot say for sure I am inclined to speculate that I have experienced many instances that are distinct only on the minutest infinitesimal level, and it was in one of those instances so like our own that I found myself walking for the umpteenth or first time unknown, it is all the same to me the continuum of chronology to my own life has become muddled, it may be I now explore a childhood memory, or perhaps it was some other’s pitter-patter, closely corresponding and so adjoined in the understanding, I made my way with measured steps not simply measured in the sense of pace but in space and pressure and displacement of flesh along my sole as I placed my weight down and beneath my feet the pressure was returned determined by that ground’s own landscape of shape, with its minute variations of valleys and basins if entered microscopically like a mountain range made minuscule, and that unrepeatable itself never could my foot meet that firm ground in the same place with the same displacement of self from a pressure and pace and angle arrived at so that every subsequent sensation was unprecedented, and while I was ever aware of this nevertheless it is the compulsion that I indulged in and so I did take great aims to replicate the conditions only on the opposite side, although hardly ever was I successful and would inevitably misstep on that second instep, where that inner heel met, slightly aslant, and so the matter left unsettled, creating another leg so to speak of the pattern extending it, and yet as the pattern grows so too grows the likelihood of error, the opportunity of a misstep increasing with every foot fallen and so more probable now that I would fail, not upset on the instep but by a ball that rolled too far asunder, the pressure returned from under undermined the attempted reorder, so if successful up until a third left step say and then a failure to replicate the precedent pace then the pattern again extended, and not by a simple step further, no, but by a subsequent sequence of a fourth right seventh overall fourth left eighth overall fifth right ninth overall fifth left tenth overall followed still by further footfalls of sixes right and left totals twelve superior steps now in my pattern, and again only if every one is successful, I may have well failed on the final step say of a fourth attempt overall say that fourth attempt followed a third with its failure to meet the last step’s match and the second attempt to reconcile was simply a boggled second step that is second step following the first error fourth step overall, well then now the pattern has become thirty-two steps long, yet this says nothing of external factors fighting to affect the feel of my falling feet, a shift of pressure impressing itself in my way as I pick a path through that star-drenched place, bright lights glancing upon my retina refracting at an angle from the pavement slightly preceding my own displacement upon it, or was it concrete beneath my feet, with those cracks created by that star’s light radiated slight expansions emerged, and so a void beneath my sole then sought to bind me, as tentacles might, it sends its patterned parts in all directions, and so my replication relied on another pattern star sewn, and what was once thirty-two steps long pushes toward an indefinitely many, or maybe more depending on the imposition of an order not my own, and if successful my inclinations might not yet recede, for it would naturally occur for my pattern to recur once more, for in the successful replication a revision and so a new pattern to repeat only as if it started and followed through on opposite feet, and the potential for the propagation of the parts of my pattern would grow more so, for I am apt to mistake my gait, and so my dance grows perhaps five- or sixfold, but let us say after n-tuple attempts I am finally successful, yet the chronology of my crossing this world remains unparalleled, when might I place that first foot fallen not merely in reverse but prior, and further the entire pattern of these thoughts passing, and so toward who knows what tuple attempt we stumble, and at this point I admit the success or failure of my attempts at repetition were mostly in my fancy, for the difficulty of keeping that many variations of place and pressure and pace in both time and space all in line is quite beyond me, so the continuing of the pattern or the satisfaction of completion almost turned not on actual success or failure but on whether my compulsion grew weary as this narration now feels and so ceases to compel although there is much ground left untrod.
exposure
And this instantiation can hardly be called such, for while it is a thing unto itself, causally closed to other instances and so something separate and distinct, it itself is comprised of nothing, and lest one imagines a space merely empty yet still consisting of properties underlying some order, as dictation regulates our own inhabited inner places, as if by fiat, an oration reorganized makes a new world ordered wherein one might possibly populate, allow me instead to place within mind’s landscape a shape that is not merely empty, not merely illusively intangible or ephemeral, incorporeal, whatever matter might mean, as Newton never knew, a shape amorphous for informing no border, or if outlined where rim erodes for lacking space and implodes those mountains amassed outside of sight, and so what seems spreads out unceasing, and appears infinite in scope, and perhaps it is, an infinite nothingness, and the plane is empty not merely because it has no inhabitants, which is true and even if I had ever been within I would have had no place to stand, no place to instantiate self and so observe that abounding nothingness, thus I tend instead to seeding the right scene within that landscape internal, the bedrock beheld behind closed eyes, and so remove the barrier blinding us to sights unsought, that all our nothings might intermingle, and close with a concern over what is now open, allowing who knows what within.
a worm amorphous
Until I arrived to provide a focal point for its budding lines of sight, became an obsession of that place that had no place to focus its attentions prior, and this intense perception of my self that I sensed from outward began collapsing all about me, a boundary newly sounded barreling down around me, and that ceaselessly shifting horizon started to shape itself to mimic my own outlying bounds, sought to close not merely the space between but grew near enough to absorb the sheen of my external surface. I sensed this space without contracting becoming slowly something like a second skin, a recently woven construction still constricting tightly leaving me little room to breathe in, and as our outer bounds were brought together the shape moved passed the point of simply suffocating as it sought to supplant, to leave the me of previously little to abscond with; and as my own limitations would not allow myself to exist beside the same, although I yet remained inside, it maintained that mirrored measure as well, and so seeing it weaved itself as an outer sleeve serving for self’s encasement, a self not yet set aside, it made to unsheathe this bounded body it had enrobed so well, as a snake sheds its skin behind, and yet I am not the hollowed one here but remain bounded within my body, and as I slither away from that place that shaped itself I wonder does it match its movements to mine, does it slink away as if behind my own tail a mirror shows its vacuously shaped trail, an empty shell of my self sliding away into the distance. I would not regret in never seeing its empty face staring back at me, a peering into my own self finding nothing behind its eyes, just the fallow source of sight its transparent lids suggest, as it mimics the movement of my face, nothing behind it but the sense to ape the shape my own eyes make, or mouth molds as it widens in its horror, or limbs take in step with my own as I back away from that place, afraid to turn aside my gaze lest it pounce and swallow me again, finding its own self wanting it wants to surround a true self again, and so when I turn tail and run I cast a glance back and see only its own shape doing the same, with frantic flailing of floppy limbs it runs, worried that what it had finally disgorged will come back to reclaim the skin it shed, become my own surrounding again, or a self transposed, a blank page I must fill to propagate my own self never to be a slave to that other imposed upon me, I am free to populate my inner place as I please, and I have yet to encounter that other self again although I do wonder what became of it.