Top of the World

All of history in that top. A crucified bag flaps up the context. I am returning to locate something I passed. It feels as though I have gone too far, but it must be here somewhere. I spot the spot. It echoes the orange of that gregarious bag.






It is there. Looking up like the Sun never does. Simply a top. But what does it reveal of its place and people? Of the ones who designed it, created, made, used and finally cast it aside?

A path where many people tread would not have harboured it for long had it been valuable. Well-trodden into the soil yet superlatively visible. Even by an eye in motion. I add myself, for scale.






Now it is the setting Sun. Setting over heroes, empires, and lost horizons. Check the bag again, it could have been carried along in that once upon a time. Too much of a coincidence. But there is no such kind of coincidence. Move in closer.















It's blurred: the mobile phone won't get any closer without terrible distortion and infidelity. Dive in anyway and find nothing but soil behind. Printed soil. Or an upright bottle with a cryptic message scrolled inside.

The message says:

Check the shadows

Across the mud sundial

Time lapsed

53°46'57.75N 1°36'55.13W

Wonders could be worked out with geometry alone! Even Time itself!

Then imagine what it would be like if you photographed and recorded every perfect trodden-in top you ever passed. What history you would be making.









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The Scrollbars of Empire

Eek! A ghastly fly! So huge, so bulbous! Eek!

Screaming: the most natural thing in the world, an emergent necessity. We learn that we can modulate our screams by controlling lung pressure, mouth aperture and throat constriction at a very early age. We are quick to observe the effects on those around us. Soon we begin to manipulate those effects and thus commences the dialectic of me and you, us and them - the fundamental relationship between the self and the other, Ich und Du, Man and God, me and my Mum.

Inside us is another ontologically emergent necessity: to be observed. This is revealed to us by the blush. We show our inner disjuncture with outer circumstance. We are caught out. Our nub of being laid bare. Caught out concealing or lying? Not always. A blush reveals a deeply felt truth. I love you, but I can’t admit it. You say something, and I can’t utter the truth, therefore I blush. Emergence of self-awareness is one obvious cause the blush. I know I am being watched. I become self conscious, and I blush. Revealing the inner to the outer. The evolutionary advantage of revelation. The group knows what is going on in your head. Your body reveals inner truths unbidden.

Google ogles our whole planet and our every dealing, even our hedges and our windows. 360 degree knowledge emerges freely. Get it done before people realise there is such a thing. Total Administration gives birth to Total Surveillance. Our very connections reveal our inner workings. A cyber-blush rouges the planet in our midst.

Now we have the thousand eyes observing the one or two. Revealing more and more. The compound gaze of the fly, an instant multi-verse. As individuals, we are blinkered in our monocular screen world. Together, we are the compound eye. In homage to Flatland, we offer up our two dimensions to the implicit third. The Third Eye. The three in one creates the ten thousand things, and the ten thousand things beget twenty thousand eyes. We are watching ourselves. No Big Brother, only ourselves. 'Watching me, watching you.. ahaah'. We each enjoy surveying our realm. We ogle with Google goggles, the Self-Other toggle.

Have you ever blushed at a thought?

What is the r/evolutionary potential of that?

(And, of course, to anyone who knows their Book of Enoch - the Watchers, or Grigori, are in fact angels. Terrible ones to boot.)

Colour scheme

Had to happen. I kept seeing rentinal afterglow angels when the background was blackground. This is much more mellow. Sun-faded acquiescence. Less intensity, more readability. Illity. Hills. Bart At.