What is an Image?
The brain's flicker on your skull wall. An electrical apparition. Memory's ephemera mixed with neuronal fire. A whisper from the gods. The mind's cave wall paintings. Virtual experience. The imagination's healers. The imagination's fuel-efficient airplane.
Thirteen squawking geese flush along the pond's lip. Her almond eyes glint in morning light as she watches over the toddler. A scrape on skin has become a caked scab. Amelie's short chubby legs hobble after the terrier who waddles and yelps after the geese.
This prose, a sort of ekphrasis.
(Some of those details--the geese, the pond, the morning light, the scrape, a photograph of Hillary--come directly from my study's surroundings. Amelie comes from memory--my friend's daughter who visited last week. The terrier, invented more or less. The implied narrative connection among sentences, complete invention.)
If you read those words with an active imagination, your visual cortex will light up with a similar stimulation as if your eyes gawked upon geese or a girl or a dog.
Thirteen squawking geese flush along the pond's lip. Her almond eyes glint in morning light as she watches over the toddler. A scrape on skin has become a caked scab. Amelie's short chubby legs hobble after the terrier who waddles and yelps after the geese.
This prose, a sort of ekphrasis.
(Some of those details--the geese, the pond, the morning light, the scrape, a photograph of Hillary--come directly from my study's surroundings. Amelie comes from memory--my friend's daughter who visited last week. The terrier, invented more or less. The implied narrative connection among sentences, complete invention.)
If you read those words with an active imagination, your visual cortex will light up with a similar stimulation as if your eyes gawked upon geese or a girl or a dog.
posted by Socra-tease at 4:55 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home