ORieNtAtioN

How about that time you crawled out of the water? Brine-covered and mud-caked. With great ache you dragged your scaly tail ashore and felt it rake sand and pebble into a path, while pearly scales glistened under moody light.

And after all that deliberate exertion, no one again could say you’d never walk on land.

In an interview, author and diviner Selah Saterstrom addresses impermanence, uncertainty, & orientation:

I’ve been on a long journey of learning to understand descents—initiations into the holy darkness of the underworld. I love a good catacomb. I feel at home there. There’s a kind of orientation that I sense that only becomes possible in the dark.

This struck me as Moon-ish. When I copied/pasted the last sentence of the above quote to a new text, it re-formatted itself.

A system glitch?

Or glitch as re-orientation? A crack in the system which makes space for that which is not yet known? Does ‘error’ reveal faultiness, or truth?

Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism comes to mind.

Chris Ofili, Black Shunga, 2008-15, portfolio of 11 etchings with gravure on pigmented paper

Chris Ofili worked only with blue and silver to make these prints in Trinidad.

“I’ve found that the night and twilight here enhances the imagination,” he said. “It’s a different level of consciousness that is less familiar to me.”

When looking at these works, one’s eye must adjust to discern subtle shifts in hue. When looking, patience is required. You cannot see without time. In time, imagination and night become lovers, secret exchangers, imprints of each other.

Selah Saterstrom’s interview in The Creative Independent.

Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto.