Igor Clark

Something struck my me while it was existing: all this going to places because you can do things you want to when you get there is fine, but what about the places where you don't know whether there's anything that you can do on arrival at them? I know they say that mind is the ultimate reality and that as that reality is ultimately undifferentiated all knowledge is the mind and thus all mind must have all knowlege of all reality, but I reckon they sneak some places in round the edges that I don't know about. You know, crafty little inserts in corners you wouldn't expect where you can do all sorts of really great stuff, like, I don't know, eat sweets or stare at monkeys or become integrated with the cosmic Being. So my me thought about that and decided that it might be possible to employ one or more of the displacement mechanisms it had recently taken to employing in order to get to places in which there were only potential activities. I'd invent a kind of Schrödinger's displacement mechanism for my locus of being and just go to places with stuff that may or may not be in them until I looked at them. Sick of theorising, I simply acted: I went. I made use of the third normal form of movement, a car, and went to a park, only to discover that my theory had been correct, inasmuch as the evidence I perceived seemed to support it - there were all sorts of activities in which to engage, including looking at things, allowing the light reflected from them to fall onto my retinæ, and using my visual cortex to formalise these things which I have a concept of as 'shapes' into 'concepts'. Not only that, but as there was some variety in the type and form of the things there, a further activity was to take photographs of these things (an example being a bit of carved stone on top of a column constructed from that very same substance), display them publicly along with a form of commentary regarding them, and hence pass all my resultant thoughts about theory and practice, craftsmanship and artistry, the fundamental nature of experience and the concept of conceptualisation (&c.) through the computerised internet and again out the other side and smashing through your retinæ into your visual cortices and BOSH! My thoughts are your thoughts! WHO'S YOUR DADDY?

I saw this. I couldn't think of anything.

Such was the success of my existence-displacement-via-pavement exercise the previous day that, on discovering that certain activities were available for engagement at greater distances than those which "my" foot-pavement-conjunction mechanism would enable me to convert to non-differentiated space within a satisfactorily small number of points in our view of the trajectory of our existence through a temporal axis, I decided to extend the technique to take in further tools made accessible to my seeming consciousness by the office of those previously existing technicians upon whose shoulders all our current expeditionary travails rest, and got on a tube to somewhere. This resulted in yet further success; not only was I successful in terms of getting my me to the place it wanted to go and thus helping it to engage in the activities which that place proffered and in which it had been desirous of engaging, but also of enabling that me to consider the relative degrees of differentiations between the things we consider to be "objects" and hence the nature of that differentiation itself in the context of what my me has been told by books is in fact undifferentiated and impartial. BINGO!

Today, I was in a place. I had spent some time there, engaged in activities concomitant with the employment by which I earn the money required for my food, fun and continued suspense within the realm of what may or may not be existence. I realised that it had become necessary for me to change my surroundings such that I might be in a different place, as the range of possible activities in which the ones in which I had been engaged were sited did not contain the particular activities in which I currently wished to become engaged, so I went to the other place. I used the world to get there; by sending messages from my brain across various neural pathways and through nerves into the muscles situated in parts of my body, I caused my body to use the device of a pavement to grip the soles of my feet in order to transport me, this existent, this thing, this I-don't-know-what, to the other place, so that my me might carry out these activities it clamoured so to do. That pavement, that grouping of tiles, that signpost for the valour of human endeavour in the face of total emptiness, meaninglessness and void, came, by dint of enabling my trajectory through this vacuum, to deposit me in my intended destination and though it had brought me closer neither to an appreciation of the ultimate nothingness or somethingness which we necessarily inhabit, it had brought me a lot closer to the location in which my desired activity was possible, and so I activated it. RESULT!

While I sat, glued to my screen, gawping at the words and images in front of me, a kind person of existing acquaintance came up to me and asked me a question. The question regarded whether I was keen to imbibe any fluids. I pondered momentarily, as though this matter of slight import bore any real meaning, as though anything we ever do makes any real impact on the yawning chasm of existence we believe stems or at least focuses from the locus of our existence, and then said "YES!". I said this because, indeed, I did want to drink some tea. None of your builder's tea, none of your tannin-rich splosh, but something clear and refreshing; something purifying, some essence of clarity that might engender feelings of rejuvenation and thus participate in a cleansing of the doors of my perception. Peppermint is what came back in the mug, and I left the dregs, that element of the experience which was neither clear nor refreshing, so that I may photograph it stationed as it was at the bottom of the cup, symbolising the end, the leftovers, the drizzles that no-one wants, and offer it up as such so that I may fill the world with such a piece of technological beauty. Yes, yes; that was my intention; that is my achievement, my contribution, my satisfaction.

They sell these bottles in the shop near me. It's a branch of Iceland. Other shops also sell bottles, but I believe that what's printed on the labels on these particular bottles indicates that not only do other shops not sell these specific bottles but also that they do not sell other instances of this specific bottle type. I took this photo of these bottles for a particular reason, I suspect related to these labels on the bottles, but now the reason escapes me. In fact to be more accurate, it is that which was printed on the bottles' labels which prompted me to take the photos which escapes me. Time is fleeting; memory unreliable; continuity nothing more than a stream of moments, and the mythical knowledge of a never-passing instant escapes us all.

I saw this in the street. It was on some steps leading into a building. I photographed it. Now, thanks to the marvel of modern technology, it's actually inside your brain, ricocheting around like a conceptual pinball, firing off reactions, forcing you to think about who drank it, what they were doing, whether they even enjoyed it, why they couldn't find a brown paper bag, what you'd drink if your favourite drink had to be served in such a container, and the like. Fantastico.

Earlier, I was upstairs. It was inside a building that the stairs I was up were in, and I'd been being up them; now I wanted to be down them, but I couldn't be bothered to walk down them, so I caught the lift. I went up to the panel next to the closed lift doors and pressed the button to go down. The lift came, I got inside it and pressed the button which makes the lift go to the ground floor, so that I'd be at the bottom of (or "down") the stairs. It did. I got out. The thing that I had wanted to happen had happened. I made it happen with my mind. I was down the stairs. I choose! I act!

The other day, right, I was walking along the street and there was this tree. I was in a city and it was in a country. The tree that I saw had branches, leaves, a trunk, the whole shebang. That's a little bit of nature right there now, isn't it? So I took a picture of it, and here it is. Look at it. Go on, use your eyes. You know, those holes in your head with white goo in them. Have some of THAT, voyeurs!