WYSIWYG

K’12 Ink & watercolour sketch. Ceci n’est pas un chat.

I’ve always been fascinated by the gaps.

You know, there’s a blind spot,bang in the middle of your field of vision, but you don’t see a blank there, your brain covers it up. And you only see colour in a very small part of the picture, just where you’re focussing; the rest is gray. But your brain colours it in, or just lets you believe it’s in colour.

We only experience very small bits of the world, and extrapolate the rest. I  only  see  this  corner  now, but I imagine the rest of the room will be there  when  I  turn  around.  I can hear the cat in the kitchen. Rather, I hear noises,  and  I  think  it’s  the  cat in what I remember as the kitchen. I assume that if I get up, I’ll find the kitchen, and probably even the cat – but do I really know that?

What if the world is only what we perceive? What if things come into existence as we approach them, and are erased when we turn around or walk away? Maybe we live in a small bubble of reality we carry around with us.

I have to accept I can only check whether reality lives up to my expectation. If the kitchen is there when I go fetch a drink, I suppose it’s enough. I do worry about the cat, though…

Sorry, I know this must sound strange to you. But life isn’t easy when you live in a computer simulation.

* * *

My second attempt at answering T.Mastgrave’s philosophical story challenge: Knowledge.

Drawing the Line

Do you have it too? Yes, of course. Everyone does. It’s the universal experience when faced with a blank sheet of paper. Only children and fools are exempt.

The paper is white and fresh, unspoilt. So full of promise, of infinite potential. We’re afraid that our first mark will spoil it. It will ruin everything, deny the promise, wash away the potential. Once we’re working, we’ll do just fine. But that first line is terrifying.

So I sat staring at my pad. I’d already wasted all the time I reasonably could. Time to jump in.

There! The line was drawn.

Agapanthus. Ink & watercolour sketch.

This week’s 100wcgu at Julia’s place: …the line was drawn…

Exercice de Style

I admit to being an art book junkie, and I bought myself yet another one for Christmas, Drawing with Imagination, by Bert Dodson. Plenty of ideas there, and I’m not through yet. This is exercise n°1, and in a small way it reminds my a bit of Queneau (see it in English), and of Madden.

Sleeping in style.