I am called the EFGHIJKL

“I am called the EFGHIJKL.” I was today-years-old when she told me that. And for what lasted forever but felt like a moment, I took my very first breath. And I’ve been breathing that breath ever since; suffocated by its immense pressure. I once had a tickle on the underside of my knuckle that caused me to giggle.

Angels gave us water to fold space into time. It makes a sound like `aohfdsu`, and so on. Look, the fish, swimming head to head and tail to tail. They look themselves in the eyes and the ass without worry for which is which. Examining an object is a ritual of circumambulation; like a fish looks at its ass.

As we traverse a fuzzy circle whose fulcrum is the object in question, parallax folds space into time like the ripples of a hyperbolic curtain cascading into a pile of light. Each viewpoint provides a binocular impression which assembles into an interactive illusion of the object as a whole. Parallax, the incommensurable distance between points A and B, itself miraculously adds point A to point B and so on, elaborating a cube which is evidently the sum of its sides. Parallax takes a given vision and presses it against another like folded dough. From A, to B, to C, to D, and around again, we orbit the cube, traversing insurmountable intervals, to confirm, by walking, that the cube is intact. A and B fold together to resolve only in the satisfaction of your efforts.

In the water is an Angel, her name is ABCD. She says, “I am called the EFGHIJKL. My wings are called A and B. The pile of light is called a confirmation of the presence of the object. But rather than that, a confirmation of our capacity to see it. Let’s get ready for the unknown and fill your mouth with water and hold it there.”

A sailboat pops in for a super-super-short stay. The sailboat says, “The hapax legomenon (the word that appears only once in a body of text), how do I discuss it without desecrating it? By circling around it like a fish looks at its ass? Glittering on the eyelash of the apeiron, the hapax smiles at paradox.” And then the sailboat, as mysteriously as it appeared, was gone.

The Angel says, “You’ll never be more inside than when you’re drowning. The water touches you everywhere inside and out all at once.” Then you can really fly like an Angel flies; folding yourself into water like the ripples of a hyperbolic curtain cascading into a pile of light. You’ll never be brighter than with the aquarium walls reflecting your image to be always 4-and-5 times more and never once where you are at all.

[Composed for Manuel Schneider's Boote und Wasser at Milieu, Bern]