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Skin above skin,
layer below layer,
cutting through and laying bare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
(Bruno Latour, 2015, p. 26, footnote 6: \u201cDas Wort Enthemmung fasst die beiden Schritte des passage a\u2019lacte in sich zusammen: Das Bedenken und das Verwerfen der Bedenken; die Ber\u00fccksichtigung der Gefahr und ihre Normalisierung.\u201c)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The echo of the warm home fades \u2013 here it\u2019s colder, the air fresher. Vogeltennstrasse. The All has changed, few traces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The green. No, it\u2019s extra green. What on earth is it? Following the intense call of the colour, Slowly parting from the micro world of the outer layer of the fake green tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moving on \u2013 out of the small wood, formed by beeches, pines and bushes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Drifting away, just a few steps later \u2013 again arrival. A short distance had been covered, soon Passing through the skin of the body of water \u2013 the wild wetland \u2013 wet matter that resonates in the body. Astrida Neimanis remembers the watery womb and reminds one that human bodies are bodies of water, primarily comprising water. (Astrida Neimanis, “Introduction: Figuring Bodies of Water.” Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. 1\u201326. Environmental Cultures. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 21 Feb. 2021. http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.5040\/9781474275415.ch-001<\/a>.)<\/sub> <\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n The breath seems to have come to a halt, just for a moment passing through silence, diffusing great depth, unfolding expanse. \u201cThe psyche\u2018s extended: knows nothing about it\u201d (Sigmund Freud, GW XVII, Schriften aus dem Nachlass 1892-1938, Fischer, Frankfurt\/M. 1999, p. 152.)<\/sub><\/sup> writes Sigmund Freud, body and psyche mutually pervading and moulding each other. The water body engulfing what formed as attitude. Passing the passage, piercing the surface, waves are no particles. Emergence. In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud further states: “The unconscious is actually the real psychic, and according to its inner nature as unknown as the real is in the outside world”. (In German original: \u201eDas Unbewu\u00dfte ist das eigentlich reale Psychische, uns nach seiner inneren Natur so unbekannt wie das Reale der Au\u00dfenwelt\u2026\u201c (Freud, 1900a, p. 617ff)). <\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Emerging from that moment the feet walk on, following the path, somewhat automated, but who had preprogrammed that direction? The passenger follows, no idea, how it was decided to surrender to the trodden path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stopping to read. Much hot snow. A tiny green stick calls for attention. Is it a lollypop stick? A geometrical mathematical tool? A useless, cheap imitation reminiscent of the glorious green noticed at the gateway? Then the gaze wanders further away surprised by the heaps of material compiled next to the timber yard.
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz writes in L\u2019Apocalypse joyeuse<\/em> (2012, p.16): \u201cThe word disinhibition sums up the two steps of passage a\u2019lacte: the concern and the rejection of the concern; the
consideration of the danger and its normalization.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The passenger confronts the passage a\u2019lacte de dance in the trans-urban space. No hesitation is the aim \u2013 a form of bodily, analogue geocaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
literal translation is bizarre: birds trashing floor street \u2013 an alley towards the sky, with hardly
any birds sounds. Have they tweeted all their messages in the early mornings? At this very
moment, the bird radio has calmed \u2013 the sweet nothings faded with the arrival of the snow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Drifting along in a slight curve, then turning right to slide downhills towards the Otto-
Wagner green, open doors. A tender white cover on the landscape \u2013 here in the expanse of
the meadow the white unfolds its magic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
The opening is intense. Lungs filled with freshness, the ends of the tentacles freeze. The pace is not steady, no hurry but earthly pleasure. (The song with this title by Villagers came to mind, but only later on.) Following the magnet that attracts inescapable. There is a group of trees, they are especially seductive with long pine needles.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
and again the sky as backdrop, patiently carrying the extra skin that has fallen onto them:
white, crystalline, probably causing a significant change in the pine tree\u2019s perception of the
surrounding, probably beyond measuring (exact) temperatures, wondering what the pine feels amidst the whitened landscape. A small pathway pulls the passenger into a tiny
conglomeration of trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
meeting the bark. A tree marked among all others, sticking out of the wood, an extravaganza, not of nature, but most probably created by a force with delineated intelligence, humans, extraterrestrials, zombies. It is a trace radiating violence, a violation of peaceful symbiosis where trees generate the oxygen that other beings need and depend upon. Two extra layers of skin \u2013 green and white \u2013 colour and snow, forming an urban trace amidst the landscape dedicated officially to regeneration of humans.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
The colour has a darker shade then the Otto-Wagner-green gates that the passenger saw just in the passing. This green here looks bilious green, strangely looming and glooming. Falling into a time warp \u2013 a wormhole \u2013 absorbed by details until the cold creeps under the skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
another landing. The gaze has been attracted by another surface, a deep surface, a horizontal double bottom: both mirroring and absorbing, calling one into the darker, reflecting dimensions of another element. The water surface shining with blackness and depth. The ratio argues that it won\u2019t be depth in terms of distance, but rather the micro-biotic business of the muddy waters that corrode all kinds of bodies, patiently and diligently, ongoing decomposition. One fellow passenger got wet feet \u2013 he is in kinship with the greened conspecific \u2013 but another kind – a willow tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe can feel the trees and the rocks underfoot, because we are not so unlike them,\u201d because \u201cwe are not pure mind-stuff but are tangible bodies of thickness and weight, and so have a great deal in common with the palpable things that we encounter\u201d. (David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, 2011, p. 46.)<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Defocusing the gaze and finding the field. Open, expansive, wide. Widening the fields,
caressing the landscape at skin layer by seeing. The field doesn\u2019t end, it doesn\u2019t even make a difference between organisms. It seems all to merge into horizontal expanse \u2013 hills, trees,
water, houses, streets, distant railways and motorways \u2013 all forming \u2018the field\u2019. Surprisingly,
this field feels different in quality from the previous water field. Each is creating its one
differentiated field of forces, that bind attention so captivatingly, yet at this very moment,
feeling the connectedness of fields (yes intendedly plural \u2013 contingent plural to be precise) as it is dependent on the passenger\u2019s reception, otherwise the field might not happen.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
A resonance emerges, I had read that passage on the day and it lingered within me, echoing, reverberating. \u201cIncommensurability is never absolute. The question is: Where is that field in which we can live?\u201d (Ben Spatz, Blue Sky Body – Thresholds for Embodied Research, 2020, p. 40.)<\/sup> The attention passes from the eyes to the feet \u2013 the earthbound contact \u2013 Kontaktfl\u00e4chen \u2013 feeling the stark profile of the hiking boots \u2013 a bit stiff when gently rolling the foot from heal to toe. Step by step until the pair of eyes stops walking, because they cling onto a small detail. Green again and in geometrical clarity stating a slim, fine line. It is a counterpoint to the organic forms of a piece of bark of a tree that seems somewhat displaced on the ground, covering probably life underneath its dark, rough skin, a shelter for small living organisms such as ants, worms, other bugs and microbes at home on (and in) earth. There live more microorganisms in a handful of earth than humans on this planet.
Zooming back to the mesozone of a walking body on the outskirts of the skin of the planet.
The pair of eyes rests on the white spot on top of the bark. Cool.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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