fa / ll / s) /
I have been reading about colour, and about texture, and about shape. There are more elements in the formal canon, but these three (and absence, space, emptiness) are my current preoccupations.
Sometimes, when I have been not-quite well, as in enough that the day to day is substantially disrupted, but not so much that the disruption is entirely debilitating, sometimes in this in-between I find myself thinking about what it means to be present.
If your work demands extensive mediation through technology, what does your acknowledged output look like when your screen time is limited by a migraine? Does it look like anything at all?
If your work demands discussion, conversation, discourse, but your lungs object to entended periods thereof, does it “count” if you rely on textual interventions?
If your work demands visibility, geographically determined and time bound, and you need to be absent from those places in those times, do you, as a worker, cease to exist until you’re able to re-enter the requisite spaces?
The systems will continue nonetheless, always, inexorable. What then does it mean to be present, or to be absent?
What does it mean to make work matter, to make work that matters, to matter because of your work, if eventually, inexorably, absence prevails.
Attribution
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
Iness
— l(a by e.e. cummings