“There, in Folded Space, We Must Have Met” by Rommel Chrisden Samarita

March 24, 2016Posted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2016: Artist’s Choice

 

Photograph by Dave Thewlis
Photograph: “Met” by Dave Thewlis. “There, in Folded Space, We Must Have Met” was written by Rommel Chrisden Samarita for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2016, and selected by Thewlis as the Artist’s Choice winner.

[download broadside]

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Rommel Chrisden Samarita

THERE, IN FOLDED SPACE, WE MUST HAVE MET

Things are always a question of after
or which life is after another.
Our world is a geometric construction
of lines and interactions.

We are shapes dwelling in space;
we are intercepts found in planes.
The order of things has taught us
how to count squares and circles,

Angles and rectangles that form
the unity of two worlds.
Counting is not so different from
charting possibilities

Or engendering the very possibility
that the world we inhabit
May really be flat. In the beginning,
it was folded into half to mirror

Spaces, beings, and times, so we may learn
not of existence, but co-existence.
We must have met there. There, in folded
space. Because we are made

To walk in search of. We are made
to linger for presence. We are made
To stand and witness. We are made
to stretch our fingers up the sky

To trade silence with salvation.
Just like the travelers, or passengers,
Or statues, or trees. We ask “what will I
become after this life?”

We live in half and have lived in another
half. Like shadows betraying bodies,
Our curse lies in not knowing our close
approximations. Travelers are

Travelers, passengers are passengers,
statues are statues, trees are
Trees in this life and after. There, in folded
space, we must have met.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2016
Artist’s Choice Winner

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Comment from the artist, Dave Thewlis: “I chose ‘There, in Folded Space, We Must Have Met,’ because it most accurately fit the mood of what I wanted to convey when I took the photo. With all photos I take and edit, my intention is always to evoke a sense of emotion. I also tend to like creating very surreal-looking photos whenever possible. I felt that this poem captured both aspects for me: It both provided a sense of surrealism and magnitude while also evoking similar emotions to what I felt when I edited the photo. While editing this photo, I had been pondering themes of inevitability and the trajectories of lives and how they intersect. Furthermore, I contemplated a sense of a greater inevitability, a feeling of being able to see these different trajectories unfolding before they had—seeing how they would intersect in the future—yet knowing that they were all locked into their assigned fates. For these reasons, I felt that ‘There, in Folded Space, We Must Have Met’ most accurately fit the mood of my photograph.” (website)

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