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      March 24, 2016There, in Folded Space, We Must Have MetRommel Chrisden Samarita

      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.
      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.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      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.”

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