The following THINKS to Think submission was written and photographed by artist Abbye Churchill. Enjoy!
Can I touch you?
Now? Here?
Yes.
It might be harder now.
Why?
You’re so far away.
Well, let me try.
Arm extended to hand, hand to fingertip, fingertip to fingertip touching hand, arm, torso, center.
Press harder. I don’t feel anything yet.
Thinking pressure, thinking feeling, thinking that feeling can arise from pressure. That pressure can arise from thinking it, willing it. Thinking that sensation is more than thinking, or more than wires and signals and impulses.
Thinking harder.
Now?
No.
Pressing down, pressing down to extend up. Pressing intently, with thought, with thinking, with mind-energy. The ground begins to give way underfoot. A toe burrows. Gravity. The pressing-thinking and the weight-body begin to exert.
No, no, I was reaching, not falling.
Here, grab my wrist.
Encircling the bones, the ulna and radius, the rounding circumference. Holding. Thinking the sensation. That if somehow the wires were cut, we wouldn’t feel at all. That the problem isn’t the distance ever receding, or the infinitesimal compounding, or the snake eating herself, but that the feeling wasn’t there at all. Think-feel for feel-think.
I’d rather hold an orange.
Abbye Churchill is an artist and writer currently living in New York City. You can find her website here.
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