Tuesday 5 May 2020

200words: Face masks


“Philosophy dies without air.. ..using up the air for telling without ever telling of air itself..” 
Luce Irigaray 

We were self-made men: anaerobic asteroids hurtling through an airless infinity, conquering space, vanquishing the void and being unflinchingly toward death. But now, air resurges, as a masked marauder.

A face mask gives closure to the inner topology of the human frame. Crudely, a face mask is a lid to the lungs, a seal of interiority, a capstone to the arch of my being - pointing both to the existence of air-to-be-contained and to the universal ubiquity of all things as-containers-of-air and likewise as containers of unseen potential.

Being-as-containing in a non-airless universe is not tautological, not semantic, and is non-trivial. This consciousness is a baptism-by and filling-with holy spirit, it is the beginning of realist magic and a re-enchanted cosmos. By breathing consciously we engage an ontology that wars against notions of persons as mere wireframes, point nodes, flat images or lumpen biology.

If face masks, then air. If air, then vessels. And, if vessels then we are tasked to be filled and fill others. Face masks make dependence visible.

[05.05.20]