The state of immersion and act of de-immersion is a recurrent bodily shift of thought, sensation, and movement. In the moment where we adjust to a new reality, our bodies witness the porosity of boundaries. Boundaries between worlds, atmospheres, self and the world, mind and body… to become de-immersed, to emerge from immersion, is to look back at ways we’ve been encompassed and absorbed, altered, marinated in an atmosphere.
We’re constantly at least partially immersed in something. As we pass through atmospheres, they surround and envelop us, if even for only a moment. Sometimes fleeting, sometimes with duration, the synesthesia of atmospheres infect us and we find our bodies their host. In experiencing this webbing of parts into wholes, we’re thoroughly immersed in all sorts of worlds. Ecologies of things. Leaving a dark theater to confront the still-up sun. A little frightened by the brightness, somewhat tired, somewhat listless. Surprised to escape the night-like trappings of hushed carpet and dark rooms, surprised that the daylights been somewhere all along.
The potency of certain atmospheres seems to sink into me long after I’ve left. I feel weak to their pressures. Seep along, leak away, thin water-bottle bodies, your skin is wavering. Do we ever emerged unchanged? Can we articulate and comprehend the changes occuring between immersive worlds?
Yesterday afternoon as I faced my screen, light flew in through the windows and I became unbearably hot.
I felt a pressure sweating up and pulsing out my scalp, that thin unrestricting top. It was humming and brand-new, and I feared the quick quick pricks of heat, and turned away from the reddened glow, and wanted spread hands about my open face.
Quickly, here, I dreamt of the cold metal of a bench, and I rested heavy on the thought of the indentations it left on my back and the underside of my thighs. Here, I accessed memories of a glass of water, the whistle of quick-moving air, wettened finger-tips in the pith of ripe fruit.
A corporeal body way too warm, birthed a somatic sensation of so so cool. My mind and body both immersed in temperature, skin sensation. I’ll open the window, seeking the mouth-watering cold that’s grown vibrant and tempting in my mind.
Are there forms of immersion that act from all around and forms of immersion that act from within?
Our existence does not always rely on where our bodies lie, while we’re held within the boundaries of immersive worlds, other aspects of ourselves can permeate, seep, and pour beyond. On the boiled brink of this hot world, became something else so immersive. The thought of cold, the thought of wet, the fever of my skin, all perched together now, skin ready to this flitting world.
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