29 October | Miroslaw Balka: How It Is

It’s so big, so much bigger than a shipping container, the port of Long Beach, a sea of containers, a bridge high over the muck of the bay, proportions vastly wrong, imposing magnitude even as the bridge arches up and over and the iron corrosion and chipped paint on distant metal stretches further away. Metal hollowness, an inclined plane, dim spotlights overhead, receding. While inside is only inky heavy space. Walking slowly, my heart pounds and sudden breath, lungs sucking sharply to compensate for failing eyes in the fading light. My retinas strain. Now just dimness, then only the felt sense of shapes ahead, then nothing. Reaching out a hand is nothing. Reaching forward with my nose could be the same thing. I can’t tell.  Vision ceases. There is a wall: I know I am somehow failing, but I touch it. Velvet quickens my fingertips and my confidence restores. But is false. Trust has become a thin thread breaking silently. Another step, away from the wall, further into blackness. But more than just a camping darkness, more than bathroom at 3 am, I think of outer space. Where place is nonexistent, complete in inconsequentiality. I could be floating out there. A close panic, a loss hovering in the still air, because I cannot find the outer edges of me anymore, so controlling this absence is impossible. Brings relief, finally—potential here for limit and limitlessness, and relief of all pressure as I just let go.