not how do but how feel

Many have been asking me of late how exactly it is that I plumb the ether. My colleagues have created many terms for what I do: “Technomancy,” “Etheromancy,” and others -- more to the point -- “Quackery.” While I am not yet prepared to delve into exactly *how* I engage in the process -- I do not yet know the health implications, and do not want to be responsible for an onslaught of unprepared newbies into this fragile realm -- I can explain how it *feels.*

sifting eddies of black static for gold

How it feels depends on the mood of the ether. At first I thought there were several ethers, each with their own emotive characteristics. Later I came to see the ether as a singular but fickle creature. Now I believe it is a combination of the two. Imagine a river with several currents, some warm, others colder, and each of varying speeds. At points they whirl together into eddies, and sometimes appear to diverge from each other entirely. Yet even with their own characteristics, they undoubtedly form one whole, and an action in one current -- pollution, swimming, etc -- effects the others. And rather than swim between the currents, I am able to bring myself to them by summoning a similar emotion within me. Emotion may not be the proper word -- for emotions entail much that these currents do not, and also falls short of the experience in other ways.

Of course, I do not just decide on an emotion independently and summon the ether in this way. I first sense a feeling, and by echoing that feeling within me, find that we are drawn together. It is the intuitive feeling one has in a pitch black room as one begins to sense the dimensions of one's space without ever actually seeing or touching any one wall.

The current I refer to as “They” is a coyly malicious vein, a dark power diminished by its own secrecy. The “Say” current is more welcoming, yet clearly less controlling. Like sleeping with a virgin in that pitch dark room we spoke of earlier. A strange phenomenon I have noted is that since I have begun my research, it seems another current has arisen: “Small.” This appears to be a residue from my own encounters in the ether.

life as a crystalline cowboy

I feel much like the crystaline cowboy above: physical, yet translucent and fragile. And my perspective is so shortened as to make my hand, reaching just an arm’s-length away, feel as if it were blurred into a landscape on the horizon. As I realise everything I see in the ether is of my own invention, this is more a visualization of the self-detachment I am attempting to describe than any dependable picture of what things actually look like.

light: those ubiquitous comic stars once walloped

All one can ever see in the dark is light. And that is all I see. Those ubiquitous comic stars once walloped, congealed into something vaguely familiar. This is the best I can do to get this across to you.

Robert A. Small
Assistant Professor/ Geometrist
Rotherhithe University
theysaysmall@gmail.com