Untitled – Simeon Otyrba

Regardless of the value I feel in fluidity, often when without direction, I wish I had more form. I imagine I would erect myself and propel towards anything but the washing-away. Do away with the drifting, the push and pull, the blur of environmental embrace. To be a form for form’s sake.

But the form does not propel, it’s a stagnation, and the world moves around its fixed contours. The fluid is undefinable, so it does not appear to exist. Appearing does not equate to existence. Existence, as granted by definition, isn’t of value. To believe this is to grant oneself permission for the desire to disappear. 

The form must be activated. It craves reaction, so it attracts. The fluid is the reaction, the endless transition. This transition can go many ways, the sum of which does not equate to its potential.

The question is: how do you cross over into the space of potential? The space I imagine you feel new beginnings, where transitions are not just gradual ends and the loss of momentum. Where the body gives direction, even if it is in all directions, even if it is cyclical—it flows, out. 

How do you avoid being tricked into form by the temptation to be definable? Of being defined?

When my fluid is directionless, it desires a container. This is the coffin. But what is a stagnation without form? Nothing. It is neither activated nor activating. It is the absence of potential and so it does not exist.

Can the undefinable lose potential because it has lost direction(s)? It may not flow, but it must be drifting. Cannot be a stagnation, like form. Everything must disappear, but while it exists, it exists, even if it does not appear so. 

So there it is, a drifting, with suspended potential, a reaction so slow it does not appear to exist. Maybe this is disappearance. Maybe it is the lull, the culminating, the withholding of energy, the hiding of another reaction. There is no direction, no future, no formula, only potentiality. 

Simeon Otyrba
Simeon Otyrba is a queer something interested in the destruction of identity and the way writing both creates and negates this potential.

Michelle Engeldinger
This piece, titled “Cosmic Sands,” is a view into the colors of my mind. My work is an expression of my passions, and through my art I hope to spread both peace and happiness.