It began, predictably, with a shift. Not a seismic one, not a catastrophic rupture of reality, but a subtle recalibration, like a tuning fork struck against an impossibly delicate surface. The light itself seemed to thicken, acquiring a viscous quality, as if the air were saturated with unspoken anxieties. Colors intensified, then receded, leaving behind trails of spectral residue – fleeting glimpses of cerulean sorrow and bruised plum regret. I found myself documenting these moments, compelled by an urgency I couldn't articulate, filling notebooks with frantic sketches depicting geometries that defied Euclidean logic; spirals collapsing inwards, cubes dissolving into shimmering dust.
The sensation was not merely visual. There were echoes in the bone, a low thrumming beneath the skin, as if my own heartbeat were momentarily out of sync with the universe's pulse. Sleep became a battlefield – nightmares populated by fractured faces and repeating motifs—a key turning endlessly in a rusted lock; a single, crimson feather drifting through an infinite grey expanse.
I started constructing maps. Not geographic ones, but cartographies of emotion. Each room in my house became a territory to be explored, meticulously charted with colored inks and fragile scraps of paper. The living room was a desolate tundra, rendered in shades of charcoal and ice-blue; the kitchen, a chaotic jungle choked with vibrant, almost hallucinatory greens and yellows – manifestations of bursts of manic energy, fleeting moments of clarity amidst the storm.
These maps weren't intended for anyone else to see. They were shrines to my own internal landscape, attempts to impose order on the overwhelming chaos within. I would spend hours tracing the contours of a single wall, obsessively detailing every imperfection, every shadow, convinced that hidden within those details lay the key to understanding—or perhaps, simply to containing—the rising tide.
Words lost their meaning. They became brittle, hollow shells, incapable of capturing the nuances of my experience. I began to experiment with alternative forms of communication—visual patterns, rhythmic sequences, attempts to translate emotion into pure form. I wrote endless streams of numbers – prime numbers, Fibonacci sequences—searching for a hidden code, a Rosetta Stone that would unlock the secrets of this fluctuating reality.
There were moments of intense lucidity, flashes of insight followed by crushing waves of despair. I felt like a ship tossed about on an infinite ocean, driven by forces beyond my control. The horizon shifted constantly, blurring the line between hope and oblivion. I started to believe that time wasn't linear but cyclical, repeating itself in an endless loop of joy and sorrow, creation and destruction.
The feeling persists now – not as a dominant force, but as a subtle undercurrent. A constant awareness of the fragility of existence, of the precarious balance between order and chaos. I notice it in the patterns of raindrops on a windowpane, in the shifting colors of a sunset, in the faces of strangers passing by. It's a reminder that everything is transient, that even the most solid things are ultimately dissolving into nothingness.
I continue to document these moments, not with frantic sketches or obsessive maps, but with quiet observation and careful reflection. Perhaps the purpose isn’t to understand—but to bear witness. To acknowledge the beauty and the terror of this ever-shifting reality, and to find a way to navigate its currents with grace and resilience.