silhouettes - part I

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as a kid, i used to subscribe to a children's magazine called "Highlights." (i loved getting any kind of mail with MY name on. didnt matter if it was a letter from a friend or an freakin invitation to open a mortgage). dont act like you're too cool to know what im talking about. all you 90's kids will know what im talking about: those magazines with all sorts of cool articles on animal rescues, outerspace, and shel silverstine poems. in the back of every issue, there was a "guess the object" section where they show you a zoomed in picture of something like lizard scales or zebra skin, and you'd have to guess what it was. i never peeked at the answers.

i think it was then that knew that i loved silhouettes, hiddenness, and even their shadows. even today, half the pictures that i save when im wasting time on deviantart.com are of outlines or the backs of heads or something else obscure.  

they make you anticipate, guess, imagine, and sometimes hope. even as formless nothings, there's a forbidden clarity: sometimes you have to trust that the things you cannot see or understand are truly there.

a good friend of mine asked me if i would rather choose a famous michelangelo over an uncut slab of marble. like most sane people, i said that i'd rather choose the michelangelo sculpture, but he met me with this response:

"i'd choose the uncut chunk of marble. it holds so much potential and room for creativity. it could be an utter failure, but it could also be the greatest masterpiece of its kind"

i love silhouettes. they are the taste of what has yet to come. 

God is kind of like a silhouette. a daringly, exciting silhouette.