Dark Matter

by Blake Crouch

I’m struck for a fleeting moment by the overwhelming sense of loss. Not grief or pain, but something more primal. A realization and the terror that follows it—terror of the limitless indifference surrounding us. I don’t know if that’s the intended takeaway from Daniela’s installation, but it’s certainly mine. We’re all just wandering through the tundra of our existence, assigning value to worthlessness, when all that we love and hate, all we believe in and fight for and kill for and die for is as meaningless as images projected onto Plexiglas.

My Daniela carries a weight and a distance in her eyes that scare me sometimes. This Daniela is an inch off the ground. I’m now standing less than ten feet away, my heart thumping, wondering if she’ll spot me, and then— Eye contact.

If you strip away all the trappings of personality and lifestyle, what are the core components that make me me?

don’t know about you, but my old world is feeling more and more like a ghost. You know how a dream feels the farther you get from it? It loses its color and intensity and logic. Your emotional connection to it fades.”