Floating Machine #54

Floating Machines

Scrawl in the air. First I sketch the big insect carcass with my arms. Then I rehearses his movement, his blind march, his groping forewarned. Curve to curve I draw the fuselage of this ingenious machine in urgent transformation. Enigmatic structure, articulated and fragile, with bandages and hinges that crack, amber bones and long legs that never end, hands that dredge the depth. And these magnificent constructions, which are rebuilt and adapted, which are released from essential physics, may be migrating birds, they may be ancestral fish; these constellations of wire, bits of meteor, planks, and human strength, sail, sail in the most rarefied purpose, in the most absolute of desires, in the most uncertain of destinies, but sail … guided by the waves of the sea, by the false maps of the empires, by the unnamed winds.

For a moment they lie down on the smoothness of the canvas, they show themselves, expecting seductively and impatiently; dragonflies of fog in bridal court, flapping wings. We enter into their warm, pulsating, irrigated stomachs, living caves resonating; volatiles, levitate stretching the ropes that hold them to the safe ground. Some loose, others never, and in this vital bump, rehearse the great flight, the fantastic flight of these enormous creatures, insect-birds, planet-fish, ship-men, of these flying trees.

And in this suspended state, of timeless and free condition, we begin all over again; we flew over the sea, into the mountains, beyond the earth; in them we come again to the new lands, founding cities, planting memories and forgetfulness, sowing poetry.

Fernando Gaspar