Читать книгу Wicked Weeds - Pedro Cabiya - Страница 12

RED

The color red is a neural response to the stimulation of electromagnetic waves upon the retina; in other words, it’s an idea, a figment of the imagination, a label that our brains affix to that part of the visible spectrum that exhibits the wave of greatest longitude. From red to violet, in descending gradation, our brains distinguish ranges according to the distance between the crest of one wave and the next. And in order to separate and indicate the experience of each of these ranges it invents a sensation: orange, yellow, green, blue—the labeling of each as arbitrary as the invention of a word to designate any given object.

A color is, in fact, a word, but a word so indelibly imprinted upon our experience of the real that we cannot imagine that it could be any other way. And yet it could be. . . .

We believe that colors exist in and of themselves, for themselves, but no. Colors, such as we perceive them, don’t really exist. To the longitudinal range that we normally know as red, our biological architecture could have assigned that other optical experience that we call green.

We are capable of perceiving only the most minimal portion of the totality of the electromagnetic spectrum. We call this insignificant segment light. But what strange and indescribable color would x-rays be if we could see them? Or UHF waves? What color would the air surrounding us be if we could detect radio waves? What would the universe look like if we could see cosmic rays, the terrible light that illuminates the extremes of the spectrum beyond ultraviolet rays?

What occurs with colors also occurs with tastes, sounds, textures, smells. Our five senses are not portals through which we are conveyed to an external reality, but rather ports that receive stimuli utterly lacking in intrinsic qualities, that our brains adorn in accordance with evolutionary requirements in order to present them as Truth. But what really, then, is softness, blueness, sweetness? What is the real appearance of the world? What does “real” mean? Is it correct to speak of an “appearance”?

And yet, all of these fictions come to me. I receive them and they constitute my world. They define me. I exist insofar as it is I who experiences these lies. In the world everything happens to me. I am the collection of reactions and emotions aroused by the farce put on by my brain—like one who plays chess with himself. Wouldn’t it be fair to say of love, hate, hope, pleasure, and, in short, of all emotions unleashed in answer to the existence of that supposed “exterior world” of which our senses speak to us—wouldn’t it be fair to say of them the same thing we’ve said of colors? Is it possible that existence is not a feat of balance? Created from nothing, sustained by nothing, and sought by nothing, aren’t we, every single one of us, but a single step away from dissolution? What separates us from the void?

Nothing separates us from the void. We carry it within.

We are the void.