I sit down. A book in hand. It’s thick, heavy, it crumbles under its own weight. It holds over a thousand pages. The paper is so thin. It has to be. This book accommodates the meaning of everything. It’s like a compass, a Bible that holds the foundation of our language. Each entry starts with a word in bold, followed by a descriptive passage. The Oxford Dictionary of English, 152nd edition, released in the year 3087. I turn the pages with an impatience that spreads to the tip of my fingers. Too many words.
familiarity | fa,milr’arti |
noun (plural familiarities)
- Close acquaintance with or knowledge of something.
- The quality of being well known from long or close association.
- Relaxed friendliness or intimacy between people.
How sweet it tastes. The concept of semantic warmth, it wraps around your heart and leaves you feeling like any one single thing makes sense. I close the book. A loud, damp clap. There he was.
Familiarity. A man, dressed in a black suit. White shirt, black tie. A black hat, black shades. An outfit that suggests some level of secrecy, and yet I can see his face. I know this man and he knows me. In this world of make belief, he is an old friend. I remember him. What a luxury, to be able to hold and cradle this faint trace of a memory. I want to treasure it, to bottle it up and keep it close to my heart. He’s standing by the door, leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets. The longer I stare, the more the world around me settles. Things become things, a quiet constancy sneaks into the room. The ground returns under my feet. I can stand, move, laugh and cry. If he is here, than so am I.
—
You are currently traversing the limitless expanses of Visual Fiction. Each narrative fragment in this collection unravels a memory of a man drawn into an alternate reality. With every piece, he steps deeper into the unknown, attempting to describe the indescribable, to paint the unseen, and to make sense of the senseless. These tales offer glimpses into bizarre worlds that can at times feel both intimately familiar and strangely threatening.
