The Constellations Are a Sickness

Note: The images for this collage were taken by my cellphone camera, an optical microscope in darkfield, a scanning electron microscope and an atomic force microscope.

The depressed do not forget that they are depressed. They wake up depressed and go to sleep depressed. They dream depressed, and awake, they move through rooms that are all named, “depression”. The sprawling vistas of the young earth with seas still steaming, volcanic vents and stars that belch together the deadly germ of life; the constellations gaunt and dreamy as the starved and, yes, even the big bang, are all depression.

And my working days, which consist of looking through microscopes, offer no reprieve. Through the lenses and cameras, I saw the same miasmic deep-space that followed me everywhere. The same contentless fever dreams. Constellations glinted their malicious smiles at me, mirroring the weak lymphatic leaking-fissures that organize the stars. And there, in the pre-history of that microscopic world, I saw the sickness in its purest form, pulling away from matter to be born.