Body of Water Essay - Zonal by Paul Carter

Horizons get taken for granted. National Parks are not set aside for horizons, even though we admire their exhibitions of sunsets and sunrises. Belonging neither to earth or sky, horizons are left over. Residue of a fifth element, they are ethereal.

Horizon, the word, is active: horizein, to bound, to limit, to define. Western painters have treated the horizon as a vanishing point, Where the world turns out of sight the brush comes to rest. Relief from representation is felt. The stars begin to be noticed.

The horizon is not a physical place, even though it is tied to our physical place, our point of view. It is metaphysical. It can never be reached. However much the traveler accelerates towards it, it keeps its distance, equably, like the rim of the sky reflected on wind-fanned water.

Besides, if, as the people near Lake Tyrrell are said to have said, the earth is flat, the horizon is all about us. There is no coming nearer. To travel on is to show how far we are from the ground.
The horizon signifies our history – our desire to cross over from one country to another. It is the image of immigration. Other cultures do not see it; or, if they notice it, do not desire it.

Everywhere the imperious Whites went (in the New World, in Oceania), they were flattered to find the indigenous people mistook them for gods (descended from the sky). It was a misunderstanding: these people had no conception of the horizon; they could not imagine a rupture between heaven and earth, a yawning gap through which men could sail in ships. As the three-master could not come over the horizon, their home must lie elsewhere. In the sky, say.

Water, like horizons, finds its own level. Where the ground is most level water spreads widest. To irrigate: to raise water to a new height. A painter might do this with the horizon, fertilizing the eye. A reed-fringed prism could result, suggesting paint-streaked flesh – or toppled pillars of salt.

The horizon poses as another country; it has psychic powers – how else account for mirages where paddle- steamers can be seen, and walls which might belong to China.

The horizon, then, also has its horizons; its layers imposed one upon another. Scrape away one and the delicately articulated bones of another peep through. In a sea of dryness you might be looking into branch-webbed water.

The water is spreading out, the eye is bleeding. A mirror is forming where every part is reflective and no part sees. Where the horizon stretches to the horizon, a continuous sprawl of glittering light (a sea of stars), nothing can be seen.

Zonal by Paul Carter
Horizons get taken for granted. National Parks are not set aside for horizons, even though we admire their exhibitions of sunsets and sunrises. Belonging neither to earth or sky, horizons are left over. Residue of a fifth element, they are ethereal. Horizon, the word, is active: horizein, to bound, to limit, to define. Western painters have treated the horizon as a vanishing point, Where the world turns out of sight the brush comes to rest. Relief from representation is felt. The stars begin to be noticed. The horizon is not a physical place, even though it is tied to our physical place, our point of view. It is metaphysical. It can never be reached. However much the traveler accelerates towards it, it keeps its distance, equably, like the rim of the sky reflected on wind-fanned water. Besides, if, as the people near Lake Tyrrell are said to have said, the earth is flat, the horizon is all about us. There is no coming nearer. To travel on is to show how far we are from the ground. The horizon signifies our history – our desire to cross over from one country to another. It is the image of immigration. Other cultures do not see it; or, if they notice it, do not desire it. Everywhere the imperious Whites went (in the New World, in Oceania), they were flattered to find the indigenous people mistook them for gods (descended from the sky). It was a misunderstanding: these people had no conception of the horizon; they could not imagine a rupture between heaven and earth, a yawning gap through which men could sail in ships. As the three-master could not come over the horizon, their home must lie elsewhere. In the sky, say. Water, like horizons, finds its own level. Where the ground is most level water spreads widest. To irrigate: to raise water to a new height. A painter might do this with the horizon, fertilizing the eye. A reed-fringed prism could result, suggesting paint-streaked flesh – or toppled pillars of salt. The horizon poses as another country; it has psychic powers – how else account for mirages where paddle- steamers can be seen, and walls which might belong to China. The horizon, then, also has its horizons; its layers imposed one upon another. Scrape away one and the delicately articulated bones of another peep through. In a sea of dryness you might be looking into branch-webbed water. The water is spreading out, the eye is bleeding. A mirror is forming where every part is reflective and no part sees. Where the horizon stretches to the horizon, a continuous sprawl of glittering light (a sea of stars), nothing can be seen. \	Why is the horizon horizontal? Because we stand up and look. Lying down, there is water or sky. Where they meet, the watcher is her own horizon. Seeing is a visor, the erect and narrow slit astronomers prize open to contemplate the stars. Bodies cannot slip through its portcullis. To focus, an apparatus is needed that bundles up the stray rays of light and warps them into a continuous glowing bar. The horizon, say. Seeing through it is a kind of blindness. But it also has the clarity of the photograph taken without a lens. Paintings: sections of rivers. And rivers: museums of horizons. As for writing horizons? It has its own genre: aphorizein means to set bounds to. The aphorism: a short paragraph or sentence. For example: even what we cannot see we have to see. These words might be typed along the white slash. The horizon is at our feet. It comes between steps. We can never tread it. The horizon is a starved figure. A drawn line. But inside it waits another word, round, female, voluptuous: zone, meaning a girdle (or many) hoped about a woman’s form. This is the nostalgia of colonialism: to pretend another history has been repressed. To insinuate it’s pieties into the few remaining folds of land, as voluptuous colours…more honest to depict the sword of light. Despite the official rhetoric of sunsets, the horizon does not shed blood. Its womb is not fertile. It weeps the ichor of the gods. This explains its transparency and its brilliance. Like the hypnotist’s glowing, erect finger, it draws us to see before us the invisible. Like the citizens in the poem who eagerly awaited the advent of the barbarians we are waiting for horizons. They are a kind of solution to the tedium of our lives. They give us landscapes. They will smash down our walls, our Egyptian irrigation schemes, our Aswans of the outback. (They will enslave us, and set us to rebuild them). Horizons are against co-existence. They hasten disappearances, turning the land into an avenue of military light. They are servants of the Imperium: the Emperor is seized by a desire to go beyond the horizon. The horizon is his servant and his mistress; it stimulates desire. It takes his followers by the hand into Canann (then places the Promised Land over another ridge) Now do you see why they are bleeding? Why light collects in the river’s wind-wounded zones. Their after-image burns chrome, then midnight blue, a cut in the retina. But the temporary drama is over. Dark land and dark sky merge into a single world. The water flows by making little animal sounds. The besieging horizon melts away. It leaves us alone with out eyes. What are we going to do without it? How are we going to see?
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