From the dense, metallic middle sprouts a set of arms which marry a sense of specialized mechanical pieces with the uncanny biological precision of insect legs. It sweeps rapidly across your field of vision. There is no sound that you’re able to associate with its mechanisms. Perhaps it is only drowned out by the grand, terrible roar of the air it pulls away as it passes.
Accompanying the space about it, you notice that where you have previously perceived nothing, there is actually a sparkling field of pinpoints. There are some which leap, primary-colored or stark white, and the monochrome fuzz of the points behind them gives a sense of depth and contrast. The insectoid middle form does not disrupt them. It seems that the field is between you and the writhing form. The brightest pinpoints do not leap where its body is, only the drab backdrop of unmoving points accompany its shape.
To either side, balancing the snapshot you perceive, are two forms. One, slightly larger, pulses in time with the moving of the legs. It is difficult for you to make out. Your instinct is to ignore it, but the details manifest as you try and look. Bulbous, organic shapes obscure the center form they are joined to. Unlike the great metallic center form, which floats menacingly across your vision again and again, this form is alive with colored pops. They are so vibrant over top of this form that they seem almost to be a part of it. The bulbous shapes of the form grow and condense rhythmically. You feel almost ashamed to have not noticed this form. It is beautiful and warm. It moves in way that implies both a controlling current and autonomy at the same time.
To the other side, the smaller form. This form strikes you almost like an underdeveloped version of the previous one. The details are even harder to make out, but you push yourself. Your view of it sharpens. The bulbs of it are sharper, thorn-like, but blunted. They are not so wide that you cannot see the center. The bulbs taper to short stalk-like tendrils that end with socket joints at the base of the form’s center. This form, overall, is cooler but not unpleasant. It is a cold, mottled blue which fades to purple and green in places.
Upon closer inspection, the field of points do not pop so much here but they are present. For the first time, you notice purple and green points in the field alongside the primary colors and the white. The center of the form is stalk-like, thick and ruddy, roughly textured. It is calm and perhaps weary. Your eyes move between the forms. Both are lovely and strange to see, but there is something about them which is blurred. Your vision is being pulled back to the center, to the metal insect form, and you oblige.
It has change subtly. Now, where the legs meet it’s center, the shape of them continues in ridges along it’s underside. Perhaps it has simply turned over. This side is still metallic, but is formed of a darker, more textured metal. Perhaps pulled against a rougher surface. It is shining also with colors, bent and pulled about it’s contours like a reflection; yes, it is a reflection of the sea of pinpoints. Dark, untextured reflection that is not an ideal recreation but an impression. The colors are flatter and darker but more varied, they are blended to a gradient and arranged into a sheen rather than a buzzing ocean.
As the form sweeps by, it makes changes. In a blink, the backdrop of points is altered. The field is no longer only grey but subtly purple as well, gunmetal purple sheen. The color pops lean towards a dull reddish hue, and the yellow and blue that could be seen so brightly before are muted, they do not capture your attention unless you force yourself to look. The points leap more wildly, the waves of the pinprick sea become violent and bending. The points appear to move more uniformly, appear to leap out towards you. Are some points bigger, or closer two you? Are the center points in the various swells leaping out or growing, multiplying like cells?
The forms to either side are changed as well. They have grown slightly, but are the same size in relation to each other. The first form is stretched, expanding the matter it contains into grander, more inflated bulbs. There is tension to this form now, and the ease it first communicated has dissipated somewhat. Its bright colors seem out of place now, still shining behind sea of points but duller from your viewpoint. The second form has grown as well, but it is denser as well. It has grown longer, thicker, more sure. Its colors hum and vibrate as the points begin to match them. It is still smaller in relation to the other form. The sum of its matter has been added to.
The forms are building to a great release. They are brought to the summit of what they are, to breaking point or transfiguration. The field shivers and shakes, the points begin to warp along the center-form and caress it. How the bright middle pulses achingly, funny legs going and blurring together so that you can’t tell how many there are. The colors of this place seem to glow, they glow into the forms, so that the points and the forms and the place that you are meld into one. In the scream of the pinpoint sea, you open your eyes.
Shanty Town 