Ekphrasis or ecphrasis, from the Greek description of a work of art, possibly imaginary, produced as a rhetorical exercise,[1] and is a graphic, often dramatic, description of a visual work of art. In ancient times, it referred to a description of any thing, person, orexperience. The word comes from the Greek ek and phrasis, 'out' and 'speak' respectively, verb ekphrazein, to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name. (Wikipedia)
There is a place in which there are no people. There is not a human being watching this place, it is empty of human life with one exception, which I will shortly elaborate on. There is nobody there, only a single person, a single human being.
Where is the place that we find this single human being, this one person, but no other people? What sort of place do we find such a lonely man or woman in? Or child. I will explain this place now
The place is a place that can be considered natural, when I say that I mean that there are no man-made infrastructures there, and when I say man-made infrastructures I mean structures built by mankind, be it an igloo or a highway. What I mean to say is that we can see none of those in the near surroundings (for of course we can see, through this reading, that there is something going on although we cannot be present for it) is there anything made by human hands, an event in which something natural is picked up, perhaps, then shaped and willed to perform a certain function, be it protection or slaughter or play.
In this natural environment there is a clearing, or rather, this clearing that we are observing through this text is a natural environment free from the impact of man. Since it is a clearing there is an implication that there is also a clearing from something, since a wide open monotonous stretch of land is not considered a clearing, but just that, a wide open stretch. It is a clearing in the trees, so there is a space where there are no trees growing, more circular in shape than other shapes it could take. How shall we describe this like-a-circle clearing in the trees in a natural environment further? What are some other characteristics we can derive from this scene? What are some questions we can ask of this clearing to let it speak about itself for a little while?
The time is the night, yet there is a moon shining down on this little clearing, and the moon is full there are no clouds in the sky, so it illuminates leaves grass tree trunks and ants in the grass which are asleep. The moon is full and it allows us to see what is in the clearing, if there is something or someone in the clearing. Is there? It was stated at the beginning of this text, it said
“There is nobody there, only a single person, a single human being.”
so we must assume that there is indeed a single human being in the clearing. From what vantage point are we observing this single human being in the clearing? We are observing the single human being in the clearing as if we were standing on two legs, we don’t necessarily of course, since you might not be standing up reading this, and in reading you are looking through the window which I am now describing to you. We are viewing the clearing as if we were standing up, the trees are taller but not much taller. The trees are standing close to one another, the rest of the forest is dark in front of us and to our sides, of course we cannot see what it is like behind us. We are standing on one side of the clearing in a dark forest with the full moon shining down on us, presumably, and on the trees and leaves and animals and straws of grass and the single person in the middle of the clearing.
There is something remarkable going on in the clearing and now I will describe what is going on in the clearing but first I will describe what this single person in the middle of the clearing looks like so you can get a better idea of what we’re looking at.
The single person in the middle of the clearing is a person with curves in her body. She is a person who has a body that has some curves, and because of those curves and because of the absence of certain signs, we are calling this person a 'she' although no one has told us that it is a female person standing in the middle of the clearing. These signs are for example, this person has breasts that, although relatively small, are of such a size and weight that we assume they are there for a purpose that purpose can be child bearing and rearing and breast feeding for example but we don't know this for sure of course it is merely an assumption. We are also assuming and calling this person a 'she' because there is hair between the person's legs, but nothing coming out of it as we can see, and this we are told is the sign of a female person in many parts of the world. We are told that this is the case and it also works relatively well with our experiences so we will take on this view and for convenience sake called it 'her' and 'she'.
She is standing in the middle of the clearing not exactly in the middle but close enough. The ground is soft at least it looks soft, and we can see that there are no pieces of garbage or trash on the ground, no smashed up bottles or rusty cans used needles soggy condoms and also no hard rocks or twigs or sticks but soft ground with some needles on it, needles from the trees, pine needles which can be used but not in that way. She is standing and she has a normal standing position, that means that she is standing quite still with her feet close together her arms down by her side. She is standing like this, there are more characteristics of her body that we will describe, and we are getting to this part now.
Her body is naked but it is not uncovered with something. It is, to say, covered with something, and we can see that there is a strong effect of this in the moonlight, there is a strong effect of what covers her body when the light from the moon hits her and hits her body. You could say we are mesmerized, but it is up to you to decide that, we are merely providing a window that you can look through or not it's up to you
Her body is covered in scales and the moonlight is hitting her body, bouncing off rays in the thousands, hundred thousands, the rays are hitting everywhere in the surroundings, the rays are rays which seem like nothing else not like the sun not like the moon, but more similar to the rays from a fish when it jumps out of the water on a sunny morning. Each scale takes a separate part of the moonlight and sends it somewhere else, so the rays are everywhere on the tree trunks the twigs the pine needles the blades of grass.
There is something else on her, we can see it now that our eyes are adjusted to the relative illuminated darkness in front of us, but it's hard to tell - there is something over her face as far as we can tell, and this thing is a large pair of glasses, something big which is covering half of her face. Her mouth is visible to us but not her eyes and hardly her nose; it's like someone has taken a little screen and put it over the upper half of her face. We think we know what this is, we think we can recognize it as a piece of technology, except there is no chord coming from it so it is not connected to anything.
Then she begins to move, and we are looking at her moving, very slowly. The movements are soft and water-like, as if you have a little animal from the sea in some water in your hand, a tadpole that is laconically moving around in the very limited space of your palm, of the clearing, but it isn't worried about getting out. We assume it knows it will be able to leave when it wants to, or, when we want it to. The tadpole, excuse me, the person in the clearing we have assigned as a female is moving with these slow and lazy morning-movements, when you have woken up on a Sunday morning and you have nothing pressing to do, you're just moving in your bed, naked under the blankets, your body is feeling around for itself, checking that it's there not something else, strange, but in it's own, those are her movements, the movements that she is making. Her hips are moving up and down, shifting her body, but her feet do not move in their place. She is standing still, in the same point, at the same point, but her body is moving, it is very erotic. We don't know if she is dancing for us, moving, or if it is for herself, but the movements seem so contained and inside of herself that we assume the latter. She is moving internally, but we see some small glimpses in the movements her body perform - yet we know that beneath the surface there is much more. She continues to move/dance/make movements for a long time, until the light of the moon has gone out and is extinguished.
There is a place in which there are no people. There is not a human being watching this place, it is empty of human life with one exception, which I will shortly elaborate on. There is nobody there, only a single person, a single human being.
Where is the place that we find this single human being, this one person, but no other people? What sort of place do we find such a lonely man or woman in? Or child. I will explain this place now
The place is a place that can be considered natural, when I say that I mean that there are no man-made infrastructures there, and when I say man-made infrastructures I mean structures built by mankind, be it an igloo or a highway. What I mean to say is that we can see none of those in the near surroundings (for of course we can see, through this reading, that there is something going on although we cannot be present for it) is there anything made by human hands, an event in which something natural is picked up, perhaps, then shaped and willed to perform a certain function, be it protection or slaughter or play.
In this natural environment there is a clearing, or rather, this clearing that we are observing through this text is a natural environment free from the impact of man. Since it is a clearing there is an implication that there is also a clearing from something, since a wide open monotonous stretch of land is not considered a clearing, but just that, a wide open stretch. It is a clearing in the trees, so there is a space where there are no trees growing, more circular in shape than other shapes it could take. How shall we describe this like-a-circle clearing in the trees in a natural environment further? What are some other characteristics we can derive from this scene? What are some questions we can ask of this clearing to let it speak about itself for a little while?
The time is the night, yet there is a moon shining down on this little clearing, and the moon is full there are no clouds in the sky, so it illuminates leaves grass tree trunks and ants in the grass which are asleep. The moon is full and it allows us to see what is in the clearing, if there is something or someone in the clearing. Is there? It was stated at the beginning of this text, it said
“There is nobody there, only a single person, a single human being.”
so we must assume that there is indeed a single human being in the clearing. From what vantage point are we observing this single human being in the clearing? We are observing the single human being in the clearing as if we were standing on two legs, we don’t necessarily of course, since you might not be standing up reading this, and in reading you are looking through the window which I am now describing to you. We are viewing the clearing as if we were standing up, the trees are taller but not much taller. The trees are standing close to one another, the rest of the forest is dark in front of us and to our sides, of course we cannot see what it is like behind us. We are standing on one side of the clearing in a dark forest with the full moon shining down on us, presumably, and on the trees and leaves and animals and straws of grass and the single person in the middle of the clearing.
There is something remarkable going on in the clearing and now I will describe what is going on in the clearing but first I will describe what this single person in the middle of the clearing looks like so you can get a better idea of what we’re looking at.
The single person in the middle of the clearing is a person with curves in her body. She is a person who has a body that has some curves, and because of those curves and because of the absence of certain signs, we are calling this person a 'she' although no one has told us that it is a female person standing in the middle of the clearing. These signs are for example, this person has breasts that, although relatively small, are of such a size and weight that we assume they are there for a purpose that purpose can be child bearing and rearing and breast feeding for example but we don't know this for sure of course it is merely an assumption. We are also assuming and calling this person a 'she' because there is hair between the person's legs, but nothing coming out of it as we can see, and this we are told is the sign of a female person in many parts of the world. We are told that this is the case and it also works relatively well with our experiences so we will take on this view and for convenience sake called it 'her' and 'she'.
She is standing in the middle of the clearing not exactly in the middle but close enough. The ground is soft at least it looks soft, and we can see that there are no pieces of garbage or trash on the ground, no smashed up bottles or rusty cans used needles soggy condoms and also no hard rocks or twigs or sticks but soft ground with some needles on it, needles from the trees, pine needles which can be used but not in that way. She is standing and she has a normal standing position, that means that she is standing quite still with her feet close together her arms down by her side. She is standing like this, there are more characteristics of her body that we will describe, and we are getting to this part now.
Her body is naked but it is not uncovered with something. It is, to say, covered with something, and we can see that there is a strong effect of this in the moonlight, there is a strong effect of what covers her body when the light from the moon hits her and hits her body. You could say we are mesmerized, but it is up to you to decide that, we are merely providing a window that you can look through or not it's up to you
Her body is covered in scales and the moonlight is hitting her body, bouncing off rays in the thousands, hundred thousands, the rays are hitting everywhere in the surroundings, the rays are rays which seem like nothing else not like the sun not like the moon, but more similar to the rays from a fish when it jumps out of the water on a sunny morning. Each scale takes a separate part of the moonlight and sends it somewhere else, so the rays are everywhere on the tree trunks the twigs the pine needles the blades of grass.
There is something else on her, we can see it now that our eyes are adjusted to the relative illuminated darkness in front of us, but it's hard to tell - there is something over her face as far as we can tell, and this thing is a large pair of glasses, something big which is covering half of her face. Her mouth is visible to us but not her eyes and hardly her nose; it's like someone has taken a little screen and put it over the upper half of her face. We think we know what this is, we think we can recognize it as a piece of technology, except there is no chord coming from it so it is not connected to anything.
Then she begins to move, and we are looking at her moving, very slowly. The movements are soft and water-like, as if you have a little animal from the sea in some water in your hand, a tadpole that is laconically moving around in the very limited space of your palm, of the clearing, but it isn't worried about getting out. We assume it knows it will be able to leave when it wants to, or, when we want it to. The tadpole, excuse me, the person in the clearing we have assigned as a female is moving with these slow and lazy morning-movements, when you have woken up on a Sunday morning and you have nothing pressing to do, you're just moving in your bed, naked under the blankets, your body is feeling around for itself, checking that it's there not something else, strange, but in it's own, those are her movements, the movements that she is making. Her hips are moving up and down, shifting her body, but her feet do not move in their place. She is standing still, in the same point, at the same point, but her body is moving, it is very erotic. We don't know if she is dancing for us, moving, or if it is for herself, but the movements seem so contained and inside of herself that we assume the latter. She is moving internally, but we see some small glimpses in the movements her body perform - yet we know that beneath the surface there is much more. She continues to move/dance/make movements for a long time, until the light of the moon has gone out and is extinguished.