Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Nano Pearl™ Paint

"More sophisticated developments in paint can be expected as nanotechnology matures." 
Tim Prosser's Future Blog

This is the first paint with human intelligence.
She brightens the room and thinks about her own nature.
She wonders about the paint that came before:
the shadow paint, the colour of watchful trees,
lying silent underneath her gleaming skin.
She is a million molecules of white light.

Insects travel on wings of light
rumbling with coarse intelligence
around the room which is a skin
she wears on the inside; this is nature
as no one intended it. She considers the trees,
which have been watching this space since before

the people came with their whiteness, since before
anything was painted, when it was merely light
that passed between the tops of trees
with no greater intelligence
to name it with circling fingers: this is us, this is nature.
This is the mebrane that separates us: skin.

So insects arrive trembling beneath their armoured skin
to worship at the altar of her, kneeling before
the image of her better nature
searching for the the core, the source, the meaning of all light.
They follow instinct not intelligence,
abandoning the world outside, sun, rock, flowers, trees.

Underneath the shadow paint has no thought of trees
or of anything. Invented before Pearl skin,
this was just paint. No lurking intelligence
or curiosity about what comes after or came before,
it has no memory of the certain quality of light
that travelled through the trees, casting patterns of nature

on the sunlit wall. The skeletons of nature,
shadow and sun, still enter through the trees,
a melancholy leaf-dappled light
deep with the sort of longing that shivers a lover’s skin.
The Pearl paint has never felt light before,
trapped until now in a tin, amorphous intelligence.

She spreads under nature and absorbs light through her skin.
She is a lover of trees, a love that wasn’t possible before
there was light, carnal with intelligence. 

---
A sci-fi sestina, inspired by our painting the loungeroom today with "smart paint" that claims to have nanotechnology in it.

No comments:

Post a Comment