Codex of the Synapse: Folio A1.4

The Synapse

 

"Yet the absence of the imagination had

Itself to be imagined. The great pond,

The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,

Mud water like dirty glass, expressing silence"

- Wallace Stevens

 

There are many ways to understand the Synapse. It is the in-between place, the gap, belonging to no world in particular but adjoining all of them.

The Synapse is devoid of sensory qualities - a silence - yet, like a rest in a line of notes, this silence has itself a quality articulated by the sounds that border it (and which, conversely, defines the qualities of those sounds). Nevertheless, The Keepers, who have compiled the Codex to map this void, use countless images to describe it. It is represented variously as a forest, an elevator, or even an algorithm, in which trees, floors, or numbers take on the role of worlds. However, The Keepers employ their myths with a wink, knowing that to describe a door by the qualities of its frame, is to miss the point of the door.

ADJOINING FOLIOS:

• A2.7 Presence/ Porosity/ Absence
• B1.1 The Keepers
• C2.1 Here/Thereness: Portals and Portality
• C5.3 The Memory Forest
• D2.1 The Codex: Reference Labyrinth and Memory Palace