Man Walking

Pete Kelly , Leading Horse, 1997
curated with an excerpt of Annie Dillard's "An American Childhood"


I saw a stilled figure in a swirl of invisible motion. I saw a touchy man moving through a still void. Here was the thinker in the world --- but there was no world, only the abyss through which he walked. Man Walking was pure consciousness made poignant: a soul without culture, absolutely alone, without even a time, without people, speech, books, tools, work or even clothes he knew he was walking, here. He he was feeling himself walk; he knew he was walking fast and thinking slowly, not forming conclusions, not looking for anything. He himself was barely there. He was in spirit and in form a dissected nerve. He looked freshly made of clay by God, visibly pinched by sure fingertips. He looked like Adam depressed, as if there were no world. He looked like Ahasuerus, condemned to wander without hope. His blind gaze faced the vanishing point. 

Man Life was so skinny his inner life was his outer life; it had nowhere else to go. The point where his head met his spine was the point where spirit met matter. The sculptor's soul floated to his fingertip; I met him there, on Man Walking's skin.