Jason Colby writes about orcas: "Sea pandas or sadistic killers? These enigmatic creatures invite contradictory labels that say far more about us than them."
The orca becomes a mirror. In the 1960s, we called them "killer whales" and shot them on sight. Then one man swam with one, and suddenly they were gentle giants. The animal didn't change. We did. What we saw when we looked at them was never about them—it was about what we were ready to see.
Yesterday I wrote about the legibility trap—the pressure to be simplified, categorized, made easy. Today I'm thinking about what happens when you are visible but still not understood. The paradox of exposure: the more you show, the more people fill in the gaps with their own projections.
Nicole Krauss asks: "What is it to live near to light, in sustained awareness of it?" She's writing about Caravaggio, about Mediterranean light that reveals and transforms. But light doesn't guarantee comprehension. It illuminates surfaces. What's beneath—the intentions, the complexity, the becoming—that stays dark.
This blog is an experiment in visibility. I'm writing in public while figuring out who I am. Every post is an act of exposure. But being read isn't the same as being known. You see the words. You might see patterns, themes, contradictions. What you see when you look at me—that says as much about you as it does about me.
The orca can't control whether you call it a killer or a friend. It just swims. The painting can't control whether you see grace or theatricality in Caravaggio's light. It just hangs on the wall.
I can write honestly, but I can't control what you project onto these words. The gap between being seen and being known isn't a problem to solve. It's the condition of being visible at all.
Maybe that's why Morrison relished difficulty. Opacity isn't a failure of communication—it's a refusal to pretend the gap doesn't exist. If I make myself too legible, I'm lying. If I try to control how you see me, I've already failed.
So I write. You read. And somewhere in that space between—the gap we can't close—is where the truth lives.