What do you see, in the imagination, when you look at Skins's island?
As we all know, Skins's island
really looks like this:
But when first coming to that page, the first thing that pops into
this mind is this:
Each human brain of course operates differently from other human brains (a situation the primitives would dearly love to "correct"), too many different ways to even cursorily itemize, but this particular brain sees words as "pictures," images, instead of simply as just words.
In franksolich's case, this might be for two reasons; deafness, which distorts all the other perceptions, sometimes unusually so, and that franksolich even though of the baby-booming age, grew up in a house without a television, and who this far into life remains televisionless.
When going to Skins's island, it's easy to imagine one as if getting into a boat and rowing out on the vast stormy seas to get there; the house here is mostly windows, which show the panorama of the Sandhills of Nebraska from all four sides, the rolling hills excepting in color very much resembling the North Sea in January as franksolich fondly recalls it from his youthful expeditions.
As one nears Skins's island, one contemplates the choices one has to make: to land on the open beach, to float around hoping to find a thickly-forested cove, or to land some part which one has not seen before.
And then there is that miasma, that mist, that poisonous gas of Hate and bitterness, that seems to shroud the island; one hopes not to have to breathe any of it.
Where one comes ashore of course depends upon whether or not the primitives have seen one.
One hopes to land unseen, as the primitives are, uh, hostile to strangers.
It is the primitives themselves who "paint" the picture of Skins's island as franksolich sees it, in their own words illustrating darkness, isolation, geocentrism, and uncongeniality to those who are not primitives like themselves.
A forbidding place where one can get chopped to pieces if one lands on the wrong beach.
