The Unknown

Last month we here at Images offered up a deal: Art for Burritos.  

Below are some of the best submissions focused on representations of the unknown.  

Chipotle Gift Card Winners are at the end of this issue.  Stay tuned for future contests, and congratulations to all of those who took the risk to submit, whether you have been published or not.  You rule.  Keep ’em coming.

Unknown

Blank, Empty.
Mysteriously undefined.
Sunken, treasure.
Buried beneath.
Deep, under.
hidden.

Large, open.
Lost, undefined.
Different.
One of a kind.
Misplaced, forgotten.
Unknown.

-Kalee Lucier-Hill

Photo by Russ McCauley

Singularity

Solitude in singularity
Aloneness is golden in this place
This place of bark, branches and birch
where limbs reach out with kindness
The swift swoosh of wind on leaves
provide ambience

Colors illuminate the traveled paths
with glory
Mystery, intrigue and wonder fill
the untraveled with questions

Fate engrosses the roots of time with
Fate predetermined for animals, stumps alike
The silence is deafening
These Glens provide singularity
And there is solitude in singularity

-Keelan Davis

Photo by Joey Marchetti

Stars

Stars.
They’re bright, they shine.
Each one is its own little beauty.
They seem to hang on invisible strings hung from the heavens.
Or to float in a waterless sea above the world we know.
When a star glints in the velvety black sky, a miracle has surely arisen.
That glint is the laughter, the joy on earth that we can’t always see around us.
But when we look at the stars, it becomes clear.
Clear that all the sad episodes, the downtrodden souls walking around us…
It’s all going to be okay.
We don’t know how, but we’ll all be okay.
Just look to the stars.

-Celia Rosa

AND NOW, THE WINNERS OF OUR FIRST EVER ART AND WRITING CONTEST…

ISREAL CORREA

First Place, Unknown Contest: Art

BRIAN HUNTRESS

      I like to believe that fear is one of the most valuable human qualities. I do not believe it is the most valuable but it does hold serious weight in the safety of mankind. The reason I believe this relates to the unknown is because of the common fear that every human in this sorry world (unless you are a sociopathic nutcase) has is the fear of ambiguity.
An example of this would be when you find yourself walking home on late cloudy night and you feel an unsettling presence behind you. You will turn around, and see nothing. But you will still have fear that someone, something, is following you. A fear of the ambiguity, or better yet, a fear of the unknown.
The online Webster Dictionary states that, “Ambiguity is something that does not have a single clear meaning. Something that is Ambiguous.” In other words, ambiguity is, in thought, the unknown.
I once read a book that will go without a title in this essay because I will not let the title and social status of this book determine the fate of this comparison. This book contained a character whose greatest fear, was oblivion.
I relate to this fear. Let me explain it like this; Do you remember the last time you were in a graveyard? Was there anything significant about those headstones, or have you ever noticed anything significant about the story of your life?
Each one of those headstones represents a birth, countless life experiences, beautiful moments, sex, love, hatred, resentment, many more emotions, and quite obviously, a death.
This goes unnoticed by many, but those lives that were oh so significant to the lifeless bodies decomposing in the Earth, but they have now fallen into oblivion, or the unknown.
That is what I fear. I fear oblivion, I fear ambiguity, and most of all, I fear rotting in the earth with the rest of those God Forsaken bodies only to be forgotten. That is not to say that people are not missed, but they will be forgotten because when I die, my family will miss me, my friends will miss me, but soon after they will die too, and all emotional attachment to my memory will be lost in the strings of time. It is sad, but it is true. This is what the unknown means to me, and it probably won’t change.
Oblivion, ambiguity, the decomposition of the flesh and the vanishing of a soul are all inevitable parts of life.
WE WILL DIE. We could die alone, or with the a lover at our side, but regardless of the circumstances, we will fall into ambiguity, we will fall into oblivion, we will fall into the Unknown.

Congrats to our winners.  Stay tuned for more awesome!

-iStaff