In short, there were no limitations to my thoughts, which weren't thoughts, after all, because I had no brain to think them; every cell on it's own though every thinkable thing all at once, not through images, since we had not images of any kind at our disposal, but simply in that indeterminate way of feeling oneself there, which did not prevent us from feeling ourselves equally there in some other way.It was a rich and free and contented condition, my condition at that time, quite the contrary of what you might think....A Desperation filled me, a desire not to do anything special, which would have been out of place, knowing that there was nothing special to do, or non special either, but to respond in some way...…The shell in this way was able to create visual image of shells, which are things very similar – as far as we know – to the shell itself, except that the shell is here, whereas the images of it are formed elsewhere, possibly on the retina. An image therefore presupposes a retina, which in turn presupposes a complex system stemming from an encephalon. So in producing the shell, I also produced its image - not one, of course, but many because with one shell you can make as many shell-images as you want – but only potential images because to form an image you need all the requisites I mentioned before: and encephalon with its optic ganglia, and an optic nerve to carry the vibrations from outside to inside, and this optic nerve, at the other extremity, ends in something made purposely to see what there is outside, namely the eye.…In short, I conceived of the eye-encephalon link as a kind of tunnel dug from the outside by the force of what was ready to become and image, rather than from within by the intention of picking up any old image.
Excerpts from The Spiral
The Complete Cosmicomics
Italo Calvino
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