Top-Down Room Carpeted in Paper Map Scraps

A view straight down into a narrow, locked, windowless room. The entire floor, wall to wall, is carpeted with thousands of scraps of paper: yellowed letters, receipts, recipes, torn pages of instruction manuals, shreds of newspaper — not one legible letter, only the texture of type, folds and coffee rings. Yet from above it becomes clear that the shades of paper form a relief map: pale sheets make snowy ridges, bluish envelopes trace the curve of a seacoast, a scatter of receipts glitters like the lights of a distant town on a northern cape. A narrow brass mail slot glows in the door, and a strip of warm yellow light falls from it across the floor like one more road on the map. In the lower corner of the frame, sharply in focus, is the only thing the map does not contain: a living human palm, veins and hangnails visible, carefully holding a raw hen's egg, the fingers trembling slightly with effort. The light is diffuse and dusty, the palette all paper — ochre, ivory, faded blue. The map seems on the verge of rising into three dimensions.