Subject and Object

On “Sueño No. 5: Botella del mar,” a photograph by Grete Stern (1950) The woman sits clutching her knees inside a short-necked bottle on a beach, looks up smiling at a mouth above all imagined itineraries. We like to think she volunteered to be lowered into the bottle. On her own idea, even her own craftiness, lured into being enrobed with the thick glass that is the gray-blue of a ukiyo-e sky of flying cranes who breathe the steam of that bluish gray ideation and end of autumn, or a plume of smoke from a train in the middle distance. Swells of warm seawater push wet sand against spun tips of seashells that sit on the warmed strand like nobility on a plush settee. The bottle’s bottom edge lists in the hot sand, the heat of the morning sunlight penetrates the bottle walls, and foam and breeze coax a juddering creature from underneath. From inside the woman argues with herself that the horizon is another of the world’s ambitions. Those ships slipped into bottles with volition and self-responsibility, acquiesce so marvelously, like the glass fitting so smoothly around her. She is a person born to be put into this and admired as perfection from the outside, which is how we love flowers and dreams, though our desires may suffocate them.