They are, to each other, invisible. They see, they speak of many things long into the night, the things they speak of, a fraction, the smallest fraction of experience.
But it is their experience.
They speak of ideas, of artists, music, of movies and plays - all these things, invisible. They have the experience and then, briefly, attempt to relive it. But the experience is gone. They talk of their dreams, detailed, half-remembered and fleeting, invisible, conjured in the mind for the remembering or the telling - otherwise, invisible.
Their relationship is an abstraction, the shared glance, "Mamihlapinatapai", each reading the others mind, but this is imagination.
They talk of their feelings, but feelings, they are invisible. They fancy they can read each other - hearts and minds worn upon a sleeve, displayed in their posture, attitude, upon their face, revealed in small gestures, a door held open, a flower plucked and given, an unsolicited gift that marks and expands their territory. But these symbols, they are nothing, the thinnest froth upon the ocean. What you see is not what is there.
Invisible, the waves in the sea, only visible at the boundary between wind and water - and - the rest, the depths and the firmament, are unknown.
Their conversations, of all conversations - the smallest portion of things they could be discussing. Their skin, when touching, again - much ado made of a connection that is as much a physical boundary, barrier, you cannot go further than this, try as you might.
Unable to see the minutiae of each others lives, their ambitions, separately spoken and vaguely interpreted by the other, his writing, made tangible on the page but so much left to write about - an impossible task that he will never complete and he is stymied by the scale of it.
And she, paintings, one after another, acrylic, oil, the general improvement in technique, the explorations, failed, successful, but - in this is well, she is up against the same - in a world of infinite possibility of form, color, meaning - how to proceed?
They are clumsy in this.
Beyond them, the world, almost entirely invisible, only recognizable at the scale of their lives. A tree, recognizable in it's trunk, branches, leaves, vanishes in it's electrons, atoms, cells, in it's function, the same with people, animals, their focal length allowing them only to see one another in relationship to themselves at a scale relateable to themselves. You can see a person, but the rest of that person - the 99.99999% of them that makes them "them" - their atoms, molecules, cells, organs, their thoughts, intentions, emotions, their memories, families, history, culture, this is implied, generalized from prior experience, we know them only by this prejudice - however well intended.
Pull farther back, the houses, the street, the parks are visible, but the city never is. Only in abstractions, in curious maps drawn from hot air balloons or in the fancy of an artist, in photos taken from planes or satellites, or symbolic abstractions, from which much can be derived but little truly known.
These maps, they do not show the intricacies of the lives that make up the city, the chance encounters, noble and sordid details of the inhabitants, the histories of their families, the long emigration that finally ended them here, the wagon trains or schooners or airplanes that brought their ancestors, themselves, there are no maps to show the interdependencies of the various organs that comprise a city, the churches, governments, water and sewage, power, the shops and markets that give it a life beyond the small sum of it's members.
From far enough away, and with enough technology and resources we can animate these maps, show the ebb and flow of traffic, the tentacles of farther and farther flung suburbs that append themselves to the city, fill in, at nighttime a vast glittering constellation, a phosphorescent jellyfish hung in the sea. But these are all tricks done to bring it to a scale we can apprehend.
The air, on a good day, by and largely invisible, the water, by the good fortune of the developed world, invisible, its shape formed by the glass, curving the light that passes through it.
The infinitude of waves that make up the telephone, the internet, that reflect from satellites, appear on our phones as texts, on our televisions as "programs" or "news", that are hopefully beamed into space in our vainglorious search for an intelligence beyond ours, our audacity in thinking we would even recognize it, the light - and the darkness that surrounds us in the turning of our days, all this too is invisible.
The world, history, deep beneath their feet, invisible unless you should take the initiative, dig a hole, and always, deeper, deeper, always what you find is not what's there...
Your imagination fills in the gaps. And this - we know, this is not real. It is invisible.
The world, experienced, translated through sight, sound, temperature, texture, given a new life in the brain, often of a completely different aspect than what has been witnessed.
And in the margins are the demons, the angels, the hierarchies of a thousand, a million, an infinitude of celestial beings, bright lights and dark shadows, these, weaving destinies and lives, these too are invisible and only a lunatic could grasp what they're up to....