“Being an artist means,
not reckoning and counting, but ripening
like the tree
which does not force its sap
and stands confident
in the storms of spring, without the fear
that after them may come no summer.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke
The memory of water
On the day of the event (i.e. the trauma), it's as if a part of the soul escapes from the body. The one that must be kept intact. The one that still smiles in childhood pictures. The event can take any form: an accident, a fateful phone call (…)
The next day
The horror of it all was that I had prepared everything in advance. Backpack, passport, essentials. A few days later, they’d be waiting for me at the airport. At that moment, I’d imagined only two possible endings to that story (…)
The wandering
It's my fault. I had established a long time ago that when things would go wrong, I’d simply cut myself off from the rest of the world. Remember when I was little? I used to call it “the extinction”. (…) But I'm scared. I think I'm stuck, Lidy. I can't get out of it. (…)
“It does come. But it comes
only to the patient,
who are there as though eternity lay before them,
so unconcernedly still and wide.
I learn it daily, learn it with pain
to which I am grateful:
patience is everything!”
